unforum

[Lewa]

[TheNightmareComplex]

Man, I seriously must have missed something.

[Porphyrophobia]

[TheNightmareComplex]

As in, I have no idea what this page or the one before it are even talking about

Like

Where did this notion of an Anti-Habit even come from

[qaqa]

[Graved]

[qaqa]

No, I really think you ought to edit all of that.

[LaurenB]

[Luipaard]

We desperately need something new.

[Karuvitomsk]

My theory of ToTT was much more understandable at least.




No but seriously what the butts is Anti-HABIT.

[TheNightmareComplex]

[Mattwan]

[veljko]

@Graved

Did you grab that off someone's OOG account? That's not very nice, really. Aren't we supposed to let the author's private stuff remain private? If decency isn't motivation enough, there is risk of disturbing a PM enough that they break off the game.

@re: anti-habit

There's a point where adding further supernatural, possibly metaphysical entities does nothing save confuse an already confusing situation. We are well past that point.

@re: reason for hidden videos

A couple of justifications present themselves:

1. Genre conventions. Slendervlogs have creepy weirdly edited footage[1] in the vein of ToTheArk. It's just how things are. Poking at it, is like poking at the suspicious ineffectiveness of the authorities and such. You are, in fact, paying attention to the man behind the curtain ruining the experience. I don't particularly like this theory, because it deprives me of the pleasure of tending my epileptic orchard.

2. Unconscious behavior, pseudopsychological. By this I mean, the stress of it all, plus the possible stresses in the past, lead to the fact that our protagonists sometimes do things and black out about them. This may include putting in odd edits and such and creating hidden videos. There's two major problems with this hypothesis:

a) Why do they claim not to see the videos? This could be explained with further handwaving. Perhaps it is a case of folie à deux on a large scale.

b) Where does the footage come from? This is much harder to explain. Once could posit that the footage itself comes from a separate source and is provided to them. This falls flat in the face of Occam's razor, inasmuch as once you have a mysterious video-giving force you can make it a video-editing force as well. No need to invent a pseudopsychological explanation as to why Jeff edited them together. There is another way of looking at it, if one assumes that their psychosis is strong enough to cause them to blank out huge undertakings such as recording all the weird footage. The extra Day in The Life footage we keep seeing is easy, but some of the weirder stuff would require extensive staging, some of it in insecure locations. One would thing someone would notice.

3. Unconscious behavior, supernatural. The videos could still be created by the crew, as with hypothesis 2, but not because of normal reasons but because they are under the effect of an unknown compelling force[2]. This could explain why they can't see the video -- when they try their minds short-circuit -- as can be seen in The Hidden Videos. You can actually test for this interpretation, curiously enough. Simply ask the guys for a screenshot of how their channel looks to them. If it is is 'shopped to lack the offending videos then the manipulation is at a digital level[3]. If the image appears as it would to us, and I suspect it will, than hypothesis 3 gets a boost. Or, at least, the notion that they are mentally blocked from acknowledging the videos gets a boost. The problem here is same as before: Where does the extra footage come from? The answers are same as before, and equally unsatisfying.

4. Full-blown possession. Something is inHABITing some some of the EMH crew and causing them to construct videos. The identity of the possessing force is unknown. Given the current state of knowledge HABIT seems like a likely candidate, but there's no real evidence either way. The problem here is the motive of the possessing force and the logistics of acquiring the strange extra footage. If we take it as a given that the footage is acquired somehow we can imagine several scenarios relating to the motive of the possessing force:

a) Intimidation. The videos are a message, presumably to us, with the intent to frighten us, possibly into obedience. This interpretation is consistent with HABITs little game. HABIT could have the personality of a controlling sadist. The videos are just another way of expressing dominance. A sort of mix, if you will, between "I see you" and "I know something you don't".

b) Information, malicious. The videos represent a cache of information which could be useful, but is meant to lead us/the EMH crew. An interesting little twist would be if the videos are malicious, but an alternate force is keeping them from viewing the videos as a means of protection.

c) Information, benevolent. The entity wants to help either the EMH crew, us or both. This is a mirror image of b) and the same twist applies -- what if a different entity, this time malevolent, is preventing them from seeing videos.

d) Insanity, conventional. The videos may be a melange of truth and artfully constructed fiction, but they are the result of a compulsion to make them. Sort of a Riddler-esque inability to do whatever it is that the possessing force wants to do without leaving some sort of trace. The chopped nature of the videos, could be the result of a mind turning on itself.

e) Insanity, unconventional. The possessing force made the videos because it was funny. Or because Tuesday. You get the drift.

f) Classic power struggle. The videos are made as the result of the possessed individual fighting with the possessing force. Their choppy nature is the result of the struggle.

g) Alien, communicative The possessing force is entirely alien and the videos are the best it can do communicate with us. This conflicts with the videos that have text in them. The text could be alien thoughts filtered trough the mind of a human host.

h) Alien, lovecraftian. The possessing force does not have motivations a human can hope to understand. As an explanation, unsatisfying.

5. A supernatural creature in present time. Some supernatural creature is making the videos. The motivation may be as described under point 4. The problem is clearly the additional footage. Anything that may have been recorded by the boys themselves is fair game. The problem is the footage that would require staging and extensive cooperation from the, ahem, actors. Unlikely.

6. An ordinary human in present time Same as point 5 with the added difficulty of hacking the videos into the EMH channel. The likely candidate here would be Corenthal, or possibly William or Linnie if they are still alive. Again, the question of the odd footage is what causes the most trouble. Still, versions 5 and 6 could be explained by the EMH Crew getting up to a lot more than they show us and blacking out on it all. The videos are lost, retrieved by either a free agent (human or otherwise) or a possessing force in control of a crewmember and cut together. The motivation for the act remains the same as under 4.

7. Videos come from Somewhere Else. The videos do not originate in our local bubble of space-time. The motive for transmitting them can be anything under 4 but is most likely to be a warning[4]. Two principal theories come to mind:

a) Let's do the Time Warp again. The videos come from the future, and are intended as a message to the past. Presumably as an effort to change something. The chopped-up state of the videos could be information being mangled as it crosses trough time without the aid of a blue police box to protect it.

b) Many Worlds Hypothesis. The videos come from an alternate world of some sort. Why precisely they are sent is unclear. Could be random, by which I mean it could really just be cross-dimensional crosstalk.

I know the next point is contentious, but it is interesting to see how Welcome to the ARK fits with this point. What we see in the, quite possible non-canon, video seems to be a "Bad Ending". It could be that this iteration of the EMH Crew wants to change the past by sending hints to their past selves with imperfect results. Or perhaps they know that they cannot be reached and are targeting us specifically. Alternatively, the ARK featured may not be a dark future, instead it could be a timeless world beyond conventional time and space. The point still stands. That world's EMH Crew which could be our own, but could be a parallel version, may be trying to make things right at least somewhere or to effect a rescue. All this falls apart if the video is non-canon, of course.

8.The Magic Camera. A central theme of HoL is that the camera can, wielded skilfully, reveal hidden truths about its subject matter. So it could be here. The crux of this theory is that the videos are the fallout of the strange things that happen. As time and space are spaghettied about, strange information surges about and crystallizes as creepy videos. Now there are a few variants here:

a) Effect on cameras. The Slenderweirdness causes strange images of what could be, but isn't to be imprinted on the film/tape/SSD. Someone still has to upload the resulting footage to YouTube, though. This scenario could be the source of the extra weird footage in the previous hypotheses.

b) The Cosmos Knows Adobe Premiere CS4. The videos are, under the effect of Slenderweirdness, imprinted straight onto YouTube. A bit silly and, uh, narmy[5].

c) It's all in your head. The videos aren't really there. They are a shared hallucination. Was a really cool theory some 400 pages ago when someone really clever whose name I tragically forgot suggested it. Alas, it is somewhat frayed because of the Hidden Videos video -- clearly what was sent to them had some effect.

I apologize for the huge messy tl;dr. Apparently, EMH withdrawal turns me into a scribbling maniac. It happens.

[1] As an aside: Did you see TTA's latest video? Terrifying
[2] Connoisseurs of Nightmare Fuel will recognize this as a Dyatlov Pass reference.
[3] As a CS guy I have to say, removing the videos mid-stream would be a tricky thing. Not impossible, depending on the number of computers involved (and phones, really) and their level of security. I know nitpicking on the CS issues is silly when we have crawspaces leading to houses leading to seashores leading to hell, but I am a silly man.
[4] Shadows of Carpenter's Prince of Darkness, perhaps?
[5] TvTropes term. Look it up. If you dare. Loosely, it is used to indicate a point in a story which is meant to be dramatic/scary/&c but comes of as funny/silly. Technical term is bathos.

[Luipaard]

Your post should be required reading. That's excellent, dude.

[Ouroborus]

Veljko pretty much covers it all.

Ultimately, at this point of the game, I don't think the motive behind the videos are as important to us as to who is behind them.

This raises a few questions

-Is the person behind the Hidden Videos the same one doing the phantom edits?

-Is that person also behind the "hidden cameras" and sending the zip drive to Evan?

For the first one, I would say that it seems so. Aside from the footage of Jeff in the bed(which could have been easily taken by Jeff himself for whatever reason) everything appears to be yanked from footage the guys themselves have filmed. And considering they are all "hidden" from the guys...it's easiest to assume that whatever is causing that is from a singular source.

For the second question, I don't have a clue. Maybe? The last hidden video seemed to be saying that Jeff was so wrapped up being a sad panda that he couldn't save his brother. So did the mystery individual do what he/she/it could to save Alex by clueing Evan in without compromising his/her/it's position? Probably.

Considering how insistent the guys are in saying that they're the only ones who have access to the footage, that really only leaves us with a few suspects, some paranormal.

Has anyone asked HABIT about the videos?