unforum

[gimlet]

[Trailhead] Morris for America

[hinoai]

Very pretty. I already have my candidate picked out and have been volunteering, though. Sorry, Morris!

His accountant has a blog with some videos on it: https://accountingforpolitics.wordpress.com/

[gimlet]

(Firstly, Sorry Kona, I'm Canadian, and was busy today so I wasn't as tactful as I could have been. I've just deleted the line because I'm not even sure where this is headed)

So I've looked into this a bit more today on and off. It got posted to R/ARG and some of the social media sites are being watched by big time transmedia outlets, which is why I thought it might be something. That being said, it seems like it is an attempt at viral marketing by a small local theatre group.

Normal theatre, not interactive theatre. To clarify specifically, a theatre in Boston putting on a play called "Farragut North" that was turned into movie called "The Ides of March" that came out in 2011, directed by George Clooney & starting Ryan Gosling.

Info about production:
https://m.facebook.com/events/563163273846748

Info about play
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farragut_North_(play)

I have actually seen small theaters go to these lengths to market their productions before (people just don't go to the theatre anymore), I'm just not sure this will go much farther than it has, which is disappointing.

[catherwood]

I haven't read anything beyond the "game" sites so far. On the accountant's blog, he has an image which certainly looks like a pile of documents we should be able to decipher for him, but I haven't found any links to the full text.
https://accountingforpolitics.wordpress.com/2016/02/29/in-h-sloans-files-and-what-i-found-there/

I'll be tediously transcribing this data, unless someone wants to interact with the character and get the originals.
https://accountingforpolitics.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/img_024611.jpg

Decoded. Not worth posting the ciphertext, but here's the bulk from the solutions. (binary)

[gimlet]

Wait... Wait. Wait wait wait.

What?

Because that last one's the twist ending speech from Bioshock. Do not click on it if you haven't played it and plan on doing so some day!

Bioshock also happens to have come from Boston.

Is there something more going on here, or did they just use some random flavor text? And geeeeeeeeese what flavor text to choose!

Edit: Ok, I'm intrigued & digging into this now too. It seems the Govenor in the movie & play was Mike Morris. The character was based on Howard Dean. This guy is *Leland* not Mike. There was a politician named Leland Morris of some historical importance during WW2, he was the attaché to Germany until Pearl Harbour happened.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leland_B._Morris

I'm also kinda feeling like... Maybe somebody should go see this play after all?

Edit 2: I'm fairly certain this is a Bioshock ARG. Somebody inform the Game Detectives on Reddit.

[catherwood]

I know zero about Bioshock. (OK, nearly zero.) I'm cool with following just for the political angle. Maybe I'm just hot for accountants.

Someone on the twitter feed mentioned that their email looked wonky. I signed up and got the auto-response welcome letter. It looks fine in my email client, but I did notice a lot of font changes, which is why the other person only saw boxes in place of letters. In the middle of the text is this ciphered block:

[Pixiestix]

Meta:

[baliset]

Interestingly enough, a lot of this ARG seems to be Maryland or DC based. Nick's LinkedIn profile says that he went to University of Maryland College Park, and that he works in the DC Metro Area for the Morris campaign. Also in this video when he holds up the paper with Hugh Sloan's name on it around 2:33, you can very clearly see the address 948 South Main St. Baltimore, MD, along with the email address hugh.sloan76SPLATgmail.com. Has anyone tried emailing that gmail yet?

EDIT: Possibly worth noting that Hugh Sloan is most likely named as a reference to Hugh W. Sloan Jr.

[sabaki12]

Ok, one of the tweets to Nick posts a picture of the emailed response he got from the campaign. It shows the key to the cipher..

[Cherry]

I might try following along. If you end up needing someone to try to pick up something in MD and no one else on here is from the area - I'm 10 minutes outside of Baltimore.

[baliset]

I'm also in Maryland, which is why it caught my eye! I hope they end up doing some live events, I'd love to come out for them.

[Adm_BlackCat]

Just started looking into this. Some of the assets built are pretty clever. On Nick Reynards blog the Hawkeye State is all locked up post links to an official looking AP Poll site:

http://associatedpress.neocities.org/democrat-morris-tucker-iowa-polls-01-24-16/

At first I was impressed that the Morris for America creators got an AP News article. And it had me fooled for a bit because almost all the links go back to the official AP News site.
However neocities.org is a free web hosting service and obviously any mention of Leland Morris is fictional. IMO it took a bit of effort to create that page, someone definitely put thought into it.

Edit: Poking around the Moonstruck Theater Company facebook and think I found the actor portraying Mr. Reynard.
https://www.facebook.com/moonstrucktheater/posts/10153485006766359

[docwho2100]

[Adm_BlackCat]

Emailed Hugh Sloan this morning.

[docwho2100]

I replied to the email from M4A (which I too had a little cipher in the middle, but seems to be different from the other one posted here) and received the following email reply - has anyone else reached out to M4A?