What Lies Below, Day Fifty Eight
I’ve slowed down the frequency of posts lately, but am not winding down or anything like that. Just haven’t had quite as much time to fiddle with this, but don’t you worry — we’re gonna see this thing through!
NORTH KOREA RUN BY CIA — The US is far from above trying to set up puppet governments who are favorable to us, so why not the other way around? The specifics can vary, but you’ve probably already guessed it if you’re this far down the iceberg: the CIA(and maybe others) retain some level of high ranking control over everything going on in NK, propping up the current government and keeping the information blackout steady so as to always maintain NK as a boogeyman in that region to justify various US operations.
NAZI BELL — A supposed secret nazi weapon that is largely considered a hoax. That said, secret semi-spooky nazi science/weapons are a hugely popular trope both in the conspiracy world and pop culture in general, so don’t expect it to ever go away. What was it? Time machine, UFO, superweapon, or maybe something else! There is very little hard evidence and it seems born largely of fairly modern conjecture and writing. And no, it has not turned up anywhere(believers would say that’s because it’s now hidden in some secret US military base).
FROON AND KREMERS FINAL PHOTO — Two girls who vanished in Panama a few years ago. Eventually, remains were found and no one really ever figured out what happened. The default ‘official’ response is that they died from a fall somehow, but pretty hefty portions of the online mystery-solving community disagree. A bunch of photos they took were recovered, and people analyzing every little detail of these has become a big part of the case — with theories ranging from foul play from other tourists to indigenous people abducting them to some sort of cryptids.
‘THE SHINING’ BRAIN BEETLE — This is way less exciting than it sounds. In the book of the Shining, the car is red. In the movie it’s yellow. But a red one is seen all smashed up. Some people seriously believe this was Kubrick sending some kind of message to Stephen King. I don’t know what the ‘brain’ part is supposed to be. Maybe because the yellow Volkswagen beetle is actually Bumblebee, the Transformer who also turns into that color beetle, and uhhhh I’ll workshop this and get back to you.
EARTH HAS 2 MOONS — Yep
BLACK SNAKE PROPHECY — This is a prophecy among the Lakota people of North America. It talks about a dark serpent moving through the land and desecrating holy sites, a serpent that must be defeated before it does some really really bad things. Recently, the Dakota Oil Pipeline has been frequently named as the object of these prophecies. And, I mean, yeah. The prophecies are right.
CARIN WALDEGRAVE — I think it’s actually Karin? Anyway, this was a Canadian woman who posted a bunch of weird stuff on Facebook ten years ago or so. It was very convoluted, dense writing that followed the stereotypical conspiracy-screed format. The messages went all over the place and checked all the usual boxes, but that’s not exactly wild for facebook. The weird thing was that she’d keep replying to herself, having very lengthy “conversations” — often without any outside engagement. There was a lot, too. We’re talking hundreds — often posted very rapidly.
Some people thought this was some sort of Facebook algorithm test, some thought it was part of an ARG, others thought it was a bot. People who’ve spent a lot of time going through it seem to have mostly dismissed those theories and lend toward it just being a real person with some issues. This kind of “word salad” is the sort of thing some people can and will write, I think it just got attention here because that stuff was often constrained to notebooks and things and was jarring to “discover” on social media.
AI IN A BOX — This is just sort of a speculative theory. Some people suggest it is connected to other AI-related things on this iceberg(i.e. it is how the CAMIEO thing happened). The idea is that Artificial Intelligence is scary because it could slip into the internet and have access to basically every device and scrap of data on the planet — but what if you fenced it in? There’s no reason you couldn’t have a non-networked machine “house” the AI but lack any hardware allowing it to reach out into the broader world. This is often presented as the solution to concerns about AIs but A) we’ve all seen this movie and know where it goes, B) everyone who creates an AI instantly throws it on the internet anyway.
STEVE IRWIN FAKED HIS DEATH — There isn’t really much to this that you haven’t already guessed. It all comes from “here’s what I think happened” style posts on blogs and forums, which in and of themselves seem to be formulated around “there are slight discrepancies in stories” and “I just have a feeling”. The idea is that he faked his death so he could change careers. I’m pretty sure that very very few people take this one seriously.
FAYE KANE — 2000s-era internet “celebrity”. Faye was a homeless woman who spent a lot of time updating a blog online. What made her really stand out was that she had a significant fixation on sex acts and would write at length and in graphic detail about this, and seemed to even invite others to come enact these things with her. She was also very into physics and may or may not have been part of high level collegiate programs regarding this. She also seems to have later written a book about her experiences. She had a habit of appearing whenever any part of the internet was talking about her, further egging on people to fixate. There’s been conjecture that it was all some sort of ruse, and people have now and then appeared to pretend to be her on various sites. While her original site seems long gone, there’s probably scraps and snippets of her web presence all over the place. As far as I know, she hasn’t been active in a while. In all honesty, it’s a sad story about someone who seemed to need help but was instead turned into a sort of sideshow for the internet.
CHINA NEVER WENT COMMUNIST — I’m guessing this is less a reasoned “if you look at China, they clearly still operate in highly capitalist ways” take and more a “it was all a hoax to keep the Red Scare alive to ensure we had an ultimate end boss bad guy to allow for an expanding intelligence panopticon and military-industrial complex”. There is no shortage of people on the internet yelling about whether China is “really” Communist or not and I’m not going to read all that just to make this paragraph longer.
VANISHING LAKE, HAMPSHIRE — I found one story about people having seen a lake with an island, but then never being able to find it again. This is sourced off a random imageboard post, though. There are similar urban legends here and there in other places, and there are lots of “lakes” that tend to vanish at times due to weather/season. Sorry this one isn’t very spooky!
PYRAMIDS=ENCODED ARABIC TEXT — Genuinely don’t know! It sounds like something that wouldn’t be that weird, but I’ve got nothin, folks. Maybe the way they’re built is allegedly a secret code? Or the carvings inside have secret meanings? If you can think up some weird theory about pyramids, there’s people who believe it.
Tier eleven still having moon stuff is nice. I hope there’s moon stuff in all of them. Onward and upward, see you tomorrow!