unforum

[VirtuallyQuinn]

[booba]

Wow. 40 pages on nothing more than a bottle of pop.

[VirtuallyQuinn]

[VirtuallyQuinn]

Re: Wow. 40 pages on nothing more than a bottle of pop.

[danteIL]

VirtuallyQuinn:

In all sincerity I think you might be better off not trying to convince everyone of your point of view. What is going on here is clearly open to interpretation. You have one interpretation and other people have another interpretation. Some of that interpretation (on both sides) is backed up by tangible evidence while other interpretations (on both sides) is pure guesswork. I happen to disagree with your interpretation, but I am also willing to accept that my skepticism may not be justified.

EDIT: and now that I see 3 posts in a row on this, I hope that you don't feel personally attacked. We definitely want to hear all sides here -- that's what this forum is for. But I think we are reacting to the relentlessness with with you seem compelled to defend your ideas.

[ljm]

The least you could do if you want to argue here is just not be terribly condescending about it. I'm respectful of your opinion. Please give me the same courtesy. This is for fun, not for swinging your internet ego around about how wrong everybody is. I sure hope for your sake that I'm wrong and you're right, not just because I like ARGs, but because you'll have an epic backpedal to do and a heck of a string of "my bad"s to post if I'm right.

Your argument just isn't convincing. It's a guess that is predicated on a few assumptions: that the people who run Swamp Pop are totally unaware of ARGs or capable of finding this thread before getting involved and secondarily the assumption that coincidences are not possible. Most problematic is that your argument is centered on the assumption that there *is* an ARG here.

Facts:

1. Swamp Pop is not using a single piece of BR or movie related IP, they're hinting at it. If you don't understand how what they're doing is clearly to avoid infringing on the IP of the movies, let me know.

2. The Swamp Pop label in the trailer is 8 out of 9 times intentionally not shown enough to discern the label. In the other instance it's picked up so quickly that it was likely overlooked. That is evidence that they were NOT involved, if you know anything about how the movie business works with branding.

3. The Swamp Pop page Shelter Supply item was, according to the Wayback Machine, added the day after the trailer came out.

Over on Reddit somebody referenced that the Swamp Pop logos were originally seen on some of the actors Facebook page pictures... OBVIOUSLY out of game.

You've used the "evidence" that the labels are almost never showing as evidence that Swamp Pop is IG, when the way the movie business works suggests quite the opposite: labels are never shown on products made by companies that aren't directly aware of, authorizing, or paying for the logo and who would stand to benefit. White Mountain Puzzle they can't avoid, but the soda label is never showing because they are *not* involved.

Listen, if you look hard enough you can find clues anywhere. But let me ask you this question:

What's more likely the cause of this situation: a) Bad Robot is suddenly really bad at leading us to really compelling, difficult but clear puzzle steps and is, after years of creating totally new content, suddenly leveraging a small independent soda company from Louisiana to execute an ARG in 1/6 the normal time frame with 1% of the subtlety of his ARGs before... or b) the people who own Swamp Pop were savvy enough to understand what's going on when they got their Google News alert and added a product to their page to "play along" for fun?

I think we all wish there was an ARG here, but as of now I don't think there is. I'm not saying there is 100% no ARG, I'm saying that Swamp Pop isn't likely part of it.

Once again: even when BR ARGs have been difficult, it was always *crystal clear* when you a development was on the right track. The Swamp Pop Shelter Supply is heavy handed, clumsy, and not subtle at all.

[Adm_BlackCat]

@VirtuallyQuinn, pardon the but you've been talking about this a lot today. Even posting links to your own blog. It's fine really. But I think we all understand your stance on the matter.

[VirtuallyQuinn]

I don't see why this is soooo difficult for you guys to comprehend.

You are the ones making the sweeping presumption it's some "nod" to ARG fans but they had to know ARG fans would care enough to show up and why.

Nobody can see the damn brand in the trailer.

Somebody showed up and pointed out it was real and THEN ARG fans went to the site where these things were waiting on them.

Do you not get it? Seriously?

Let's try it your way..

Trailer comes out, ARG fans question the brand, get told it's a real drink, find the site and start showing up.

Swamp Pop sees a sudden hit in traffic or google alerts or osmosis or whatever and decides oh hey, let's screw with all of them and make a shelter supply product they can't buy and just nod at them with you cant drink just four...they'll love it and buy our drinks.

Please, please kindly explain how they knew WHO was going to their site and what those people were looking for.

To my knowledge as a web dev site trackers that explain the motivation behind a site visit haven't been invented yet.

You're not explaining how SP knew how and why to differentiate between the massive general public who never saw their label or brand in the trailer AND ALL OF US who found it scouring frames and why the hell it'd even matter to them to do it at all.

You can't say we ARG fans are relevant enough to them to 'nod' to after the fact but it's absurd to think they were in on it with Bad Robot and working it out in advance - somebody had to tell THEM who WE were and why WE would even be there - because WE found Slusho relevant. The fact they seemed to know that and do it is what gives it away as IG.

You can't have it both ways. Either ARG fans are relevant enough to them to cater to or we're not. If not, then I doubt they'd bother doing this for such a small, small group of people to show up without any guarantee they'd buy anything. And again, we didn't show up TO buy their stuff, we showed up TO get the contact info and email them to see what happened.

A few people bought stuff.

[ljm]

I'm just not interested in discussing this with you if every time I disagree based on pretty sound reasoning you're going to passive aggressively suggest that I'm dumb. I do this for fun, not to argue with someone who can't be polite.

[Adm_BlackCat]

The trout is strong with this one.

[Ecks51]

[ljm]

[Adm_BlackCat]

[dmax]

Deep breath

[Pixiestix]

Now now, let's all play nice. Let's all share some stroopwafels and brownies Or should I just pop some corn?

please don't multi-post. (That concludes the moderator end of my post....)

Now then, as a player

VirtuallyQuinn - I'm not going to continue to argue about the swamp pop label. It's been proven that people saw it in the trailer, knew what it was, said what it was. They saw part of the label and said "oh, that's swamp pop" the same way someone else might see half a Pepsi or a Budweiser label and go "oh, I know what that is." I will say, if you honestly believe that a sock puppet posted on Reddit or anyplace else to flat out tell people about swamp pop, that's piss poor marketing on BR's part - and very unlike them. If that is your entire basis for "they are IG" then that's a shame.

As for how many customer they got - if they got 5 more than usual, that's a rush in my view. And I see that between here and Reddit (which I'm finding out from reading here, I don't do Reddit) lots of people bought soda and shirts from swamp pop. My comment stands.

SP isn't "screwing" with everyone. They very likely had to grant permission for their brand to be in the movie, and I'm going to guess it is because someone (be it JJ or DT or whomever) is a fan of the product, or simply wanted a bit of local flare. Obviously the film isn't out yet, there is no need to remind me that multiple times. I was giving you a hypothetical - we don't know what is going to happen, so to assume it just isn't because it wasn't in the trailer is a bit narrow, hence my comment "for all you know blah blah blabidy blah"

ARGs aren't that small of a thing. The Cloverfield ARG was a hugely known entity. If you google 10CL you get hit up with articles/blog posts about the original ARG. Assumption: SP did indeed make that tie in just to amuse us. Who cares? Why does it bother you so very very much that someone might opt to cater to us a little inside joke without it being something more? Unless I missed it, no one said we weren't relevant, however being relevant doesn't entitle us to an ARG either.

We have yet to find anything at all of any validity. No puzzles, no codes, no characters, no interactions, nothing but a real life soda company who put something on their website that you can't do anything with (that we are aware of). Maybe that will change, I hope it does, but that hope is dwendling by the day. In the mean time, all of us have a bit of confirmation bias going on, and convincing us something is true doesn't mean it actually is. It's all just movie spec right now. It's a house, it's a truck, it's a hazmat tub, it's a giant balloon man.... It's MGP, it's the parasites, it's JG'a dead genitals.... Maybe we will find out all the answers we seek when the film drops (I kinda hope so only to get closure for myself.)

On a personal note, how dare you exclaim that I'm "skirting closed minded" while you seethe a single opinion to the point of insulting everyone who disagrees with you. I would LOVE to be proven wrong, and that there is an ARG or even a basic immersive fiction. I'm here. I'm following every lead that gets posted right along with everyone else. If you want to discuss and debate, that's one thing, but don't take it so personally that other people aren't seeing your views. Be a bit flexible or learn to agree to disagree. You aren't helping your points at all if people are too ticked off to even read them.