unforum

[ravenofroses]

[Karuvitomsk]

[Porphyrophobia]

[elizibar]

[Soleil]

[MsSynclair]

[ChildOfAtom]

Over on the wiki I just created an "In-game" timeline trying to lay out all of the letters, files, etc. and the information that we have gathered from those. Have a look and let me know if you see anything I missed or got wrong.

Thanks!!

http://everymanhybrid.wikia.com/wiki/In-Game_Timeline

[Pasdio]

[veljko]

Truly the ChildOfAtom is the nuclear Messiah!

However, I fear there is an error in the timeline.

[Luipaard]

ChildofAtom, I have a minor nitpick: Vinnie turned 19 in 2010, which means he was born in 1991.

[agreatdivorce]

[qaqa]

I will admit some of the phantom tweets bordered on automatic writing, and made me think of some sort of raw psychological output from the unconscious, and that in turn made me think of the kind of memetic infection from the great underseen film Pontypool.. But I still think whatever the device, HABIT is an actual intelligence. The question for me is did he originate with Centralia Evan or any other human.

[TheNightmareComplex]

[veljko]

@re: memes

Well, real-world memes are tricky customers whose precise nature is hard to pinpoint. It all depends on the theory of mind you subscribe to and even then the degree to which we are virally programmed is a matter of some debate. I've read most of the stuff Dawkins wrote but it's been a while since I last read the Selfish Gene. I'm quite rusty on the actual science of it all.

However, I don't think this actually matters, for our purposes. We are dealing with fictionland memes, and those have, uh, very elastic properties, depending on the demands of plot. For my hypothesis to hold, EMHVerse would have to have very powerful memes that are capable of very powerful behavior modification and that can be transmitted easily. Something, perhaps, that resembles the (entirely fictional) Neurolinguistic Programing in Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash.

Even if we treat the process as a black box[1] it's influences on EMH can be summarized thus:

a) HABIT isn't a real entity so much as a dark side of the Fairmount Four -- possibly emerging because of the trauma of the Slenderpresence.

b) HABIT doesn't possess or mind control so much as it is a parasitic consciousness that opportunistically modifies the behavior of various characters.

c) HABIT wants us to think otherwise and to ascribe its existence to the purely supernatural.

d) HABIT wants to spread and is trying to turn rabbits into propagation vectors. Rabbits to HABITS. Huh. The method of doing this is entirely natural (within the fake memetics of EMHVerse we postulated a while back) and is replicated (lessened in power) in the Real World with the trials which actually do seem to control our[2] behavior for the worse.

Do I have any evidence for this? Nope. But I find the idea amusing and oddly fitting with the timbre of the show.

@qaqa

HABIT could be a real intelligence and not be a real entity. Imagine the situation to be a bizarre meld of DID and folie à deux turned really nasty and there you have it. If a real psychologist reads this: I'm sorry.

Further, if we want to get seriously nutty we could say that HABIT is a form of life/intelligence that exists as an epiphenomenon of memetic propagation -- it's environment would be other sentient minds and it would live in them parasitically. Such an entity may have evolved here (possibly under the influence of ol' Slendy) or it could come from wherever the hell Slendy comes from.

What? Quit staring at me like that. I did say 'seriously nutty'.

@TNC

I'm not diving into wild theories. Well not about TGF, anyway. I did harbor suspicion that he made the videos without the intention to confound and as a joke. However with his latest messages it is clear that he's either been eaten by HABIT or has clearly trollish intentions.

[1] And we really should. There's no good way to talk about it without resorting to a particularly vile melange of technobabble and psychobabble.
[2] Well not mine. I'm no rabbit. Too busy.

[ChildOfAtom]