What are /r/ARG's favorite Products & Services?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

http://aminoapps.com/c/LiAz776

Translated, via google, it reads:

Need to draw all the buses

Boyfriend, you come to the address Here you can draw all buses, for example, LiAZy: 5256.25, 5256.30, 5256.35, 5256.36, 5256.53, 5292.00, and others. If you joined, then welcome family

Mike Selinker (who has created more than his fair share of ARGish experiences, including Wired's Hunt for Evan Ratliff) wrote a book called Puzzlecraft: The Ultimate Guide on How to Construct Every Kind of Puzzle that is fairly thorough, and has a section that explicitly addresses ARGs.

For the try-before-you-buy perspective, here's a talk he gave at PAXDev on the subject.

No clue what the website is about, but it certainly feels off. Like other people have mentioned, there aren't any ads, and the spelling is horrible, but on the other hand, the lynks disease article is from April 2, and it's been going since before march, so if Alan was involved, this seems like far too much time to make the site seem like a bad news journal.

Adding to the discussion, the author pages are broken, and clicking on their links leads straight to the homepage, but going to the generic author page (healthsline/author rather than healthsline/author/author-name) takes you to a template. This template also has a list of the authors, and their post count, with one of the authors being "microwaze999" with no posts. microwaze999 is an uncommon username, with a google search returning only one email address, which has several accounts on random sites, with most related things being broken links. It is of note that this might be a red herring of sorts, as cleansite.org lists the email registered for everything as a spam account.

As a final bit of research, performing a whois lookup on the website, we can see it is hosted by NameCheap.com, and that the website was created in February.

So yeah, probably not an arg (unless OP made it, and is trying to get traction)

Let me show you something cool called RES: Reddit Enhancement Suite See /r/Enhancement

Among other cool things, RES will put a number in brackets after each link, making it very clear where the various links are.

It can also easily show the source of reddit comments, so you can hide stuff like this, and it should be hidden without some way of showing it.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^hidden?

There's an IRC at irc.freenode.net, #11B-X-1371-decryption for those wanting to seriously talk about the ciphers, and #11B-X-1371 for less serious stuff, those who want to chat about how spoopy it is. They had some really good materials collected, including an in depth timeline, but it looks like some of it may have been taken down for some reason. Here's a page with info about all the ciphers/puzzles found so far and their status.

You might try setting up a few Google Alerts. Then you'll get an email notification if an ARG gets mentioned in the news, on blogs, YouTube, and a few other places. Try 'alternate reality game', then tweak to fine tune your results. 'ARG' by itself, for example, will get you a notification every time someone posts about how bad their life sucks. 'New ARG' or 'is this an ARG?', or other phrases might work better.

I just found this all by watching Nexpo's video. I haven't seen many of them, but I love tugging at threads. I don't know what's going on with the Rebecca thing, or if that's definitely unrelated, but Piansi is Italian for, "crying," but also, if

REBECCA IS AN IP,

R-- E-- B-- E-- C-- C-- A--

18- 5-- 2-- 5-- 3-- 3-- 1--

there are only a few possibilities. One of which

18.52.53.31

https://ipinfo.io/18.52.53.31

leads to a random garage in Seattle.

47.6339,-122.3476

It's located on a dead-end street, which might be apt, but maybe it's a thing worth checking out.

If you just want to reverse video and audio, use this: https://ezgif.com/reverse-video

It's pretty fast and light, since you don't need to install anything.

But lightworks, as MrsButterfly said, is the full package if you want to start creating stuff.

update: for that link, if we assume the three letters after the . are .com, and the first part is https, we get P _ O T _ C T_ _ T _ _ T.com/201710006005018....

That looks a lot like protect _ _ t _ _.com

EDIT: https://www.protectedtext.com/20171006005018 We need a password

also, spoiler is down

Reviewing the comments of the recording of one of the ads that I uploaded to YouTube, someone pointed out that that store page for the app has been altered recently. The one for App Store looks normal; however, the Google Play Store one has been altered but the commentary on each image seems to ignore what's actually being shown.

Store Page: Evertale Google Play Store page

I have saved the images in case the store page changes.

I was thinking of putting together a multi-language "radio broadcast" for an ARG idea I've been kicking around.

Via sites like www.freesound.org, I was able to get solid minutes of shortwave squawks, static bits, etc.

Via "www.youtube-mp3.org", I was able to get recordings of national anthems.

The sticking point was: where do I get the voiceovers? I have no budget for talent, and I don't have any friends who are multilingual.

The solution presented itself rather quickly...

I installed a recording widget for chrome that records video and audio of a particular tab, and went to "www.acapela-group.com/"

The voices are not perfect, but I applied a few distortion filters to the VO- and that smoothed out most of the rough edges in the speech

Using this, I was able to put together a fifteen-minute "Number station" style broadcast, in about two hours, using a 30-day free trial of ableton live:

http://www.filedropper.com/radio_5

You can make entire news broadcasts using this method on a budget of zero dollars. The acapela site can read a paragraph at a time...

This is an old and very basic article but I've used it to successfully embed an image in a .wav file in a couple of puzzles I've made. The walkthru is easy to follow, even a plebian like me could do it!

I was on skribbl.io when a mysterious person drew a swastika and this link and instantly left. curiously I checked the link and found an image of a man pointing to light.. maybe its some sort of prank but seems weird.. if you cant read the link its mygot.win

You can pretty much use most video editing programs out there for that. I personally used the VideoPad Video Editor by NCH to look at an ARG video a while back since there's a free trial edition of it which had stuff like brightness and contrast adjustment and frame by frame skip built in.

Cool, I managed to decipher it (caeser cipher, using the 28 letter shift, and I found this: whoever see that light is soon made such that i would be impossible for him to set that light side for other sight;

​

because he good, the object of the wll, is fully gathered in that light; otside that light, what there is perfect i defective.

​

https://www.protectedtext.com/0RPX14BXTF

if some fellow dude could help me with decoding this poem sort of thing, then we might be able to crack it :D

So I'd been working on this basically all day last Saturday, but I'm right in the middle of exams and can't afford to spend any more time on it I'm afraid. Therefore:

After sending the first email, you get the reply /u/rkeppler42 described, as well as an audio file and a video called 'cam.wmv'. The 5th video gives a bit.ly link, which links to here. Using the tool on the video, as well as the key given in the email (146), gives the following message out:

Welcome dear follower. If you found this contact our email again with the following quote: "Knowledge is true opinion";

You are almost there.

On sending the desired email, I got the following response:

Hello dear follower. Henry Smith is dead. Time is over. Stay aware we will contact you very very soon. Get ready. Good luxo.

I went to bed and woke up the next day to the 6th (and so far final) video, which once again declared Henry was dead. I also received the following email:

We failed the mission. Henry Smith is dead. I must run away they will come for me.

01000001 01010011 01000110 01000100 01000111 01000001 01001000 01010011 01001010 01000100 01001011 00100000 01001101 01000010 01000001 01010011 01001000 01001010 01010000 00110010 00111001 00100000 00101101 00100000 00110101 00110101 00101110 00110011 00111000 00110011 00110111 00110000 00110100 00101100 00100000 00101101 00110010 00101110 00111000 00110111 00110001 00110001 00111001 00111001

The email also had another cam.wmv, which I have uploaded here. If nobody gets this in 2 weeks then I'll have the time to look at it again, otherwise best of luck and I'll keep an eye on it, since I'm very curious.

I like Visual Understanding Environment (VUE), free from Tufts Univeristy. It’s kind of a mind mapping program, but I find it less limiting than most I’ve tried. I’ve used it for plotting out D&D campaigns.

I found a padlet online with the connections between post so far. I can’t really look now because I’m on mobile but here’s the link if you are interested. https://padlet.com/lavenderlandes/welovegumby

Maybe this one, if you haven't tried it? I can't vouch for it and its reviews aren't great but it at least claims to support maxicode. This information might also help.

This is an underrated one.

It started out looking like a gamejack of 'Visit Eroda' but after a number of us researching it's older and way more nefarious. It's got webpages, youtube accounts, a ton of visual novels/stories and itch.io accounts all connected through an overarching theme that are tied in to the mythology of HP Lovecraft. There also looks to be a connection to infamous asian visual novel company Arcane City Game Studios, Horror Manga Legend Junji Ito, and maybe even..... Stephen King. Seeing Ito and King collaborating and messing with people wouldn't surprise me, honestly. King has went by a pseudonym before (bachman) and Ito enjoys terrifying people.

found their LinkedIn page. Based out of Nigeria ca 2009. Seems legit. They've got a Facebook too with what appears to be real people liking posts. Probably just a typo on the ARG site.

is registered to a company named Network Solutions, LLC. They have owned the domain since May 22, 1997. The contact for the business is Perfect Privacy, LLC out of Jacksonville FL. I found a PO Box, phone number, and email for them.

Wait a second, ante is also signed in the art on the site during July 6 2017, maybe it is still owned by PAIN.

I also did some digging on the website itself, and here's what I got:

The server is hosted off of a datacenter in Montreal, Canada owned by OHVHosting/OVHCloud.
The site was first registered on May 22 1997, was last updated on March 24 2022, and expires on May 23 2023.
The connection goes through a lot of IPs, their locations in order:

Amazon Datacenter in Ashburn, Virginia

Amazon Datacenter in Seattle, Washington

OHVHosting Datacenter in Montreal, Canada

It also mentions Perfect Privacy LLC on the site I'm using, which hides true IP's, someone likely went through a lot to keep this secretive.
At least that's what I gathered from this.

Just do what you'd normally do to protect yourself online.

If you're filming a video, film against a boring background or a greenscreen. Wear a mask and sunglasses or a box. Anything that protects your face.

If you're not filming an IRL video, then you don't have anything to fear. Get a free VPN (ProtonVPN works for me), make an ALT account, and just post whatever you want.

I'm testing something out right now. Using a pseudonym I've built an ARG and released it under a creative commons license. Using PGP and sites with timestamps I've basically signed and dated the work to show precedence and tie it to my pseudonym instead of my irl name just in case. If anyone can improve on this please chime in, I'm also interested.

Gee thanks. Impossible to have been from 2016 as the PewDiePie vs T-Series thing was just last year. B!tch Lasagna only came out this past year. Had fun deciphering this though:

Through the bitly link, you get the hastebin for a series of 'B's and 'T's. Substituting the 'B's for 'A's and 'T's for 'B's, you can use a bacon cipher to get this text: https://hastebin.com/afihucuvin

If you can figure it out, it is "Bitch Lasagna" by PewDiePie.

​

Thanks for this adventure lol.

If you need a free one for video editing, I find Kdenlive to be a very solid open source option - it can crash occasionally on Windows, so I'd recommend saving your progress often (good practice in general).

Maybe! There is another arg that was around in 2017 on scratch:

https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/171695079/

Its very good and has a good backstory and codes, etc

PS We've removed the requirement for entering your discord ID, so that you can register easily. But we do recommend you join our discord server at https://discord.com/invite/C5Y2CQ5 so that you get regular updates about the event, the levels and the hints.

this looks mildly interesting. I went onto the G+ of this redlum person and it says its gender is female.

I just emailed the youtuber this message to see if its a trailhead. It seems unlikely that the youtuber would put up one video and nothing else.

"Hey, i think i've seen a video like that before, do you have any more information on it?

Thanks, Zombsicle."

Also if you look on his Reddit page thingy (https://www.reddit.com/user/REDLUMYLLUCS) then all his posts are for that video. All but this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USPa-8ncUI8. What this means i have no idea but it may be relevant. Good luck all and i'll post again if i get an email back. :P

keywords:

digital marketing, social media, behavioral research & analysis, AI, artificial intelligence, machine learning, ARG

Author: Bertrand Zermelo (idk what author means but)

Font referenced in the site: https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Questrial

It's a wordpress site

That photo of "Joseph Stevens" was definitely made by this AI program: https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/

I don't know what to think about this website. Since I can't really find anything else strange about it, I'd rather just chalk it up to the work of some very dedicated shitposter.

hey there! Rule 1 states that posts about the same ARG/project must be 24 hours apart. It's only been 15 hours since the first post so please use that one for further discussion. It keeps all the info in one place for anyone who might be hopping in late or interested.

That said, the first paragraph is definitely able to be translated, so its not a matter of being able to read it but copying it and plugging it into a translator honestly lol. I used this one

>!When the Moon appears in an hour without light, the souls of the recently weak can show a new world to god, that it was nothing and now is all. Flesh and saw all the needs of life and the living of wine, for it will turn the darkness before ever returns.!<

Good luck! :)

Pen and Paper work forsure and are always reliable lol. I don't like handwriting DETAILED notes, but quick things to move to the computer and build on later. The easiest, most usable thing on the computer imo would be Google Docs. Formatting is easy, i love utilizing headings and the document outline rather than a clunky table of contents. and its free... so usually the first I suggest.

i use the notepad app a lot lmao just for jotting down quick things as i think of them, then move them to their proper spot later.

Depending on how you want to plan, I've been suggested Miro. I haven't messed with it much and free options are limited but it could be an option.

I've also been playing around with Campfire, but it's more for worldbuilding, i think? But it's really nice to have everything in the same place during the creative process. Again, free version is limited (though I'm not sure how much) but you can buy modules or extensions or extra slots for things for like... $1. Really neat, i like it and I'm not even creating LOL.

More info:

Replies to Comments.:

Scr4chcAaT has replied to two comments. The first one is from me. I asked the: "question Is This an ARG?" and he replied:

@b222006 EY E&*TN^&etndm6ETD^*QWndt^rg*h%&t^&^A&RQE&BErbb%wR@*NW6NT@^ @t6w%^@*w%@*^@*&^@*&n@^^&tn&^tns67STJ6sTS76ST7St@%nts7w^G267S2tST67@(t&&RT6R9d&9db)

The second comment is from A user named Cash 737 who said "I don't speak Minecraft enchanting table" Scr4chcAaT replied with this:

u/Cash737 lN^TVH JINGGF*ejJY4HW4y*h&$k%u6W4h(%UMR%j%h73U0

I triple-checked from the beginning to see if I didn't miss anything. Redundantly so. Wrote it all down, for cross-referencing. No email address.

https://www.scribd.com/doc/299132848/Log
Gut feeling says that we wait the twitter y/n poll out.
I wonder what happens to the cheeky bugger that clicks no?

https://www.tiktok.com/@baybeehoe/video/6790184122234047749

I believe in this video shes attempting morse code with her eyes, 3 short blinks, followed by 3 long blinks, and then 3 more short blinks. This would spell out SOS

Here is an example that is kind of a mix. I have been using an MIT app called Scratch to make games and things for over 8 years. This is a project that lets you encode or decode a text message based on a keyword. It is a variation of the most basic cryptology, a substitution cipher. Like numbering all the letters 1-26 then shifting the numbers over and re-writing the text. What my project does is keep shifting the numbers based on a keyword entered by the person encoding the plain text. That way the result doesn't have a visually discernible pattern as was used to break the broken Zodiac Killer's message, I know from having worked on a decrypting project, however, that the pattern still exists, we just can no longer see it. For us, we must have that keyword to decrypt the message. A smart program, however, can run a brute force method and eventually guess the pass by knowing that.. 1. the keyword has so many digits 2. each digit only has so many possibilities based on a 26 letter alphabet (+ symbols and numbers)

https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1709781/

Just in case you're still curious (and didn't already figure this out) if you go to the comments he talks about in that video you find this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuF0_rg_Xfc&amp;feature=youtu.be

Which leads to this strawpoll:

https://www.strawpoll.me/13954382

Here is the original. https://www.pexels.com/photo/brown-valley-during-a-grey-cloudy-sky-63553/

When you compare the two, there are some slight difference but not sure if there is a pattern to be found.

https://online-image-comparison.com/result

If you chabge the letters of the name from the last video you get backwards so I reversed it but i can't hear what, the what i think is a woman, says at the end

&#x200B;

https://ezgif.com/video-to-webp/ezgif-2-5a07cb569032.mp4

I also put the video backwards on a website and this is what I obtained :

https://www.kapwing.com/videos/5dbe9e1f5477130014b43377

Unhappily I don't speak english very well, so I can't catch what is it said in this video.

I checked the followers of this account and found 2 accounts that ARE related!

The First Account Link: https://www.tiktok.com/@watchinghimforever

I can't seem to find a link to the other account but the @ is @ imwatchinghimnow

UPDATE:
Eli made a new post. he is in vacation right now i guess?
https://www.tiktok.com/@elirsteves/video/6725961116356332805?langCountry=en

Honestly, if I were you buddy. I'd just walk the hell away from it. It's not an ARG. It's something made to look like an ARG, and right now while you're not on their radar it's a good time to forget you ever saw it. Trust your intuition. "Non est dignus". Speaking from experience here . http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Law_of_series

Reverse DNS lookup gives an email address and phone number when they registered the site. HTML and CSS and Javascript appear clean and barebones. It is registered to a PO box in Minnesota, US. Hosted through 1and1.com so not out of their house or anything.

Ah. The above was a stream of consciousness. Link to DNS lookup produced a phone number (not posting so I don't get banned by Reddit for doxxing) and googling that phone number led me to TCTreasureHunt's page on Facebook. They are an ARG company, looks like, so it appears to be a legitimate ARG.

The binary string (the 01101101_... part) can be converted to: mr. wimh

(you can use a "binary to text converter" to do that, google it)

After conversion you end up with the following link

https://bayfiles.com/taFbQ0o0u5/mr. wimh_mp4

But that does not work ... I have tried many variations and none of them worked so far.

Just thought I'd share some progress on this one. The numbers are actually ASCII codes leading to this link https://bayfiles.com/taFbQ0o0u5/

followed by a binary string: 01101101_01110010_00101110_00100000_01110111_01101001_01101101_01101000

and this suffix: _mp4

when converted to text the binary part with suffix added is: mr. wimh_mp4

However, I can't figure out a link that actually works from that so I'll keep searching.

Just received an email reply from projectinverted. The code work was ¨the juice¨.

Email:

> Hello dear follower. Henry Smith is in danger. Be fast. Your key is: 146 Good Luck!

- Two files were attached to the email: https://filetransfer.io/data-package/d4QFtREN

I'd like to help you, but I've never made a proper ARG before. I made a really short one with a friend a little while ago thou.

If you want to try it, here's all you'll need.

b??????|???? x ???

https://__________.weebly.com/

WWpOS01HTXlaSEJrYldSdFlWY3dQUT09

&#x200B;

Idk, I posted it on here, but no one's responded to it.

&#x200B;

&#x200B;

I havent seen an ARG creation specific tutorial or testimonial, but there are plenty for regular video games (indie games especially), and they mostly work the same in regards to the non-technical aspects (organizing work, vision, tests, etc).

If you work in a team, you could look into the numerous project management tools available. Many development companies (at least in europe) use Jira which is free for up to 10 users ( https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/ ). It might be overkill for a single person project, but if the project is large enough then I think it could still be worth looking into.

For organizing the game/story itself I suggest you make a story board or something similar.

> How did you get the first step of your ARG out into the world?

In the world of video games, launch and promotion is easily half the battle. A good launch can save a bad game, and a bad launch can ruin a good game and prevent it from taking off. Most creators love creating the game/story, and dislike planning and figuring out the promotion, thus this part of making an ARG is almost always overlooked or ignored. There are no silver bullets here, because if there was, someone would have figured it out by now and everyone would do it. If you waited 5 years to do your ARG, include at least a couple of months figuring out the promotion before you launch. Dont let good work go to waste.

Pshhh, as a mature, 30 something potential creator who will someday BLOW ALL YOUR MINDS, I can say that this very important step was forgotten. You order this from Amazon and let it sit in your closet for like a year:

https://www.amazon.com/Tinksky-Halloween-Costumes-Painting-Masquerade/dp/B074V59K12/ref=sr_1_18_sspa?keywords=spooky+blank+masks&amp;qid=1567975952&amp;s=gateway&amp;sr=8-18-spons&amp;psc=1&amp;spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUExRVoxT0hXSTcwSE1RJmVuY3J5cHRlZElkPUEwNTUzMjcyM000V1JJN1JPSU5CVCZlbmNyeXB0ZWRBZElkPUEwOTgxNjc3MldEMFM3TzVHRldYViZ3aWRnZXROYW1lPXNwX210ZiZhY3Rpb249Y2xpY2tSZWRpcmVjdCZkb05vdExvZ0NsaWNrPXRydWU=

The numbers structured like that are IP addresses. In actuality, IP addresses can have one-to-three digits in each section examples being: 162.12.3.142, 1.1.1.1, 1.12.123.123, etc. Although, they must have some value in it, so there can't just be a zero in a section.

You can type these into your URL to connect to them, but it's suggested to use a VPN when connecting to weird sites like that. A good, free one is ProtonVPN. You'll probably need to explore these sites in order to progress in the ARG.

Sorta related: they also have an uber-secure, free email service called ProtonMail based in Switzerland if you're into that kinda thing.

https://www.amazon.com/BalancePoint-Mealplan-Cookbook-science-based-inflammation/dp/1499645198
Here is the book I think

I don't think a woman wrote this, or at least not one old enough to be a mother did. Journaling, like bujos and things of those nature, are really big right now. A woman who took the time to buy nice/custom notepads wouldn't use old/dried out felt sharpie pens on it. Plus it say's "Mother Loves You" and not "Your Mother" or anything else that would imply that this is actually your mom. Also, here is the earring.

With the found-footage genre you have a lot of freedom to create with limited resources.

You get a lot of wiggle room with exposure, framing, shakiness, and (mostly) sound. You don't have to follow rules/standards of cinematic film, considering it's made to look and sound like someone just picked up a camera and hit record. You just need to know you should write things you know you can make, so that no wild post-production or high-budget set design will be needed.

But for the most part, all you need is a camera. A camera-mounted shotgun mic could do your sound nicely, but even that isn't essential for found-footage.

Your house/neighborhood setting shows you're not being overambitious, which is great.

Also, side note, I have had this extremely similar idea that seems to align exactly with what you're going for, both thematically and stylistically. I'm a film student in South Florida and I'm most likely going to write a draft in the coming weeks for this "found-footage web series figuring out an ARG with your life on the line" idea for my screenwriting class.

I'm interested in hearing more about what you're trying to do, would you like to PM?

Seems like the website for a musical artist called 185668232. Here's the bandcamp and an Amazon.com album link.

Seems like just a weirdo tbh.

In the first video, she laid "Alan" on top of a book by T.C. Boyle, The Tortilla Curtain, which I think is relevant, too. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0023SDQDK/ref=oh_aui_d_detailpage_o00_?ie=UTF8&amp;psc=1

Aside from the document directly linked here, the same user has uploaded a separate document. It includes images posted by -Omega-and-Alpha in other topics here and on other subreddits, but at the end includes a multi-page excerpt from a contemporary Russian novel called Sense: https://www.amazon.com/Sense-Russian-Writing-Arslan-Khasavov/dp/5717200935 . I'll let others discern meaning from it through their own intuition, but I thought it was pretty interesting in the context of what we know so far.