Don't Look Under the Internet
Don't Look Under the Internet
DLUTI 195 - Hoaxes
A shorter episode this week, as we cover a few made up things from in and around the internet.
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Speaker 3:Good evening. I'm recording all three pixels, everybody's face, hello everyone and uh, welcome to don't look under the uh internet don't look under the cum yeah that's not. That's not dandruff on your head, that's cum. Don't look under the internet. Internet comedy horror show starring yours truly Matt.
Speaker 2:I don't even remember what the noise was that I made.
Speaker 3:You're just like uh-huh, I'm here, that's Doug Muck and I'm Bang. Welcome everyone, so you'll see again. Jason's not here. That's this fuck-ass dude decided oh, I'm not going to show up, he's fired. Yeah, he's fired Fully. Don't tell anyone. Yeah't, I totally dumped his 401k god, we spent it on booze I bought it on more. Lord of the rings.
Speaker 1:Standout cardboard cutouts over here but they're all facing mike can't see any of them he do be kind of like weirdly staring at you back there he does, he does.
Speaker 3:He's my buddy, he's always protecting me. The thing that scares me the most is like so I went. This is off topic. Obviously we haven't started topic yet, but uh, my favorite thing about horror is background horror. When it's creepy, shit's happening in the background and there's no attention brought to it. That shit's awesome, like that movie it Follows. You can always see the fucker in the background, but it's never brought to the attention. Well, it is sometimes, but not all the time Do you ever watch the Haunting of Hill House?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that with all the ghosts in the background.
Speaker 3:Oh, mike Flanagan, Anyway, but it's a great Mike.
Speaker 2:Flanagan anyway, but I think we talked about this before, probably, but a horror thing that gets me is when scary shit happens during the day because, you don't expect it. I don't know.
Speaker 3:I love that, but because I like the background shit. I'm terrified of Legolas here because one of these days I'm going to be re-watching back to youtube videos or something and I'm gonna see his like him wink or like his head moves slightly or something. It's gonna freak me the fuck out. I know it's gonna happen, probably.
Speaker 1:Um you won't like, because it'll just look like a potato, so you'll never see it yeah, you're right, not enough pixels to tell if anything's moving, um, anyway.
Speaker 3:But, yeah, looking forward to that scare happening in my life. Um, or maybe it would just be a big old fucking prank, bro. Uh, who's the fuck would, who the fuck knows? Uh, we're not doing housekeeping today because this, we're recording this on the same day as the other one. But, uh, pranky, prank, pranks, hoaxy, hoax, hoax. We're doing, uh, things like that. Uh, the baton, uh, what's his name? Radio guy that did war in the world and was like, oh my god, they're here ah, the french champagne yeah, yeah, orwell that was my topic oh, oh shit, ass, just kidding.
Speaker 3:It's not Good, but we're talking about hoaxes and pranks on the internet, which is fun. So last time we had Doug start. Matt, do you want to kick it off? I'll kick it off.
Speaker 2:Oh, I'll kick it off, I will do it.
Speaker 3:I will open my notes and I'll talk about the thing about the hoax um oh yeah, so my hoax prank, whatever the fuck you want. I didn't have their notes up.
Speaker 2:I sure fucking didn't I was was googling Discord video quality bet. My hoax prank thing is called Diane in 7A, so this is Diane. Diane, diane.
Speaker 3:I don't know what, anne did but I don't want her to die.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry, Anne.
Speaker 3:We can't hear anything. Doug Dang, he's purring so fucking loud. Ah, he loves you. Diane and 7A.
Speaker 2:So on Thanksgiving Day of 2013, there was a man and this man's name was Elan Gale Elan I'm pretty sure it's Elan E-L-A-N. Gale and he is a producer, or at least was a producer for ABC's reality dating show, the Bachelor Diane, and he began tweeting about somebody who was on his flight. Allegedly named Diane was being very loud and very cantankerous about the fact that the flight was delayed and she really wanted to get home because she had Thanksgiving plans. So Mr Gale took it upon himself to send her a glass of wine with a note attached to it, and this note read and, by the way, he's he's live tweeting this interaction. So each time he sends a note to this woman, he takes a picture of the said note and post it on the internet, on Twitter. And the first one reads it has come to my attention that today is your Thanksgiving. It must be hard not to be with your family. Please accept this glass of wine. It is a gift from me to you. Hopefully, if you drink it, you won't be able to use your mouth to talk. Love, elan. So she sends a note back and this note reads the wine wasn't funny. The vodka wasn't funny.
Speaker 2:You're an awful person with no compassion. I'm sorry for your family that they should have to deal with you, to which Gail responded Thank you for your love, fuck you. And that's the end he wrote. Thank you for your lovely note. The person who lacks compassion is you. We all want to get home, particularly the nice men and women who fly your lazy ass around and serve you drinks. You're welcome. Next time you're in a bad mood, stay home. I hate you very much. Eat my dick note number four which um is, is from diane.
Speaker 2:Again, this is inappropriate beyond belief. I will be speaking to the authorities when we land. Note number five is from Milan and says when you speak to the authorities, please make sure they arrest you for cannibalism, because you just ate my dick. So apparently this interaction happens during the flight and they finally land where they're going and this woman is so upset that she apparently assaults him, like just walks up to him and slaps him and the airport security like starts to arrest her, but I guess she is able to like talk herself out of it. Anyway, he posts this entire exchange on Twitter and it goes viral and I'm talking like hundreds of thousands of retweets, hundreds of thousands of likes and stuff. So much so to the point where, like, major news publishers are starting to pick this story up. Buzzfeed writes an article about it. They're like this is a crazy interaction Of course they did yeah they posted all the pictures and stuff.
Speaker 2:It gets reposted on ABC and the Huffington Post and then, apparently, somebody who is related to Diane comes to her defense and says that Diane had cancer and is in a very bad mood because she has been recently diagnosed with cancer. Because she has been recently diagnosed with cancer, so on December 2nd Mr Gale tweets a picture of an empty chair and accompanying this picture of the empty chair is a message that says here is Diana sitting in the chair. And it turns out she didn't exist. There is no Diane in 7A. He was just bored and just made it up and people bought into it and Buzzfeed bought into it and so did the mainstream media.
Speaker 3:I feel like that's like those people that make the. That's at that time on Twitter where you just make up a story or whatever everyone buys it. Like um right, yeah dear, dear david or whatever, where everyone's like oh, this guy's house is really haunted yeah, a hundred percent.
Speaker 2:You would never be able to do this today and get people to buy it.
Speaker 3:Not a fucking chance people would know yeah, I've seen some shit on here, right this is musk's, I think. I think people now most people are like nothing's true immediately skeptical.
Speaker 2:A lot of this shit like you'll see stuff that is very obviously real and like half the comments will be like this is fake as fuck bro ai ai right like.
Speaker 2:I saw a video on instagram the other day that was like a montage of this guy riding a riding lawnmower over like jumps and shit and like slamming his head into the ground on the way down and like very obviously injuring himself, and half the comments were like that ain't real, that's a dummy, and it's like it's very obviously a man like he moves as he hits the ground like I get there's videos.
Speaker 3:I see where this guy like he, he moves as he hits the ground, like I get there's, there's videos. I see where this guy like he, he hits, he, he like, hits things into his shins. That's the whole bit. Yeah, like he, I've seen that guy before yeah, it comes with these contraptions where he's got like razor scooters and like like truck, like hitches on, like contraptions to just like where he'll launch it.
Speaker 3:He'll come back and smack his shin, yeah, and people are like, oh, those just rubber, there's no way his shins could survive. He's just adding in the effect afterwards. I kind of agree a little, because how does it? How is shins not powder? Uh, but also fuck I. I watched those in my fucking nuts going to my stomach.
Speaker 2:I don't care if it's fake or not. It looks real and it's like the secondhand pain I feel is real.
Speaker 1:Yep, I went, so there's a tick tock guy that I see every once in a while. He's, he dresses up as a mime and like people like hurt him or like his friends are hurting him in some fashion, but he can't make any noise, so he's just like one of them is a razor scooter to the shin like he's a mime. You can't fucking make any. It's really funny actually.
Speaker 3:I thought that was going a different direction. I thought when you said they were hurting him, like they're miming, like beating him up and he was actually getting bruised and shit from it and you just see like blood coming out of him and no one's actually hitting him that'd be impressive um um so a couple of a couple of other things I got because that wasn't super long is some computer virus stuff.
Speaker 2:So back in the day before we used computer viruses to like get money out of people and like destroy data and take over governments and all sorts of shit.
Speaker 2:It used to be almost solely on live wire they, yeah, the people used to write viruses just for the hell of it, and so there's lots of viruses, uh, out there that were prominent during like the late 90s and early 2000s, that just do goofy shit, like stuff that's not necessarily malicious but is just annoying.
Speaker 2:So one that I thought was particularly interesting was called the hps virus, and what this would do is you would download it and if it installed on your computer, it would find every bitmap file, which was like a common method of storing uncompressed images back in the day, like a dot bmp file. It would find everyone on the hard drive and then, whenever that file would get open the next time, it would invert it so that it was like flipped, not invert color wise, but like it would turn it, it would mirror it, and so, like lots of stuff is stored in the operating system this way, or at least was so like even like the windows 95 logo that, like you see, yeah, that you see, when you boot your computer would just be flipped, and there was no. And and when it did this it would like set a string so that the next time it ran it wouldn't flip it back. So all the, all the images on your computer would just be permanently flipped, so that's a fun one that's so mean I that me.
Speaker 3:There was one. A while ago, like a long long time ago, we had a family fucking computer that it would like automatically open our like CD disc drive thing like you would go to close it and it would just come back out. You close it just we had to like restart and refresh everything to get it to go I've seen that one before.
Speaker 2:Um on like old forum posts. I think there's one that there's a screenshot that uh makes the rounds periodically. But it's like uh, somebody says somebody posts that um program and they're like this will give your computer a cup holder and they're like what, and they download it and they run it. And they're like this will give your computer a cup holder and they're like what, and they download it and they run it and they're like it doesn't do anything and that's exactly what it was.
Speaker 3:I was ashamed to say I fell for a cup holder trick. Yeah, me and my dad were like oh, that must be funny, let's do it. Just downloaded it onto our computer like where's the cup holder?
Speaker 2:simpler times. Um, there is the internet archive, the way back machine. Archiveorg has a malware museum now so you can go look at old viruses. Most of them just kind of make messages and shit like that. There's one called coughshopcom that um just puts a big message on the screen that just says legalize cannabis.
Speaker 1:Hell yeah dude, I thought it was going to be like just a guy's face and he's going.
Speaker 2:And one that is like more recent that I think is just kind of created in. Like homage to this sort of stuff is uh, so have you ever heard of untitled goose game, or yeah, so the guy that made that game created a virus and it's just a goose that wanders around on your screen when you run the program and it will like show up periodically and just like fuck with stuff. So it'll like leave you notes, like intimidating notes, like uh, I cause problems on purpose. Is this one, uh one that I saw earlier was piece of piece was never an option and then it'll do things like grab your mouse cursor and like drag it across the screen and shit.
Speaker 3:It's pretty fun.
Speaker 1:Hell, yeah honk, pretty solid stuff, dude, that's pretty solid fucking stuff. That's what I got a little little goosey guy on my screen?
Speaker 3:yeah, I'll take it. Is that all you got there, moot?
Speaker 2:that's all. That's what I got. That's it. That's it, bro. That's all wow I'll look up more stuff while you guys are talking. I'm sorry, you, basically.
Speaker 3:I'm sorry, okay, don't um, it's okay, I have an interesting one, so I today I'm going to be talking about microsoft coffee.
Speaker 3:Basically, what had happened was in the 90s microsoft was microsoft was really trying for this, like relatability, um, like theme, and they tried making things like super simple for their users. Um, they had something called like uh, well, first and foremost, um, windows 95 was very big and, um, because it was such a simple, you know, program to use, they did Microsoft Bob, which people were like all right now you're just talking down to me, I'm not stupid Microsoft, because it was very, very just like rudimentary, like Matt, do you know what Microsoft Bob is?
Speaker 2:That's like the automated voice thing, right that's like the automated voice thing.
Speaker 3:Right, so it it. When it first came out it was like a um, it was basically a computing, like a system, kind of like windows 95, but they dumbed it down to the extreme where it was like oh, this is your home computer, so it they made like the desktop it was supposed to be like an assistant, like it was like the pre-credited, like the virtual assistant thing, right yeah, kind of, and like it.
Speaker 3:Like it popped up as this like imagery of like it was your living room and then like if you wanted to, um like open a file, there's literally like a file cabinet, and you like click on the file cabinet and like it was like very rudimentary people are like all right, this isn't a point and click like children's game. This is my computer dog, I don't need this shit.
Speaker 2:Um yeah but, um, the the voice for bob is like when people think early text to speech, the voice that they hear in their heads is probably the microsoft bob voice. It's that voice is like I like a bob voice. It's that voice is like I like, uh, like john madden like uh, you've heard that you've heard yeah, you've heard the microsoft bob voice before.
Speaker 3:Hello, winrar yes, exactly um, but so uh, this is around the time. You know, clippy was a thing that people were like all right, he's fucking here, whatever, but they were going for that relatability thing they were going for.
Speaker 2:No, I'm thinking of Sam Bob, who's Sam Microsoft. Sam is the voice.
Speaker 3:Oh gotcha, I have no idea, but they were going for that relatability and they're going for what's hip and happening and wow. And now? So for those of you that don't know, microsoft was stationed out in Seattle. That's where it got its startup and everything. Guess what else got its startup in Seattle in the 90s? Starbucks, baby Starbucks. So what's the most relatable thing to people in the 90s in Seattle? Coffee.
Speaker 3:Ironically, the programming language, java, was also pretty brand new. Java was like a year old when this whole thing was going on. So there are these employees that worked at Microsoft okay, and these employees like to poke fun at microsoft, basically because microsoft was seen as making worse dumbed down versions of already existing things. Ie um, people complained about early, like, internet explorer being likea ripoff of netscape. Um, photoshop was a ripoff of another program I don't remember the name of it, um, but people are like, yeah, microsoft's basically just taking, uh, like existing programs and dumbing them down, making them stupid. So of course, it makes sense that microsoft would come out with their own programming language, just like java. They can't call it Java, so we'll call it Coffee. So Microsoft Coffee was born.
Speaker 3:These employees spent a few weeks making this fake Microsoft Coffee product. They made a physical box. They had a, because, remember, back in the day, fucking software and shit came in a box. People A lot of you that may be listening are young where it's just like you just download shit. No, you had to buy this stuff. Fucking the internet came on a CD back in the day. It's not something you just fucking got, you had to get it. Aol sent you a disc and, if you were lucky, it got one in a fucking cereal box that gave you a day of free internet along with captain crunch's video game with the crunchlings in it.
Speaker 2:Uh, there's an episode of podnancy plays where chris and I play like some of those old shitty like cereal box demos I think you guys play the checks dooms, yeah, yeah I, I want to do more of that.
Speaker 3:We should do more of that I would love to play that Captain Crunch game. That'd be awesome. Let's do it one time. So they made this fake product. They even went so far to making a logo. They made a fake production and distribution list. They even made a press release for Microsoft Coffee and sent it to local news stations. As part of this big old fucking prank, people were sent out these barcodes that would give them a discount on purchasing Microsoft Coffee. But whenever you went to a retailer to try to get your box of Microsoft Coffee, guess what wasn't in stores? Guess what was on the shelf Microsoft coffee. That's what. No one had it.
Speaker 3:The jig was up and Microsoft was fucking pissed about this. So Microsoft sent out a. They had their legal team send out a mass like letter to their employees and they're like hey, we're legal, we're lawyers, we're looking into this shit. You fucked up, we're gonna fucking find you, bro. And in the letter it even says they're like bill gates is not happy. Bill gates is not amused by this situation at all. So, bill gates, you pissed off the man. There's that video. You pissed off the coolest guy ever. There's that video of him jumping over a swivel chair. You pissed that guy off. How dare you.
Speaker 3:So the employees you know appropriately enough decided to never come forward with what was going on for years. Everyone stayed silent, so the legal team couldn't fucking find them. It wasn't until like I want to say it was like 20, it was like 20, like 15 or 16 or something when one of the guys that worked on the print came forward and was like I fucking did that shit. There was a couple of us. It was awesome, but it's too late for them to do anything to us. So fuck you Microsoft.
Speaker 3:Now, if you try to look up Microsoft Coffee, there are no news articles on this. People have went to newspaper archive websites to see if there's any news articles or anything on this. Nothing, there are no news articles, no newspapers that reference Microsoft Coffee at all. However, one person did have a VHS tape of a local news station talking about Microsoft Coffee. Now, matt, I'm not on Twitch right now. I don't know if you're playing the clip or not. I am Cool. Now, this video for those of you that are just audio listeners this video is a guy recording his TV that is playing a VHS tape. And this VHS tape, you know it's doing that classic VHS tape thing was kind of glitching out here and there Um but it's a news acre talking about.
Speaker 3:Microsoft coffee and he's holding a coffee analog or it looks like that Um, but the uh, the, the news anchor is holding a physical copy of the Microsoft coffee, uh, a box. As there's a lot of people online that are like, oh no, this is fake, like this is made for this bit, this is just a joke. But a lot of what's going on on this videotape does seem to be somewhat real. First and foremost, if you listen to the audio of the tape the way they talk about things you can kind of tell that the internet is still this new thing. It's like got that, like it's the way they speak, that kind of sells it a little bit like.
Speaker 3:They're like, oh, this new thing came up on the internet today and it's like all right, yeah, no one talks like that um, and the news anchor that's actually messing around with the box and everything, he's an actual news acre. You can find him if you can look him up and find him. I forget his name, but he's a actual, legit news acre. So this does look like it's a legit um broadcast, not a, not a fake or altered one. And if it is a fake, they did a damn good job, cause it looks pretty good. Um, but that's Microsoft coffee. Uh, a pretty fun prank where people were just like what if microsoft did shitty java? And uh, I got a little out of hand. That's hilarious to me, that's pretty silly.
Speaker 1:I like shit like that. I've been, uh, I've been actually watching like a lot of random youtube channels about just like the history of the internet and like aim and aol and shit like that lately. So it's kind of fun to like I don'tOL and shit like that lately. So it's it's kind of fun to like I don't know. Go back to that like early internet era where people were like on the, the worldwide web. Today this happened and you're like oh, I forgot. People like didn't talk like that.
Speaker 3:Okay, I didn't know what the internet was.
Speaker 1:They're like yeah, I went to Nickcom and I played a Flash game for a while While we were surfing the web.
Speaker 3:I'm like, okay, no one talks like that. Meanwhile, my seven-year-old ass was over here playing the fucking Lilo and Stitch sandwich stacker game Yep.
Speaker 1:Neopets fucking Gaia Online.
Speaker 3:All that good shit dog, all that good shit.
Speaker 2:You mentioned you were covering this, and I looked it up because I wanted to know more about it too, and I found this Reddit thread where people were arguing that it is in fact just made up. And I was enthralled by this Reddit thread because yeah, what'd you find?
Speaker 2:There were people that were like so this news broadcast is totally bullshit, right, is what they were saying were people that were like uh, so this news broadcast is totally bullshit, right, and that is what they were saying. They were like why would somebody just record it? Can they not just record a vhs? And I'm like, dude, I don't have the shit. I'm amazed that this person had the shit in their house to play a vhs tape one yeah two, I don't have something to fucking record a VHS tape Like.
Speaker 2:I guess if you have a capture card that's got like composite on it, maybe, but like most people don't have that technology in their house anymore, I feel like him, recording the TV playing the VHS adds a little bit more of like an authentic, like shows.
Speaker 3:That's more authentic Because if they just uploaded the VHS in, in theory you could do. That's easier to edit than something that's being put on the tv, you know, because you have to deal with like glitches or something that might happen to the tv if you're trying to, you know, falsify something on that right. But like if you, if you can doctor and make shitty looking vhHS footage easy and upload that, Right.
Speaker 2:Well, the OP from the Post was arguing that it was clearly fake because there is absolutely no mention of this anywhere, like you were saying, until the Medium article came out in 2021. And he was like you would think if somebody, if this had happened in 1996, like microsoft was a big deal, people are going to talk about the latest microsoft thing, there would be some mention of it somewhere, but there there's nothing. And so I kept going and I was like, man, damn, maybe you've got a point. And then I got down to the section where they were like the news broadcast is fake. And then somebody was like, nah, I lived in in the Seattle area in the 90s.
Speaker 2:I'm pretty sure that news anchor is this person who used to be on this TV show or on this TV channel. And I was like, oh shit, he's got him. He can verify that this is it. And then somebody else was like nah, that's not that woman, this is that woman and this is somebody else. And else was like nah, that's not that woman, this is that woman and this is somebody else. I was like, oh shit, we're back in it. And and then somebody else was like no, I lived in seattle in the 90s and the guy is this guy. And then uh posted his name is it's keith eldridge and yeah, yeah, it's that guy.
Speaker 3:So yeah, and he's a news. That's it, keith eldridge. Thank you, yeah, yeah, he's a real guy.
Speaker 2:So no, this is a real news broadcast from 96, so this is definitely yeah, yeah and um, I imagine too what might have happened.
Speaker 3:Why there's no record of it in like newspapers or something, because it was caught by microsoft relatively quick after like um, yeah, and you don't want to fuck with microsoft's legal team so exactly.
Speaker 3:I imagine once it was discovered, microsoft's legal team went to the local stations and, like newspapers, it was like you don't print shit about this. We have bill gates money. You remember that, know your place. And then they just were like, all right, rip it up, we're out. We're out. Because I feel like back then you know it was I don't know you couldn't really have. I mean, I guess you could do like a fucking what's it called? What's that like the sun or whatever it is that like newspaper that's just full of bullshit. That's like an alien impregnated.
Speaker 2:Oh, you're talking about the tabloids.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the tabloids. You would think a tabloid would pick up on this, but even if they did, Nobody would believe them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no one would believe it Exactly so.
Speaker 3:I'm pretty sure Microsoft's legal team just cracked down on all these news stations before they were able to print anything about it.
Speaker 1:Because you could just do that. It was the 90s.
Speaker 2:You could be like hey, I'm Microsoft, don't do it. They got a guy in a suit, in a brown suit, who picks up a phone.
Speaker 3:And punches it in.
Speaker 2:And holds it up to his ear and he's like listen.
Speaker 3:Get me the Chicago Tribune.
Speaker 1:Reveal in your stories.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, that's. That's what I gotoug. What do you got?
Speaker 1:I got nothing, I bet okay bye everybody. Um, all right, so my topic is called the cathode project. Um, and it's it's a weird one. So the Cathode Project was an alleged DARPA funded experiment that was leaked onto the internet via a strange blog post on a defunct info site in the early 2010s. Now we've heard DARPA before, so if that tells you anything, face lasers, shit like that they make weathers.
Speaker 2:So if that tells you anything, space lasers, shit like that. Yeah, we've talked about DARPA.
Speaker 1:They make weathers? Yeah, so the original post claims that the US military researchers had developed a software tool that could generate person-specific visual patterns, video or image sequences that would trigger neurological responses, including dissociation, paranoia or even memory blackouts. Um, the name cathode supposedly stood for cognitive effect trigger via heuristic optical data encoding and, in short, this video could hack your brain. Uh, not like subliminal messaging, but something lower, like closer to a firmware level, like perception.
Speaker 2:So damn straight to the source yeah, right.
Speaker 1:So the story starts spreading through like conspiracy theory forums and early youtube channels and, according to the legend, uh, these leaked files a series of strange like 30 second dot web clips are discovered on an old flash drive purchased at a government auction in West Virginia. So each video was simply titled with a color and a timestamp. There was like green underscore zero, zero, four, two white underscore zero, zero, zero, zero. Yellow underscore 0319, etc. And these clips end up containing nothing like overly frightening, but it's just like static, some like weird archival footage flickering lights, low droning sounds. But if you watch them, people who claimed or people who watch them, claimed that they caused nosebleeds, short-term memory gaps, deja vu, hallucinations, mostly of geometric shapes, and one widely circulated claim after watching a video titled Red underscore 0190 was that you would wake up a few hours later and have no memory of what happened. One person said that they woke up two hours later and they had a band-aid on their temple, and they have no memory of them putting a band-aid on their temple. Just random shit like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, someone came in and just clocked them.
Speaker 3:They're like that's what you get for watching the video.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right. So by 2011, the internet urban legend channel started covering the cathode project and the hoax went viral under the hashtag cathode e-files hashtag catheter files hashtag. Watch me put this catheter in they're sticking videos of our dickholes and people ended up hashtag watch me, put this catheter in. They're sticking videos of our dickholes. And people ended up starting to upload fake reaction videos of themselves having seizures or speaking nonsense. And basically schools and college campuses banned students from watching anything that was rumored to be part of the cathode project.
Speaker 3:Bonjour, crazy gibberish.
Speaker 1:Bonjour, bueno, si of the cathode project. Bonjour, crazy gibberish. Bonjour, bueno, see um. And then so a 15 year old in arizona who was hospitalized after watching a replica video and having what his parents claimed was a psychotic break. Uh, turns out to be a prank and the teen had taken sleeping pills beforehand. Um and but yeah so the cathode, cathode, panic. Uh ends up hitting the news and, soon after, youtube and reddit began quietly removing all the content. And then the subreddit r slash cathode, uh proof was permanently banned in 2012, with the note removed due to public health concerns. Oh shit, what do we got?
Speaker 2:here. We got some pain. I pulled a mic.
Speaker 1:I fucking doored it.
Speaker 3:Quick Go, doug Go fast For those listening Speed run.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all right, anyway, so yeah, so these places start removing all this stuff YouTube and Reddit and conspiracy theorists start to lose their fucking minds, right, youtube and reddit? And? Um, conspiracy theorists start to lose their fucking minds, right? So all this evidence, um was that was claimed by the believers is all fucking fabricated. Um fake request screenshots, uh, showing redacted documents with, uh, like you know, you know, redacted stuff all over it. Um an interview with darpa, whistleblower, who said the project was testing, uh, non-lethal information warfare. Um, and rumors that watching all seven clips in a row would make you forget your own name for 30 minutes. Just all of this shit. Um, and yeah, by 2013, the hoax was dead or scrubbed, and believers said that the government removed it all from the internet and that it could have just possibly been a short-lived ARG designed to trick gullible edgelords.
Speaker 2:It was scrubbed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, when you can just scrub everything about something on the internet.
Speaker 2:Yeah, when you can delete that picture, like Mariah Carey did, what?
Speaker 1:So yeah, that's the project?
Speaker 3:Was it a nudie hold on?
Speaker 1:it showed her tits, but her tits actually had their own, like real people faces maybe I'm making up a lot of people knowing I'm confusing her with a different person who's another pop star, that isn't uh uh, uh michael jackson jackson was michael jackson jennifer lopez, someone with the last name jack.
Speaker 3:Miss Jackson.
Speaker 1:I am for real, um, but yeah, did you guys find that was that interesting? Was that a good hoax?
Speaker 3:uh-huh, I loved it.
Speaker 1:That was a fun hoax yeah, well it was, I made it all up, literally there's no such thing as the cathode project. I made the whole thing up with a little help, but I made it up why would you do that to me? Because, because we literally can and there's no repercussions for it so the hoax was?
Speaker 1:you told a fake story yeah, the hoax was that I made a hoax, pranked and it's not real, got your ass, but the real, the real inception here, though, the real thing is that I want everyone listening to take a breath, take a seat.
Speaker 2:Actually, if you're not taking a seat, take a seat are you about to tell me that something else is made up, doug yeah, so I'm about to tell everyone that we made up some shit and it's going to be funny because no one called us out on it yeah, everything we do is
Speaker 1:fake. We're AI-generated videos and they don't even know. In 2024, we did something called Dilute-E-Thon. That was real. We really don't. Let me just get that out of the way.
Speaker 3:We took all that money, fuck you.
Speaker 1:That really happened because just that to be fair. So we did do that, that's a good disclaimer.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:To get that, just nip that in the bud real quick. However, we did an episode during Dilute-E-Thon and that episode was entitled ephemeral sensations, and we have been waiting for more than a year now for someone to just be like, hey, that's not real, that doesn't exist, that's not a real thing that you cover.
Speaker 2:My favorite thing about that episode is there are people commenting on it that are like arguing facts about it, like no, mushrooms don't work that way yeah, we made that shit up. Doesn't exist, it wasn't real Jad should be teammate.
Speaker 3:Jadeth. He's kept it quiet this whole time, but he did figure out that it was a fake when we were like it took heavy prodding because we mentioned something about April 1st and I'm pretty sure Jadeth just googled it that it was a fake.
Speaker 2:Yeah, when we were like it took heavy prodding though, because we mentioned something about April 1st and I'm pretty sure Jada just Googled it and it was like, Since we posted it on April 1st, it was like the first result if you Google April 1st, Deluty. Yeah, but either way yeah we faked it, we made it up, didn't happen, not a fiction Complete.
Speaker 1:Not fiction, Complete fiction. Yeah, we've been waiting for someone to. We literally were like all right, the first person who tells us that this is fake gets a t-shirt. And yeah, it never ended up happening. No one said anything, so good job listeners.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Shows that you guys just take what we say for granted. Hey, you know what Swag. Just tell you whatever and apparently you believe it. We can just do another one of those. Let's just make up every episode after this and see if anyone catches on.
Speaker 1:It's all fake we should probably do another AI generated episode, though, like where we all have random scripts and maybe we'll try and not dog Jason so hard this time.
Speaker 3:Laughing, laughing, laughing hi welcome to the and not dog Jason so hard this time. Hi, welcome to Lockout the Internet. I'm Jason.
Speaker 2:I'm already drunk, according to the AI, and you would think your initial reaction may be well, maybe just nobody listened to that episode, but it's got just as many plays as any of our other episodes. It's over 1,000, maybe 2,000 people have listened to that episode at this point.
Speaker 3:Yeah yeah, it's a normal episode and just no one caught on. And you know what? I'm glad that you just take whatever I say as correct, because you know what I'm going to say it right now I'm the most attractive member of diluity. Okay, you could take that for granted, for truth that's a bank 100 truthful um.
Speaker 1:I'm fucking six foot tall that's why we do really fucking tall exactly like I'm a tall.
Speaker 3:I'm a tall, hot man, and now you have to believe it because I put it on there. Well, thanks for joining us on this weird trip down prank road and hoax road. I enjoy this. Maybe we'll come back to more hoaxes in the future we'll see but probably not because Doug couldn't think of one. So odds are he probably won't be able to again in the past. So, or in the future. So he probably won't do this again, but I'm glad we at least tried it. It's something different, something unique. Next week we covered Doug's. We do it. We watch a stream of Doug dying his hair. It's a good time for everybody. I didn't really have anything lined up there. I biffed that I had nothing.
Speaker 1:Anyway, yeah, I feel that dilutycom patreoncom slash diluty pod.
Speaker 3:Uh, send us an email dilutypod at gmailcom. Um, look us up on all socials. We're on everything. We're either diluty pod or don't. Look on the internet everywhere. Check out our YouTube video you video. You can see our video. You can see the videos there of our beautiful faces. Uh, twitch as well. We we every tuesday, we're on. Every other tuesday we're on twitch 6 30. Sometimes we're there. Sometimes it's cool. I upload some stuff. I downloaded videos, um, I might upload them to youtube. I've been playing through halo a bunch. Um, so I have a couple videos that I might put on youtube of, uh, me playing halo. I got like six of them. We'll see how that goes, but yeah, you might randomly catch me on Twitch streaming Halo. So just kind of keep your eyes open on the Twitch. It'd be fun. Doug, what do you got to say for people, beautiful people?
Speaker 1:Poop, poop, poopoo, peep poopoo, peepy poopoo.
Speaker 3:Wow, wise words, matt, can you?
Speaker 2:pop that no.
Speaker 1:I can't.
Speaker 2:This is a pretty short episode. Sorry about that Blame, jason. We had to expect.
Speaker 3:How long?
Speaker 2:is it Less than 45 minutes?
Speaker 3:They're not all gonna be perfect. Bye, bye, everybody. Have a wonderful day this one not all going to be perfect. Bye everybody, have a blessed day.
Speaker 1:Watch this one perform really well for some reason.
Speaker 3:The algorithm loves fake shit. Short fake shit. Yeah Well, bye everybody, We'll catch you on the flippity flop.
Speaker 2:Don't look under the internet Outro Music.
