Decoding the Known: Internet Mysteries We Totally Solved

Hello everybody, welcome back to a episode of Decoding the Unknown, although Kevin has given this one the title Decoding the Unknown, uh, sorry, Decoding the Known, Solved Internet Mysteries, because we kind of, like, I really enjoyed, we've done, like, a series of internet mysteries that Kevin has written, and I enjoyed every single one. He was like, Simon, man, we're really scraping the bottom of the barrel of, like, internet mysteries now. Uh, all right, is that, I could do one about, like, solved ones. Oh yeah, that sounds good. That sounds good, let's do that. It's short, it's, uh, there's definitely a shorter episode. Script feels unusually light. I've gotten kind of used to having these big weighty things. If you're new here, what happens is, uh, one of my writers, in this case Kevin, will write me a script. I've never read it before, I might be familiar with some of these because the internet ones I sometimes am. We're gonna read it together, we're gonna learn together, it's gonna be fun. Let's get into it. When I was but a wee lad, one of the most fascinating sites in the world to me was hell.com. I feel like I remember this for something. For starters, I was like 12, so hell was still a pretty naughty word. But also, the site was intentionally mysterious. I first discovered the site during its initial iteration, when there was nothing on the site other than a warning stating that you were not invited and to go away. Over the years, however, more content became available. It seemed to be like a secret exclusive club and I wanted in. I never was able to become a member, but that's for the best as I would probably not have fit in there anyway. You see, hell.com was not an occult website full of angry, angst-ridden teens that wanted to feel cool and special. It was a digital space for artists. The site was owned by artist Kenneth Aronson and it was absolutely playing into the name hell and people's lack of understanding of technology. As the general population became more technologically savvy, projects like this became less viable without being much more elaborate. REAL LIFE HACKER RESPONDS TO HACKING SCENES FROM MOVIES Most of the time. Arthur C. Clarke famously said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. This is absolutely true, but creators have taken this to mean that they can treat technology as though it is actually magic, which is of course nonsense. If you show a reasonable person something seemingly magical, they will assume that it's just technology that they don't understand. The converse is not true, however. If you show a reasonable person technology that they don't understand, such as the inner workings of a computer in the early 1980s, they're not going to assume that it's magic. But even old people who say that are being sarcastic. They know it's not really magic. They just know it's something that their old brains can't understand. It's a good thing they never tried to revive Tron well into the year 2000 when the average person had a much greater understanding of how the insides of electronics worked because that would have been downright silly. With technology rapidly advancing, so too must internet humbuggery advance if the creators seek to deceive people. There are a lot of mysteries in both the physical and virtual worlds, but more mysteries have been solved than not. And the less magical technology appears to us, the more easily the virtual mysteries can be solved. As a fan of this channel, you're likely a fan of other, mysterious content. Well, stop it, because Simon makes enough videos to keep you busy. But I love how Kevin is such an advocate of my channel. Whenever I read a script and he mentions other YouTube channels, he's like, yeah, but you shouldn't be watching those, should you? You should only watch channels from back to God. I mean, because I'm in them, it would be weird. But I don't know. There's lots of great stuff on YouTube that should be watching. Like after this one, go check out that internet hacker response to hacking in movies. It's really good. If a bit like on the nose for YouTube. But if you insist on watching other videos as well, there are plenty of lists of unsolved internet mysteries out there that feature nothing but solved mysteries. Yeah, the problem is when we solve one of these Internet mysteries, it's boring. It's almost always boring. The unsolved thing. You're like, oh, my God, it was the CIA. And then when it comes out, it's like, oh, no, it's just a kid in his basement. And it's just a bunch of red herrings. And it's really boring in reality, which is why like unsolved is more interesting than solved. It's probably why I called this general decoding the unknown rather than stuff we know about Yeah. Yeah. So unfortunately, it pays to be like to be ignorant of the solution to save you some time so that you can focus on quality, well researched and truly unsolved content like what we have here at decoding the unknown. Here are some of the most pervasive solved mysteries that lesser YouTubers might try to clickbait you with. And we shall look down our nose at those peasants. Webdriver Torso. I've heard of this. Webdriver Torso is a YouTube channel that was created in March 2013 and started uploading videos in September of the same year. The channel uploaded lots of short videos, most about 11 seconds long, that appeared to be nothing but a series of slides featuring a white background with a red rectangle and blue rectangle in various sizes and positions. There were also tones included in the videos, each a simple sine wave or square wave, and the tones would normally change with each slide. There was a lot of speculation regarding Webdriver Torso. It was an internet numbers station, a recruitment tool like Cicada 3301, a form of alien communication. No, no, please see a psychiatrist. The mystery behind this strange YouTube channel was extraordinarily banal. What a great surprise that is. The channel was created by Google, and used as a means of quality control. That's it. When YouTube was asked for comment about the channel, their reply was, We're never going to give you uploading that's slow or loses video quality, and we're never going to let you down by playing YouTube in poor video quality. That's why we're always running tests like Webdriver Torso. Cute. But if a statement to the press is going to include a rickroll, I prefer it to be read by Melania Trump. Yeah, that's actually quite interesting. The most boring thing would be, yeah, someone just uploaded it. It means nothing. They just thought people would speculate about what it meant. 11BX1371 Also known as the Plague Doctor video, this entry enjoys extreme longevity because it's just so damned creepy. Still, the mystery was solved in all of three months after going viral, when the creator revealed himself. The video itself is shot in black and white, and features a man in a Plague Doctor mask and a hooded cloak standing inside an abandoned building. The audio is an obnoxious and disturbing collection of noise seemingly designed to irritate people, like dubstep, but with less bass. Dubstep barely qualifies as music, it's just unpleasant noise. The video's title, when converted to binary and then to letters, translates to muerte, the Spanish word for death. When the tech news site GadgetZZ ran an article about the video on October 12, 2015, the video blew up and was viewed over 700,000 times in one week. GadgetZZ had received a DVD of the video in the mail from an anonymous sender in Poland. Someone's just playing a prank. Immediately, Reddit was on the case, trying to decode the messages hidden in this mysterious video, as well as identify the location it was shot. Embedded throughout both the video and audio are a number of hidden messages, discovered using steganography, spectrogram analysis. I learned what steganography was, not stenography, not what court reporters do. In a previous video written by Kevin, it's where you use something to look for like hidden messages and images. Deciphering Morse code, the messages were threatening, and the images were of murdered and mutilated corpses. Holy shit. Fear not, however. The video was not made by a murderer, and the images are stills from horror movies. Good. Plus, one image of a victim of the Boston Strangler. They also identified the location the film was shot in, as abandoned sanitarium in Otwock, Poland. Three months after the video went viral, and attention had begun to die down, an individual owned by the name of Parker Warner Wright claimed to have created the video. Parker Warner Wright doesn't sound particularly Polish, does it? Parker Wright was also the name of the channel that hosted the original upload, so this wasn't already that much of a stretch. He uploaded a sequel video, and challenged anyone at home to make an exact replica of the homemade Plague Doctor mask he wore in the videos. He wound up doing an interview with the Daily Dot in January of 2016, which he explained was all part of an art project inspired by cryptography. He had originally finished the video in May of 2015, at which point he left two DVDs out in public in Poland, one on the subway and one on a park bench, and posted the other to 4chan. A. Someone just lost it. It's not gonna be like their super valuable spy documents or photos that you're going to be a hero and return to them. Maybe it is, but it's not worth the risk, because if someone has put some like little spyware tools on there or something that's gonna mess you up, like, just don't be inserting random... don't put stuff you don't know about into your computer, alright? Wasn't there that story, um, that someone hacked into like some big company, like they just put spyware on little USB sticks and just started littering them around outside, uh, corporate offices, and eventually someone, like one of their staff, will pick it up, go inside, stick it into their computer, and it's like all of that software that you have stopping people from hacking in from the outside, and it's just like someone grabbing a little USB stick and popping it into their office computer. Here's the light. I wonder what this is. Don't do it. PSA over. You're welcome. When it failed to gain attention, he mailed a copy to someone at Gadgetzz. Why did Wright choose that specific person to send the video to? Because at a booth at some tech show, Wright had been handed his business card. The real name of Parker Warner Wright is unknown, but that's not important. He's an American citizen living in Poland, there you go, and this was his art project. And since we know he's not opposed to doing interviews, maybe someday he'll give us his real name, but seeing as that is the least compelling part of this mystery, I think we can safely call this one closed. John Titor John Titor was not the first internet time traveler, and he would not be the last. He was, however, the first to catch on in a big way. He was also not actually a time traveler. I hate to spoil this one right out of the gate, but come on. Titor appeared on various message boards and forums discussing time travel, why he was here, and what the future was like. He appeared in 2000, and began using the name John Titor in 2001. Fake or not, the internet phenomenon was big. Really big. Big enough to monetize. In 2003, the John Titor Foundation was created, and they published the book John Titor, a time traveler's tale in December of that year. The name John Titor was also a registered trademark that has now been abandoned. This is an old mystery that was debunked almost two decades ago, when literally nothing that Titor predicted was even close to accurate. The biggest mystery here is why this still finds its way onto lists of internet mysteries. The two men behind these works of fiction, an entertainment lawyer and his computer scientist brother, made the right call by trying to cash out in 2003. After all, the second American Civil War that Titor predicted, which could lead to a nuclear World War III, was set to begin as a result of turmoil surrounding the 2004 election. And so… wait, 2004? Isn't that where George Bush gets a second term? Controversial. So it was best to rake in all the cash possible, before the claims became demonstrably false. While time travel stories are rarely believable… Rarely believable? Never believable, maybe the word? This one was no different, though I do remember finding it extraordinarily fascinating at the time it was happening. Yes, much like fiction can be. This is like some semi-real world fictional thing. I love it when it blends the two worlds together. It's like, you know, the Da Vinci Code, but for time travelers. Yet they still had enough time to profit from it. Despite the popularity of Back to the Future, which is an all-time classic movie, they claimed that the time machine was housed in the back of a 1966 Chevy convertible. It takes some brass f***ing balls to make that claim and try to play it straight. Giydus Oh, I remember this one. This was like some weird toy or something, wasn't it? Or some drawing? Stickers? Something like that. Giydus first popped into the internet scene in 2017, when comedian Nate Fernland posted a picture of a metal pin containing a character named Giydus. He randomly came across the pin on eBay and thought it was interesting, so he bought it. Actually, he didn't buy a metal pin. He bought 75-80 metal pins, a plethora of Giyduses, if you will. His Twitter post was simple, what the f*** is Giydus? It turns out nobody knew, or at least none of his followers knew, which is a far cry from nobody. Shockingly, however, he had been unable to find any information about it anywhere online, searching for Giydus yielded zero results, which just doesn't happen. Still, these existed, so someone had to know, right? These were just made a few years before the internet and then totally forgotten about, right? So they'd be on the internet if it was made present day. Of course, you just Google it and it's going to be found. But if it was made pre-internet, forgotten about, and then just left in someone's attic, and then they sell it on eBay? That's going to be the only… thing. Still, these existed, so someone had to know, right? The search went viral, and it only took about a month to sell. Giydus was a character from the Land of Tar. Ok, fantastic, but what is the Land of Tar? It was a set of stickers for kids with a fantasy theme. Of all the stickers, only Giydus got made into a pin. The stickers were created by artist Sam Petrucci. Sam is most famous for his work on G.I. Joe, but he also made logos and designed packaging for countless companies and organizations such as Friendly's, Dunkin' Donuts, Ocean Spray, Gillette, Charleston Chew, and Harvard. Wait, the university? That's a broad range of… What did he do? He designed for G.I. Joe, Dunkin' Donuts, and Harvard. If you notice a link between all these names, yes, Sam Petrucci was a local boy. Local to me in Massachusetts, not local to Simon in Prague. Yes, that would be weird. Technically, who produced the Giydus pins is still unknown, but the internet as a whole seems to be pretty happy with the Dark Web Red Rooms The Dark Web, home to every illegal and immoral thing your black little heart can imagine. Also, people believe a lot of the rumors are true, and there is definitely a lot of illegal stuff on the Dark Web. There's also a lot of lies. There are pages upon pages of scams trying to separate people from their hard-mined bitcoin. Because of the notoriety of the Dark Web and people's ability to buy anything there, from drugs to hired guns, allegedly, it was only a matter of time for urban myths to emerge. So enters the Red Room. A Red Room is a chat room and stream on the Dark Web where you can pay to watch victims tortured, raped, murdered, and donate bitcoin to control the action. That is super fucked up, and I hope it's not real. It's like Chatterbay for psychopaths. It's also 100% fictitious. Excellent news. How can I be so sure, you ask? Have I spent hours upon hours searching the Dark Web trying to find these things? God, I hope not, Kevin. No, of course not, but for the sake of research, I've spent a little time on the Dark Web. Feel free to give it a try. It's mostly harmless. You can download Tor, pop onto the hidden wiki for a starting point, and go from there. The first thing you'll notice is that the Dark Web is pretty boring. I've been on the Dark Web. Allegedly. I don't need to say allegedly. Back when I was a student, this was like back in the day. The Silk Road was a thing. I'm not sure if going to it is a crime or not. I definitely didn't buy. I mean, allegedly, I went there and I definitely didn't buy. I didn't buy anything. That's like not alleged. But it's like, oh my god, there's lots of drugs and like, I think drugs like fake paperwork for stuff like passports and it was weird. It's a lot like the surface level where they accept much harder to navigate in the banner ads of cocaine instead of weight loss supplements. Although in a way, I guess there's not even a difference. Was that Nickelback? Something about staying thin because of all the cocaine? Yeah, Nickelback quality. Nickelback aren't that bad. It's just, you know, Nickelback aren't that bad. They're not that bad. Who says that anymore? The second thing you'll slow. With TORS technology, a live stream from the dark web is virtually, if not literally, impossible. There are a lot of scary things and scary people on the internet, but fortunately, this is not one of them. Literally Everything By The Tech It Rel Don't think I've heard of this one. I spent a lot of time doing research for these videos. But as I've covered most of the more prominent unsolved mysteries already, I spent a lot of time researching what other mysteries there are on the internet that I might not have heard of. Sometimes, finding a topic to write about can be really difficult and generally exhausting. I'm sorry, Kevin. While I choose either to persevere or to quit and take a nap, it turns out that there was a third option available to me all along. Just make some shit up. Kevin, that is not an option available to you. Just to be clear, I'm Fact Boy, not Fiction Boy. The Tech It Realm is a channel with almost 1.5 million subscribers. But unfortunately, they seem to be predominantly of the opinion that his videos are real. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with writing fiction, but it's generally nice to present it as such. I'll never forget the embarrassment of making it halfway through the audiobook of Make Love with Bruce Camberway before realising it was a satire of celebrity memoirs and not a genuine account of events. But is that true? But thanks to Tech It's YouTube Unsolved series, I get to relive that feeling again and again. I can't comment on this because I don't know enough about it, but Rockstar Games roasted my GTA 6 idea. I made it anyway. Wait, that actually sounds like something that could be done. Company thinks I invented Rickrolling tries to buy it from me. Look, I don't know. I can't comment on this. I'm going to assume Kevin studies research. If the second most searched thing is The Tech It Realm exposed an empire built on lies. Multiple times, I had stumbled upon internet mysteries that were so interesting and exciting I couldn't wait to write about them. Only to trace back all leads and discover the source of everything was a single YouTube video talking about a mystery that there was no evidence of ever having existed before the video was made. Credit where credit is due, the stories are absolutely engaging and entertaining, but you should avoid this channel if you want to learn about real, unsolved mysteries. As a fan of this channel, and presumably a fact boy in general, I assume you're interested in facts. But if you're more interested in fiction, be sure to get in the comments and let us know. Maybe next time, instead of the normal educational affair, you can listen to Simon read my novel about four strangers accidentally becoming the four horsemen of the apocalypse and It's a bit of a change of direction, isn't it? 1. While born and raised in Massachusetts, at the time of his death, Sam Patrucci was living in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Uh, I, right now, no, uh, Scranton, I'm watching The Office for the first time, The Office U.S. for the first time, set in Scranton, Pennsylvania. I never heard of Scranton before the American version of The Office, but I swear to God it comes up in the research for nearly every single script I write for Simon, whether it shows up in the finished product or not. 2. TOR stands for The Onion Router, and is required to visit .onion websites on the dark web. It works by routing your signal randomly through a large network of servers to improve your privacy and security. The technology that protects your privacy and security is also the technology that makes something like live-streaming a Red Room impossible. And, uh, yeah, the mysteries that are solved. These are boring, because I hope you like this video, uh, this show, this podcast, however you're consuming it. If you liked it as a podcast, please leave a review. I love those reviews, they make me feel warm inside. And, uh, yeah, that's brilliant. If you're watching on YouTube, like, subscribe, and I'll see you next time.