Transcription
[Music] It started the way these things often do with a single video that I stumbled across on YouTube. At first glance, it appeared to be a newscast, but as I watched, it quickly became clear that something was off.
The faces were blurred. The audio was warped. The visuals were damaged by compression artifacts and strange symbols flashed across the screen. But the oddest thing of all was the numbers. Integers in the title, digits in the description, a sequence of numerals spoken aloud by a monotone robotic voice. There were numbers everywhere.
At first, I thought this might be an AI generated video, but that couldn't be the case as it was posted nearly a decade ago in 2016. The video was uploaded to a mysterious channel that I've since come to know as 312. And this channel is full of bizarre videos with uncanny visuals and garbled audio. The only thing that seems to connect them is the persistence of numbers. Every single video has them. They're prominent and inescapable.
Yet there is another dimension to this channel that further intrigued me. The dedicated following of the viewers. This isn't some obscure project lost to time. Instead, there are hundreds of comments on these videos. By reading them, we can see that this community shares a uniquely powerful bond. Some speak of the channel like it was fate that brought us together, that we are the chosen ones, that the video found us. Somehow all of us watching are on the same wavelength, similar to reunions of old friends. But others have theories about the channel itself. Maybe it's the subliminal manipulation of consciousness, an attempt to wake us up. Perhaps it's designed to activate sleeper agents. Or maybe it's the recruiting efforts of some intelligence agency. Some even suggest that the channel has a nonhuman origin.
I've spent a lot of time on YouTube, but I've never seen anything quite like this. The more I watched, the more I found myself drawn into the mystery. Without realizing it, I began to feel like I too was a part of the community and that I was deeply connected to the channel. And for some intuitive reason that I don't quite know how to express, I could not shake the idea that these numbers were meaningful. Some deep part of me knew that this wasn't random. It was an attempt at communication. And more than anything, I needed to understand what it was saying.
Tonight, I'm going to show you what I found. We are going to go deep into the rabbit hole that has consumed me for weeks. So settle in, turn out the lights, and join me for a dive beneath the waves.
[Music] [Music] In many ways, the signature of this channel is the numbers. Nearly every video has numbers in the title and description, and most also have them in the videos themselves. It starts with the very first upload in 2012, which contain nothing more than a block of floating numerals. It is therefore logical that this is where we should start. My first task was to get all of these numbers in one place. I went through and transcribed everything, all text, all spoken word, all video metadata. The result was a grand total of 9,690 numbers spread across nearly 60 videos. And here they are for your viewing pleasure. Do you notice any patterns? I don't blame you if you don't, but if we look at these numbers in a different way, a few things will pop out. For example, there are an awful lot of ones. This is visible if we change their color. There are similarly high counts of threes, but other numbers are rare. There are very few sevens and eights and no more than a handful of nines. In fact, by counting everything up, we can see that there's quite a dramatic difference in the frequency of each number. This tells us something very important, which is that these numbers are not random. If they were, we'd expect every number to occur equally. Instead, certain numerals are far more common than others. We can take this a step further by looking at two-digit sequences known as bgrams. Once again, certain combinations are more popular. For example, the one two chunk is far more common than 1 one. The same is true if we look at the three-digit trigrams. The chunk 312 is notably seen more often than anything else. So, if this is in fact a substitution cipher, it could suggest that these chunks represent letters. However, knowing that letters are hidden and actually finding them are very different things. We thus need more information to figure out which chunk corresponds to which letter, or at least a very solid guess. This is what was on the mind of a Reddit user named Squirre. They performed a similar analysis to me, although they only looked at titles and descriptions. But then, in a stroke of brilliance, Squirre had an idea that would change the course of this mystery, and it would prove to be the first step towards cracking the code. Let's return to the mysterious newscast video uploaded in October of 2014. There's a very prominent number displayed throughout 52153534. It's seen in big text on screen. It's the title of the video when it's in the video's tags. In the video itself, we're clearly watching some bizarro news program. So, what if this number decodes to news? Squirrel split it up into four chunks. 52, 15, 35, and 34. Then they assigned each chunk the appropriate letter. From there, Squora began replacing letters using these guesses to see if there were any other clear replacements. And in the description of the ninth video, they found one. We are. This added two more letters, 26R and 41A. The description of video 5 had a word that looked like beware B42. And step by step, the code began to take shape. A new letter revealed a new word which revealed a new letter. Soon, Squirrel had constructed a preliminary key for the substitution cipher. Armed with this tool, it was time to see what these videos are all about. So, let's go back to the start of it all with the very first video. Mission start. Mission initiated. This is now your communication language. The comments were right. There is something deeper to find here. The channel is attempting to communicate, not just subliminally, but explicitly for the few who know the code. There's a mission, something we need to do. But what?
Now, the code is a bit more complicated than just a simple substitution cipher. Sometimes the order of numbers is flipped and other times multiple numbers are squished together to become one. While Squira identified that this was happening, they did not have an algorithm to handle it consistently, instead leaning on their intuition. So my next task was to write code that could decrypt this cipher automatically. No need for gut feelings. I thus came up with the first version of my decryptor. Not perfect, but a good start. Merely 10 minutes after the release of Mission Start, another video was posted to the channel. The title decodes to Hello. The video itself is very unclear, dominated by noise and compression artifacts. It seems as though this is a handheld camera. We can barely make out the visuals of walking forward with trees in the background. About a minute in, we get a brief moment of clarity. There's a shadowy figure with their arms raised. The audio contains a low rumbling sound music.
It turns out that this is from the disintegration loops by William Bazinski. The story of this piece is interesting. In the early 2000s, Bazinski was attempting to digitize old recordings he'd made of shortwave radio. The recordings were made on magnetic tape, but they had decayed so much that they began to crumble. Bazinski captured the sounds as digital audio. Each melody just fell away in its own time, in its own way, and somehow managed to retain the very core of what made it special.
Bazinski finished the project on the morning of September 11th, 2001.
So, we turned on the disintegration loops really loud, just went up on the roof and sat there looking at this new landscape. Since then, the piece has become a powerful symbol of remembrance of the events of that day. The hello video also contains spoken numbers. The current version of our decoder can't handle it perfectly, but it is nonetheless obvious what it says. This isn't just some random gibberish. This is a secret code. There's more in the description. Hello and welcome, initiates. This is your mission. The phrasing of this is provocative. We are referred to as initiates. We aren't just passive viewers. Instead, we are undergoing an initiation into a group. We are in the process of learning its secrets and proving our worth. Could this be the purpose of the channel? Some sort of ritual or a right of passage. Certainly, the ability to decode numbers has to be part of it. It's something that most people do not know how to do. Speaking of which, we now have the tools to decode the channel name and description. Using our decryptor reveals the following test radio. The channel is a radio broadcasting tests challenges for us to solve as part of our initiation. And we suddenly realize that somehow the commons were right. We are a part of a special group, a secret society, or at least we will be soon. So, let's continue forward with the next video.
[Music] The title of this video is evil. We watch as numbers appear out of a skull. These numbers decode to, "Is this the face of evil?" The description says, "You're evil." Once again, the phrasing is somewhat ambiguous. Is this video a depiction of what evil is for us, or is it instead representing a specific evil that we've committed? Is this a symbolic skull or a real one? The videos on this channel contain some additional hidden information. Every YouTube video also has tags. While they're no longer visible on the watch page, they can be read by external tools. Every video we've seen so far has number code tags. Decrypting them reveals that they follow a pattern. Test zero, start experiment. Test one, hello. Test two, evil. Each video is in fact its own test broadcast from the test radio. They count upwards from zero. It's notable that the first test is referred to as the start of an experiment. This refineses our understanding of the tests, suggesting that there's a dual meaning. Sure, each test is part of the initiation process, but also perhaps a portion of a broader experiment designed to gain some deeper understanding. The unsettling implication is that the experiment is looking at us. We are the ones being examined, but for what? And why? Who's running this channel anyways? One day later, the channel uploaded a video called Peace. The images are extremely distorted. There's nothing obvious here. One thing we can try is taking an average of all the frames in an attempt to smooth out some of the noise. We do see that there are a pair of lights, but further context remains elusive.
[Applause] The audio contains a reversed and slowed version of Still Alive from the original Portal game. It represents another connection to death. Although unlike the skull in the previous video, Still Alive is a defiance against it. Speaking of which, we're presented with a black and white image of an ocean. After about a minute, the video fades into a dark figure standing on the beach. The audio has a low rumbling sound. The figure's face becomes obscured by static. Then a cut to a spiral image. Red liquid begins to drip down and in the background we can hear what sounds like a growl. Noise envelops the screen and the video ends. Most of the imagery here is from the movie The Seventh Seal released in 1957. We are specifically seeing shots from the opening scene in which a man stranded on the beach plays chess with death. The end is a famous sequence from the 1989 James Bond movie License to Kill. In the description, we get yet another death reference. Beware of death. Be careful. The channel is moving in a somewhat dark direction both literally and figuratively. This video clearly connects to the video evil where a skull is suggested to be the face of evil. Perhaps the implication is that the evil being is death itself. The channel was quiet for a couple of months. On September 16th, 2012, the next video was released entitled intelligence. Our intelligence says the description. And this video is quite a bit different from anything we've seen so far.
The images here are from several different commercials spliced together. The first is a KitKat commercial from 1984 in which a band performs some lowquality music. You can't sing, you can't play, you look awful. You'll go a long way. I won.
The lyrics are short but intriguing. Alien invasion. What on earth are we going to do?
This is the best.
There are two more commercials. One is a 1989 Pantene shampoo commercial starring Kelly Le Brock. This too has a notable phrase at the end.
Listen, it won't happen overnight, but it will happen. You'll see.
The final commercial is for McDonald's and it's probably from the 1980s. However, despite going through hundreds of videos in McDonald's commercial playlists, I haven't been able to find this specific one. If you recognize it, let me know in the comments. The audio contains two sections of spoken numbers split by a man saying
Our decoding algorithm doesn't quite know how to handle the first half, though we can see the word priority. The second half decrypts to intelligence needed. Which intelligence is needed? Our intelligence. According to the description, the test radio wants our capabilities, but right now it's not entirely clear what for. There is a 6-month gap between videos. The next one was released on April 9th, 2013, and the title decrypts to message. Emergency message. Excuse for delay. Please stand by for further orders. The visuals are a distorted scene from To Serve Man, a very famous episode of the Twilight Zone. In it, aliens called Canamits arrive on Earth, offering peace, prosperity, and the solutions to the problems of humankind. They leave behind a mysterious book called To Serve Man. This convinces people that the aliens are benevolent and they begin boarding ships to the alien planet, believing it to be a paradise. But just as one of the translators is about to leave, his colleague Patty makes a discovery.
Mr. Chambers, don't get on that ship. The rest of the book to serve men, it it's a cookbook.
message shows a distorted version of this very scene. Patty being held back by the alien as Mr. Chambers enters the spaceship that will take him to his doom. We once again have a reference to aliens just like in the Kit Kat commercial. If we speed the audio up 800%, we can hear that there is music hidden in this video. But despite my best efforts, I've not been able to figure out what it is. Shazam makes a bunch of guesses, but none of them seem to be accurate. If you happen to recognize this song, please let me know.
[Music] The message video has one subtle difference from the others, the tags. So far, each consecutive video has incremented the test number from 0 to 5. But message breaks this pattern. It's test X. Even stranger is that the following video goes back to the pattern test 6. It's almost as if message exists outside of this structure. At this point, the reason for this is unclear. Speaking of which, the name of test 6 is the lie. This video shows a sequence of about 20 television test cards. These were calibration images that were broadcast when no regular programming was on. They feature geometric patterns, color bars, and reference shapes designed to help engineers and viewers adjust their equipment for optimal reception. It's a relic of a bygone era when television was analog and wasn't saturated with content 24/7. The cards in this video are from all over the world, including some very famous ones such as the RCA Indian Head card. There's also BBC test card F which contains an infamously creepy image of a girl with a clown doll. The audio has a prominent beeping sound. This is Morse code and it spells out lies. If we look closely, we can see that some of the test cards have been modified with a suspicious group of squares in a matrix. The pattern is the same every time. We found another code. We have seen the matrix code before, but it's also in the profile picture, albeit with some extra curved lines. These seem to exist outside the structure, so we'll just take them out for now. The result is a grid with two chunks, an upper and a lower row. The top row contains 10 columns, and the channel's username has 10 digits. So, let's line these up to see if there's a connection. When we do this, we discover that it is self-consistent. Every time we see a one in the numbers, there's a single box in the bottom row. Two is a box in the middle row. Three is a box on top. We can thus determine the matrix code translations for numbers 1 through 5. Now, let's turn our attention to the bottom row. Using our table, we can decrypt the known digits. This reveals that there's one pattern that is unknown, a box in all three rows. However, this number once again connects to the channel. This time, it's the channel description. By comparing the two, we can see that the unknown pattern represents the digit 6. Thus, the channel profile picture also decrypts to test radio. The plain text isn't new, but the encoding scheme is. Now, let's turn our attention to the channel banner. This one is a little bit different because it reveals that matrix codes are actually four blocks tall, not three. There's an additional top row that wasn't seen in the profile pick. Thankfully, the rest of our table still works and we can substitute in numbers. This reveals that there are two matrix symbols that are unknown. This can be solved using some educated guesswork. Recall our number frequency analysis where we counted up each digit in the codes. We have a matrix code symbol for the most common digits, but we don't have anything for zero, the space character. That's surely one of the missing symbols. and the other one is most likely to be seven as it's the most common number with no symbol. Looking at the channel banner, we can guess that the first unknown is seven. After all, why would a message begin and end with a space? That would make the other unknown zero. Using this scheme, we can decrypt the number sequence to check our work, and our guesses are accurate. The banner says, "This is test radio." Now's a good time to take a step back and examine what we found so far. This channel is a test radio, some sort of a broadcast system. Each video is a test which are related to an experiment. These videos are examinations, assignments, trials. These tests are a form of initiation, testing our ability to understand the secret codes. For those of us who can, the videos begin to give us more information and hints. Beware of death. Be careful. But at some point, we're presumably going to get explicit orders. The description of the message video tells us as much. Emergency message. Excuse for delay. Please stand by for further orders. This is apparently all part of our mission, the one that was introduced in the very first video. However, at this point, what the mission is remains somewhat vague. And we also don't know who created this mission. Why are they broadcasting this out into the void? Speaking of broadcasting, this is a very clear thematic trend among the videos that we've seen. Television commercials in intelligence, a TV show in Message, a sequence of TV test cards in the lie. All of these are examples of broadcasted signals which have been received and decoded. Speaking of decoded, what about those matrix codes on the test patterns? We now have the tools required to convert them to numbers. Unfortunately, this sequence does not cleanly decode into text. It must have some other meaning. We have no choice but to keep this in the back of our minds and continue forward. The following video is called player. It shows extremely distorted visuals that seem to be of a handheld camera. We hear breathing and a fluctuating beeping almost like the radio of a spacecraft. Full screen, it's difficult to parse anything, but it becomes a bit more clear if we zoom way out. The footage appears to show a landscape from the air with the camera wobbling as if using a parachute. At the end, the person recording is on the ground with visible parachute lines. A shadowy figure is in the distance standing adjacent to a structure of some kind. The visual quality then deteriorates dramatically, and the video ends with an odd repeated sound, breathing, and a voice. But what's it saying?
The description talks to us once again. Welcome back players. Finally, we are back to the real thing. Sorry for the mess. We are now back on track. We are the players, but of what? On July 4th, 2013, two videos were released simultaneously. The pair shares many similarities, but we'll look at the videos one by one.
[Music] This immediately should feel familiar. It's a repeat of the evil video, but with additional distortion. Everything else is the exact same, including the numbers. But while the content of the video is stuff we've seen before, the title and the description are not. Instead of the number code, we see a complex sequence of gibberish, random characters, numbers, and symbols. This is a new type of encryption. For some of you, the text will look familiar. You've probably seen it when opening a website or file containing non-English text. When this happens, the computer can get confused, reading the text in the wrong language. This results in a garbled mess, and it's known as emoji bake. It's pretty easy to generate emoji bake. There are many websites that can do it. For example, the phrase sub2rgn looks like this when emoji baked. But while creating it is easy, decoding emoji bake is a little bit harder. There are many reasons for this. For one, it's often not clear how specifically the encoding got messed up. It could have happened in multiple steps. It can also be difficult for the decoder to know which symbols are broken and certain special characters can cause further issues. Even though we just generated this emoji bake, no online decoder is able to decrypt it. The same is true for the title and description of this video, nothing understands this specific version of Moji Bake, which means, of course, that we're going to have to write our own code. This one was not so easy, and it took me a few tries to figure it out. Eventually, though, I was able to get a Python script that can decrypt this channel's version of Emoji Bake. The key insight is that the script doesn't just take the text and spit out a result. Instead, it attempts certain fixes first and then does a conversion. If that fails, it attempts reconstruction again and a third time if necessary. It's still a tad finicky, but it's enough to decrypt the title of this video. But while we have the plain text, we're still not quite done, at least for someone like me who can't read traditional Chinese. Upon translation, we can reveal the title of this video. 128 remastered. This is a bit odd considering that remasters are typically supposed to increase the quality. Perhaps this sharp step downward in fidelity is some sort of bizarre joke. Now, let's turn our attention to the description. Even before decoding, we can visually see that certain chunks are probably already correct. One of these is a date, April 22nd, 2012. This is the upload date of the evil video. We can also see what appears to be a portion of a YouTube URL. Decoding this emoji bake again reveals Chinese which can be further translated. Original upload date April 22nd, 2012 followed by a YouTube address. This is not quite the correct format for a YouTube video, but we can easily repair it by adding the missing watch. But this link does not connect to the evil video. It instead goes to a video that has been made private. a perplexing dead end. We can follow the same process for the other July 4th video. This time it's a quote unquote remastered version of Intelligence. The title is 58 Remastered and the description again links to a private YouTube video. For the moment, these two remastered videos will have to remain a mystery. They have no clear meaning.
[Music] [Laughter] [Applause] We find ourselves at a terminal. A number is dialed and we hear the sound of a modem handshake. The phone rings and then
Hello
A man answers but a robotic woman begins reading out numbers.
Hello
You did
Okay, it's you again. What do you want? I told you I
We gave you orders. We suggest you follow them. Yes, I mean of course. I mean
Affirmative.
I will do it.
deed
This is a fascinating video for many reasons. To begin, this is the first time we've seen an actual conversation, communication between two different parties. On one end is the woman operating the terminal. She uses it to call a man who answers, but neither of these characters feel natural. The woman is clearly robotic, and the man speaks with a stilted, awkward cadence.
Yes, I mean, of course, I mean, four.
The conversation is told mainly through numbers. The woman speaks only using the code, but it's clear that she understands plain English as she responds to the man's words. He too understands the code and he uses it at the end to spell out affirmative. We can learn who this man is by decoding the numbers in the initial call. It decrypts to player followed by something that we still don't know how to decode. Previous videos have referred to those watching as players. This means that the man is probably one of us. The way the woman talks to the man is similar to how the videos have talked to us. Specifically, she mentions orders that have been given to him, just like how the message video told us to stand by for future orders. And it goes all the way back to the first video, initiating us into the mission. Yet, this conversation still doesn't explicitly say what the orders are. The words of the woman feel vaguely threatening. The player is apparently not followed the orders properly. She uses a word that provides us another clue. We These tests are not being broadcast by a singular person. Instead, it's a group of some kind, but the nature of it remains shrouded in mystery. Just 3 days later, the test radio has a very similar message for us. The video is entitled Hypnosis.
[Music] The numbers on the screen decode to a command, obey orders. The same command is in the description. A man's unrelenting gaze pierces our soul, and we see the spirals from the Twilight Zone intro. Half a minute into the video, there's a brief shot of a man turning a woman clockwise. This is from A Matter of Life and Death, a 1946 film. The American title is Stairway to Heaven. This movie has many motifs that we've seen. It's about a British pilot named Peter Carter who was shot down during World War II. Despite not having a parachute, he manages to survive washing up on a beach. He falls in love with June, a radio operator that he spoke to in his final moments on the plane. In the afterlife, we discover that Peter was supposed to die, but a heavenly conductor missed him in the fog. Heaven demands that the error be corrected, but Peter argues that his newfound love is reason enough to remain alive. The film climaxes in a surreal celestial trial in which Peter must defend his right to live. Ultimately, love prevails and Peter is allowed to stay with June. The movie touches on many concepts that we've seen before. a radio operator, the tension between life and death. But this is the first time we've seen the idea of love. And it's immediately explored further in the next video.
[Music] This video has a glowing red orb which morphs and changes as time goes on. It could be a womb. It could be an eye. It could be something else. symbols are occasionally seen inside of it. According to the description, love is waiting for the victorious. The audio seems to have some sort of chopped up music in it, but I was again unable to figure out what it was. I'll take you quickly through the next several videos. Most of them are short and there are not many obvious clues to find. Answers is the longest of the bunch at 5 minutes and it has a repeating sequence of a man pounding his fists on the table. Future has another red orb and it flashes numbers one by one. They decode to whatever. Dimensional has a stereograph of a wireframe mountain. The description reads first test of 3D. The number in the video itself is only partially decryptible. The audio may also be a spoken word slowed down, but I can't tell what it's supposed to be. The next video is Flames, which has a rotating 3D skull. It's another reference to death. The skull symbol has been seen several times. The audio contains a persistent beeping like the heartbeat from an EKG. The video has no description. The color TV video has another test pattern. This time it's the European Broadcasting Union color bars. The distortion is extremely intense. The description says, "Now in color. On March 10th, 2014, the pattern of short videos ended with the release of Traveling. This is the longest video to date, clocking in at over 6 minutes. It shows what appears to be footage from a train, although it's mirrored upon itself, creating a kaleidoscopic effect. It's difficult to tell where this train is. It appears to be in some sort of urban environment. However, at 5 minutes and 44 seconds, there's a relatively clear shot of a bridge. This is probably the Rainbow Bridge in Tokyo, which seems to suggest that this is the location of the video. What's far more interesting though is the description. From A to B, delete C. Take train. Get briefcase. Car number seat. Time is normal. And for the first time, we have something that is obviously intended to be instructions. It's telling us to take a train, get a briefcase, and it says which car and seat number. This is a mission orders that need to be obeyed. But there's a problem. Our decoding algorithm doesn't know how to handle numerals. That's why we're unable to read the car or seat number. We need to find a way to understand how this encoding works. So, let's take a look at the videos we've seen so far to determine if there are any clues. One persistent reference to numerals is the tags. As I mentioned previously, the tags of every video read out the number of the test, but it works a little bit differently on the remastered videos. These contain tags of the videos that are remastered, test 2 and test 5. Notably, the decrypted titles contain numbers as well, 128 remastered and 58 remastered. So perhaps this is indicating that this is the cipher text for these numerals. Both of these codes contain the number 8. Recall that 8 is a very rare digit to find. It must have some sort of special meaning. Maybe its purpose is to indicate that the chunk represents a numeral. It turns out that the traveling video we just watched has several chunks with an eight in them. Listing them out gives a grand total of seven chunks, one fewer than the eight missing numerals, but I'm sure we'll be able to figure it out. These mystery chunks fit into two different categories. There are three-digit triagrams and two-digit biograms. The three-digit chunks only use numbers 1 2 or 3. The bagrams also include 4 through 6. Looking at the trigrams, we can already see a pattern. It's a base 3 system. Each digit counts up to three and then the next digit goes up. So 1 28 is followed by 138 which is followed by 218 228 and so on. Let's write out this pattern. But while this is a good start, the cipher does not follow this pattern perfectly. This is because it conflicts with one of our known numerals. 5 should be 58, not 228. Furthermore, two numbers in this pattern do not make an appearance in the description. 118 and 338. Since we haven't used 48 and 68 yet, this is presumably where they're intended to go. The repeated ones get squished into 48, the repeated twos into 58, and the repeated threes into 68. This leaves just one unused chunk 18 which must indicate the numeral zero. With that, we've made a major improvement to our decryption code. We now know how to decode numerals. We can use this newfound knowledge to see what the description actually says. From A to B, delete C. 35.66490 139.737757. Take train. Get briefcase. Car number three, seat 27. Time is normal. The first two numbers match the format for latitude and longitude coordinates. These point to the TV Tokyo Corporation building, which confirms our guess about the location of this video. Our updated decryption algorithm allows us to go back and solve a couple of previously unknown codes, specifically those found in the phone call video. We now know that the man who was called is player 16. Although it's a little bit weird since the description says that it was a call to player 18. Is there a reason for this discrepancy? We can also decode the tags in this video where we find that it's another one that does not match the incrementing test pattern. Instead, it's test X2. This connects it to the message video which was test X. But besides this tag connection, it's not obvious how these two videos are related. The channel went dark for over two months. Then on May 19th, 2014, a video called Scanner was released. The description says, "Anomy detected."
[Music] We see red patterns moving from the top down. Perhaps this is the data that the scanner is reading. At 16 seconds, there's a pinging sound with a bright red flash. At 24 seconds, there's another and another. The visuals become much more varied and complex as the rate of pings increases. A low buzzing appears which gets louder and louder until the video ends with a glitchy static sound. These images are very interesting. There are hints of patterns, but nothing is obvious. It almost reminds me of a roar shock test in which different people see different things. Come to think of it, that's kind of a metaphor for this channel. Everyone who views it interprets it in a different way. So, what is the anomaly detected?
And with that, we're back to the news video, the one that started the decoding process. Now we can decrypt the entire thing. The on-screen numbers, of course, decode to news. There's a woman reading out numbers, and these translate to pause News. The description reads PSA, short for public service announcement. But things get truly fascinating at the end. There's a shot showing the newsroom. Then there are four black and white screens full of numbers.
[Music] more people wanted. If you can read this message atgmail.com reference ID, it was an email address. And for the first time, there was a way to respond, the first mission that I could actually accomplish. But I didn't know what I would find if I contacted Test Radio. To this point, I'd been a passive observer. Sure, we decrypted the codes and interpreted the videos, but it was all from the sidelines, from the safety of my own browser. But now, the channel was beckoning me to go deeper, to become a part of the mystery, to entangle myself to it. There was an opportunity to see how deep the rabbit hole goes. I had an encoder that I'd written which could take plain text and encrypt it as trinary code. I use this to encrypt a message. I can read the text. I await further instructions. I pasted the encoded numbers into a new email addressed to the mysterious recipient. As my cursor hovered over the send button, I froze. Once I made that click, there would be no going back. I could never return to being an anonymous viewer. Sending that email would change my relationship to this mystery forever. But I'd been sucked in just like everyone else. I just had to know what my mission would be. After receiving so many transmissions from the test radio, it was time to respond with the transmission of my own. So with baited breath, I gathered the courage and clicked send.
[Music]