jamisonmalber

[jamisonmalber]

This second screencap is when the weird just amped-up. What had been a blank profile was suddenly filled with garbled data, and this image was posted showing... well, another tunnel, we guessed. It had similarity to the earlier video, only this time it was a still image. Around this time I also received an odd direct message (others who I was talking to about the account also got it):

GHQRRSFGGHQRKLCD

We figured it was more randomness, like the data in the account profile, but a few months later the drummer for this band I used to run lighting for figured out that it was a cypher. I'll post a spoiler later, for now it's more fun to let ya'll stew about it like we did.

A couple other things that jumped out about this: there's some kind of profile picture, hard to make anything out. It gave me then (and still does) some 2001: A Space Odyssey/HAL 9000 vibes.

And then there's that... appendage? Antenna? That sliver of a thing with the light on the end, sliding in from outside the frame. First indication we got that someone was behind the lens. At this point we were still convinced this was a new Bethesda came coming out, maybe some kind of sci-fi FPS like Doom.

[jamisonmalber]

Woah, not sure what happened with that first post... it just posted itself before I was finished? And now, for some reason, I can't edit it. Anyway, moving on!

So this is my earliest capture of the phenomenon, back on MySpace in October 2006. It caught my eye--and a few other people's--because the graphics quality was just top-notch for that era. Those of us who discussed it took it for viral marketing. The username was referencing Bethesda's Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, which had just come out that March, so we guessed it might be another game in development from that studio.

The video itself was pretty short and just moved along the tunnel, like a submarine or something going through a sea-cave with a big spotlight on the front. Eerie, but no story evident.

Yes, that's my handle on the right. Don't laugh too hard. RSGHLMWX

[jamisonmalber]

Hello!

Maybe you're a reader, getting into secret codes, or making intricate networks. Good stories often open nebulously.

What I'm about to start sharing with you here is not a typical blog, not really. As an independent researcher interested in all things digitally historic, I've recently been GREATLY excited by certain artifacts that circulated on the early world wide web--items that I (thankfully!) archived for myself years ago, and which seem to have vanished from all records today.

So much for "what gets posted online lives forever."

Let me be clear, I want to present this material to you with the utmost solemnity and serious consideration. It'll ask you to believe in something that seems, currently, impossible. And it has implications that go far beyond the internet as we know it.

I won't say too much yet, but it starts with an unusual username that began appearing in 2006. You can search for it if you like, I haven't been able to locate any of the old links that are still active. The name was weynon_backpacker and