Is This Super Creepy Video Just A Marketing Campaign?

 

marekting campaign national security threat viral video
Screengrab from YouTube.


The Internet has a treasure trove of bizarre content. There’s the Texas Department of Criminal Justice’s website devoted to the final statements of inmates before their executions. Over here is a point-and-click adventure game in a dilapidated insane asylum promoted as “an online experiment.” Right this way is the Deep Web. And every fourth click contains scores of videos meant to shock, terrify, disgust, and disturb (preceding links obviously contain NSFW content). Recently, however, an intriguing and creepy video has been making the rounds and raising an imperative question: is it some portion of a bizarre marketing campaign or is it an actual veiled threat? You can watch the video below.

Internet denizens have been trying to decipher this video for the past couple of weeks after a Swedish tech blog, GadgetZZ, published a post about the video after receiving it in the mail. The firestorm of speculation and investigation have turned up five important details about the video that may help determine what the purpose of this two-minute bizarro film.

1. The video was filmed in an abandoned Polish asylum.

Redditor dlbdlb has determined that the video was shot in an abandoned asylum in Otwock, Poland named Zofiowka. He posted a link to a color photo of the location. Zofiowka was used for the care of Jewish psychiatric patients. During the Nazi occupation of Poland, Zofiowka was the scene of some terrible tragedies.

It is worth noting that the video is sometimes referred to by a code GadgetZZ noted from the DVD’s menu — “11B-X-1371.” This is symbolic because, in 1371 A.D., the Black Death was running rampant in Europe, a disease that societies around the continent sometimes blamed on the Jews. This makes the subject’s plague doctor costume even more interesting.

2. The video was first posted back in May 2015.

As many people in the video’s comment section have pointed out, the video was initially posted to YouTube five months ago by a user named AETBX. The assumption would be that AETBX created the video, but the user claims this was not the case. AETBX has stated that girl he knows found a disc “in a park outside Spain” then sent him the file online.

3. The plague imagery may be explained by one of the hidden codes scattered through the video.

A single frame from the video was isolated by a Redditor that others have decoded. The decoded message is alleged to say:

“Soon comes the fall. Another great empire. The fall. The eagle = on the horizon. Join us. The eagle = infected will spread his disease. We are the antivirus will protect the world body.”

Other messages are still being figured out. A complete time stamp of the messages has been compiled on imgur.

4. If the video is part of a marketing campaign, no one can figure out what is being promoted.

Many who have taken the time to find the meaning of the video have attempted to justify the marketing campaign angle. Perhaps it’s a viral video tie-in to the upcoming film version of Dan Brown’s book, Inferno, as some have suggested? Perhaps it’s a promo for a new Aphex Twin album, as I have just speculated at this moment? There’s really no confirmation as to what, if any, marketing campaign this video could be for, but there does appear to be some evidence that supports the Dan Brown theory.

From The Daily Dot:

“In the book, a death-obsessed genius sends a video while wearing a similar outfit to the man in the clip and preaches the benefits of creating a new plague to reduce the human population. The movie is slated to arrive next year.”

The marketing campaign hook seems legit, however…

5. Disturbingly, the video contains map coordinates for the White House and a possible encoded threat.

In another quick frame that was also isolated by Reddit users, the GPS coordinates of the White House can be found along with a couple of veiled, but chilling statements:

“Strike an arrow through the heart of the eagle”

And the nonsensical:

“REDLIPSLIFETENTH.”

Since “REDLIPSLIFETENTH” makes absolutely no sense at all, there have been attempts to determine whether the phrase is actually an anagram. Placing the letters in a different order reveals the phrase KILLTHEPRESIDENT,” making the GPS coordinates that much more disturbing.

Whatever the purpose of the video may be — a complicated, bizarre piece of a marketing campaign or a legitimate threat to the United States — this video is far and away the weirdest thing I’ve seen on the Internet since SadSatan was a thing a few months ago.

And if you watch that video, good luck sleeping tonight, guys.


 

Robert could go on about how he was raised by honey badgers in the Texas Hill Country, or how he was elected to the Texas state legislature as a 19-year-old wunderkind, or how he won 219 consecutive games of Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots against Hugh Grant, but those would be lies. However, Robert does hail from Lewisville, Texas, having been transplanted from Fort Worth at a young age. Robert is a college student and focuses his studies on philosophical dilemmas involving morality, which he feels makes him very qualified to write about politicians. Reading the Bible turned Robert into an atheist, a combative disposition toward greed turned him into a humanist, and the fact he has not lost a game of Madden football in over a decade means you can call him "Zeus." If you would like to be his friend, you can send him a Facebook request or follow his ramblings on Twitter. For additional content that may not make it to Liberal America, Robert's internet tavern, The Zephyr Lounge, is always open