[drumroll]
Greetings children, Captain Disillusion here!
We have done it!
We've cracked teleportation!
Eighty years of scientific research in quantum entanglement have turned out to be irrelevant, because
in the end, the first interstate portal was opened in the bedroom of a YouTuber named FunkyFatHead.
He achieved this by playing just the right combination of audio tones of different frequencies
through a Bluetooth speaker,
until a mysterious glowing window leading directly into Sedona, Arizona formed above it.
FunkyFatHead - "It is a well known, uh vortex phenomenon, there's several of them there,
"and you are witnessing a gate, portal, wormhole, stargate, whatever you want to call it,
"from this bedroom to another state."
You know, as I watch the number of views on the video steadily approach a million,
and the credulous comments about the experiment outnumber skeptical ones, I can't help but ask;
WHAT THE F*** IS WRONG WITH YOU!? WHAT THE F***!?
- "Whoa, Captain, take it easy..."
DON'T F***ING TELL ME TO TAKE IT EASY!! WHAT AM I DOING!? WHAT HAVE I BEEN DOING THIS FO-
It's important when you... disagree with someone's point of view, to make sure that you... fully understand it.
If I showed you that this collectible T-1000 Terminator figurine seems to be somewhat alive,
you'd be right to immediately assume I faked it with a bit of digital warping.
And if I suddenly made a big deal of how a decorative turtle shell keeps falling off my shelf for no reason,
you'd be right to suspect there's a simple explanation for how that happens,
But if I took my time and engaged you in an interesting story about these events,
you might find my cheap tricks start to look more convincing.
You'd be seeing them in a specific context.
I call this trendy web content technique the "Piecemeal Paranormal."
It's when someone shares little tidbits about odd things they've been experiencing, or experimenting with.
Each individual anecdote is not that crazy,
but over time they get more interesting, and add up to a disturbingly compelling paranormal narrative.
And a compelling narrative often feels like compelling evidence.
BuzzFeed-contributing cartoonist Adam Ellis understood this well enough
to break out of the painful mediocrity of his webcomic by starting a long Twitter thread about "Dear David,"
a ghost of a little kid with a bashed-in head who makes appearances in Adam's apartment.
The tweets began as sections of a first-person horror story that had a clearly fictional tone.
He saw David in a dream,
he dreamt about another kid telling him the rule of how not to get killed by David,
don't ask him more than two questions,
and then dreamt about inexplicably breaking that rule, and now David haunts him.
But after the huge audience response, Adam's tweets transitioned into earnest reports,
complete with pictures and absolutely terrifying videos of paranormal activity.
[Captain screams, gasps]
Faceless Russian YouTuber known as Korney also understood this
when he achieved viral success with an early video on his pseudoscience channel "How to Make."
In it, he explained how to make a homunculus by injecting a chicken egg with his own... sperm,
and after a few days, extracting a misshapen creature that appeared to move.
This made the internet somewhat curious, and after studying viewer reactions and suggestions,
Как Сделать spun off an entire series of progressively wackier homunculus experiment videos.
His attempts to make a healthy one and getting sprayed with acid,
Как Сделать - "BITCH!"
Growing another, feeding it, creating a third, naming them after Pokémon,
letting them interact until one absorbed the other, and discovering that the resulting hybrid had teeth,
and was partial to pieces of meat soaked in human blood.
[cough[ Spoiler alert.
So our friend FunkyFatHead wanted in on this piecemeal paranormal trend, and started his own channel.
Like the others, he used what's available to him.
Adam Ellis lives in a dilapidated building and owns a creepy doll,
Как Сделать has access to laboratory equipment,
FunkyFatHead has...
some tacky wall art.
And a bed.
FunkyFatHead - "Uhh, yeah, I know, sounds nuts."
His first few videos focus on pretty creative demonstrations of the "Mandela Effect,"
but eventually, he discovers that certain sound waves seem to create a physical disturbance above the bed.
A frequency of 432 Hz opens up a dark mass...
FunkyFatHead - "...there it is."
...and gets 710,000 views.
528 Hz fractures space-time,
and earns a less-interested 292,000 views.
But playing a combination of 528 Hz and 525 Hz opens a gateway to the red rocks of Sedona!
A natural reaction to something like that is of course, "I want to try it myself to see if it works!"
Several viewers did just that, and... were unable to replicate the results.
But they didn't follow the protocols closely enough.
I've got the exact same Bluetooth speaker that FunkyFatHead used.
I've also got my own creepy girl painting, tacky wall art, white bedsheets with gray pillows,
and the same Szynalski tone generator ready to go.
So let's do this.
Roll sound!
Roll camera!
And... action!
So, uh, a, uh, linear light aperture appears to be forming.
It's, uh, becoming semi-circular in nature.
I'm starting to see some features in the center.
I think it's... it's...
...custard, encased in a pie?
Whoa!
I may have missed some small detail.
Oh, right, everything on FunkyFatHead's channel revolves around the idea
that his bedroom contains some sort of transdimensional pocket.
The anomalies happen in it, but not outside.
So don't bother trying to replicate them. For all we know, they might be unique.
FunkyFatHead - "It's just a strange thing that's happening to me right now, so..."
This is a staple of piecemeal paranormal accounts.
There's always some special condition making their claims impossible to verify.
Adam Ellis's hauntings happen only to him, and only at his apartment, so you'd have to be there with him,
and even then they don't happen all the time, so you might not witness it.
But here are some weeeird Polaroids!
Как Сделать claims his homunculus can be made by anyone,
but also shows it takes countless attempts and doesn't always work.
The eggs have to be from a small farm, and a bunch of other special requirements.
And when commenters challenge the validity of his "science,"
he answers with all kinds of evasive explanations involving alchemy.
These creators aren't just moving the goalposts, they've strapped them to their backs.
And that's why you need me.
I don't "know things" or "talk to people." I stare at videos.
The frames making up those videos, the pixels making up the frames making up those videos,
and the metadata hidden behind the pixels making up the frames making up those videos,
until I notice something.
Like the fact that only one video on the channel has a framerate of 29.97,
the standard for American camcorders,
and it happens to be the one upload that doesn't show anything paranormal, it's just a vlog update.
The rest of the videos, even though they seem to have been shot with the same camera,
are at an even 30 frames per second, which 29.97 often gets rounded up to by prosumer video editing software.
Does that automatically mean visual effects were used?
No, but these beautiful volumetric light rays occurring in a small, smokeless room
definitely look like the ones taught in this AfterEffects tutorial
by that guy who's too busy to make tutorials anymore.
How dare you keep us waiting for free things that you make for free!
In order to align the 3D-like effect of the rays, you have to track the camera motion of the shot
by pressing a button and waiting for a little bit.
This also lets you accurately place other things in the scene,
like an inexplicably flat portal that just happens to be facing in your direction.
Of course, why would you build and animate a whole 3D model of a cool spherical anomaly when
drawing a simple flat shape and wobbling it with some procedural noise impresses your audience anyway?
In fact, at the beginning you don't even need to 3D-track the camera.
Simple point tracking and quick pans do the job nicely.
But with a 3D camera track, you can use the flat portal as a mask to reveal another object.
In FunkyFatHead's case, it's a large flat plane with a view from Airport Mesa,
a tourist spot where every hippie goes to experience magical "vortexes,"
and every stock photographer takes pictures of this same vista.
Except this isn't a still picture, we can see the tree branches moving in the wind.
That means it's a static video of the view which, if he didn't film it himself,
narrows the stock choices substantially.
And maybe, if we build a composite of the view,
we can all pull together and find the exact piece of stock footage he used!
Or maybe it was this live webcam.
Hey, let's talk about this lamp!
Before the portal appears, the light from the lamp overexposes the wall.
Once the portal is in the shot, the camera supposedly auto-adjusts exposure, and the background gets darker.
But it wouldn't really look like that.
Reducing exposure doesn't dim everything together like the brightness knob on a TV,
it makes the camera less sensitive to light,
so darker parts go way darker, while bright parts get less bright, revealing more highlight detail.
The highlight on this wall stays the same because there was no detail to reveal,
because the camera didn't really adjust, because there was no portal in the shot.
Because, whether or not flapping air molecules at certain frequencies can open a portal across space,
It can't.
whether mysterious vortices exist in Sedona,
They don't.
and whether or not FunkyFatHead's bedroom is home to a transdimensional anomaly,
It's not.
this video is definitely, 100%, fake.
Now your reaction might be:
"Wow Captain! That's incredible! But you're missing the point.
"People GET that everything on these channels is fake, AND THEY LIKE IT!"
Do they, though?
I tried to tally some comments from each of these three piecemeal paranormal purveyors
to see if viewers who definitely think the content is fake outnumber those who definitely think it's plausible.
But I got bored and threw my computer out the window.
On the homunculus video at least, it was exactly half-and-half between believers and skeptics.
And maybe that's the goal; to create ambiguity.
On one hand, Как Сделать's videos are subtly funny
and just preposterous enough that maybe they're brilliant satire.
On the other hand, Adam Ellis just straight-up says that everything he reports about his "Dear David" ghost
is completely true.
It cannot possibly be true, but he can write that and it doesn't seem to matter.
If I secretly installed cameras in his apartment and offered the world definitive proof that he's making it up,
if I procured raw footage of the homunculus videos before any warping was added
and showed them side-by-side,
if I deconstructed the rest of the visual effects on FunkyFatHead's channel,
each of them would just shrug and say "Dude, of course, it's not real! I was doing art!
"Don't you know? It's a cool new ironic form of social media infotainment!
"Letting a little bit of fear-based fiction bleed into reality for fun and profit!"
But I don't think it's cool.
In art, or health, or politics, in any aspect of life, this blurred line is how you get confusion and mistrust,
and $22,000,000 fruitless Pentagon UFO threat research programs,
It's how you get 2017.
Do you really want another 2017?
So keep that line sharp.
Enjoy, or hate, or argue with friends over things you know for sure are entertainment,
but keep a cool, critical eye on what's real and true and important in everyday life.
You know, love with your heart, but use your head for everything else.
And let's hope for a less uncertain New Year.
[to the tune of Auld Lang Syne] ♪ I never learned the meaning or ♪
[to the tune of Auld Lang Syne] ♪ the lyrics to this song ♪
[to the tune of Auld Lang Syne] ♪ But I just like the sound of it ♪
[to the tune of Auld Lang Syne] ♪ so I try to sing along ♪