I watch a lot of YouTube. In fact it’s essentially replaced TV for me at this point. I think that might be the case for a lot of people, though.
During one particularly boring night, I was surfing through my subscriptions, but couldn't really find anything interesting to watch.
That's when I decided to check out the 'trending' page.
Now, I didn't really expect anything much out of it. I assumed that there would be some Jimmy Fallon, Buzzfeed... that kinda stuff. Not really my cup of tea, in all honesty.
However... I did end up finding something rather intriguing.
About ten videos down, there was a thumbnail that grabbed my attention. It was a black symbol over a plain white background, and was 1: 55 in length. The symbol itself was really intricate and hard to describe, so I won't even attempt it. All I know is that I'd never recognized it before. The title was even more interesting. It was in Russian and translated to: "A signal - Attempt 34". The channel name was just a mess of letters and numbers. No video description either.
But here's where shit started getting really weird. The video itself had no views. Well, to put it more accurately, it didn't actually have a view counter. It was just empty space where it should've indicated how many views it had.
Obviously, this made me immensely curious. So I clicked on it. I jumped as soon as the video loaded up. It really wasn't anything too disturbing, just rather unexpected. There was a "man" standing in an empty white room, wearing what looked to be some kind of green-ish, futuristic-looking space suit.
I put "man" in quotations because while it did closely resemble a human, there were also a lot of things that simply weren't right about him. First of all, his eyes were too big. They were brown and oval-shaped, just like a regular person’s could be, but they took up too much damn room on his face. Second of all, he was pale. Way too pale. In fact, his skin was essentially translucent.
The words coming out of his mouth were also rather peculiar. It sounded like Russian, but very broken. Now, I’m not a native speaker, but I’ve heard enough of it to comprehend that this guy wasn’t either. I made an attempt to try and take down what he was saying in order to translate it later, but there was no way in hell that I was going to be able to. His words were simply too fast and too unclear. Eventually, I just clicked off of it. It must have been some kind of weird glitch, I thought. It was probably just some obscure Russian show that leaked onto YouTube somehow. In any case, I didn’t really think about it too much.
That was until the next week.
After work, I hopped on YouTube again and started doing my routine browsing. I watched the videos in my subscription box before going back onto the trending section. However... The strange video was still there. Well, not the exact same video, but it had the same thumbnail. The title was now different. It was in Chinese this time. I translated it and it came out to “A signal – Attempt 35”.
This was officially getting weird. Again, there was no video description, and no view count. I watched the video through, which was only about 1:43 long this time, but it was just the same guy talking in the same tone, this time in broken sounding Chinese.
I called my friend, who actually speaks Chinese, and told him to go watch the video. About an hour later, he messages me back, saying that there isn’t any video in the trending section that matched my description. I was a bit shocked by this, but still wanted to figure out what was going on, so I downloaded the video and sent it to him.
The next day, I turned on my phone to a bombardment of angry texts from my friend. Apparently, when he downloaded the attachment I’d sent to him, his computer crashed instantly and wouldn’t turn back on for hours. When it finally did, the colors and text on his desktop and applications were now distorted. There were also these obscure-looking symbols now spliced in between random words on his internet pages and in his directories. However, none of his credit cards had been accessed, so he eventually just accepted it when I tried to explain that I genuinely did not know what was going on.
I was floored at this point. I stopped watching YouTube completely for about two weeks. However, the curiosity kept gnawing away at me. I needed to know what the fuck this was supposed to be. I went back to the trending section and started scrolling again. This time, I found a video about 25 down.
This one's title was in Spanish, and translated to “Aftermath – 31.559, 35.472”. The thumbnail looked like the sky… expect it was dark purple, and there were large, black cylindrical objects blocking out the stars. It was also around five minutes long. With all expectations out the window, I clicked on it.
The video began with what appeared to be a reporter on a rooftop, with astronomically tall, decimated buildings in the background. He had the same facial anomalies as the man in the spacesuit. Also, the language that he was speaking was completely unfamiliar to me. It wasn’t just a broken human language, it was something else entirely. He was pointing to the cylindrical things in the sky, looking absolutely distraught. The camera panned towards them, and I could begin to make out things falling from the objects. They were too distant to make out the details, but I could tell that they were flailing wildly on the way down. They were alive, for sure. There was also some sort of extremely loud humming in the distance, presumably sourced from the sky.
The reporter turned back to the camera and started shouting. He abruptly ran out of the frame and what appeared to be a soldier took his place. The guy looked extremely large, and was wearing some kind of robotic militarized suit. He pointed at the objects in the sky and began to bark out what I assumed were some kind of orders. The video ended right there.
Obviously, I had no idea what to think. I mean, what the hell was I supposed to make of this? I started searching the internet for answers, but of course there was nothing. I asked everybody I knew if they were seeing these videos in the trending section, but none of them did.
The next day, I went back and searched. Just like I expected, I found another one of those anomalous videos. This time, the thumbnail was back to the logo that I’d seen the first two times. However, this time the title was actually in English, reading: “A signal – Attempt 36. You have to watch fully.”
What the fuck?, I thought. Why was it different this time? Not just a regular signal, but one that I had to watch?
The video started off with the same man in the spacesuit from the first two, but this time, there was also a large machine in the room with him. It looked absolutely alien to me, and I couldn’t even begin to fathom what it could’ve been used for. The man seemed to be staring at the camera… almost as if he were looking through it… at me. He eventually stepped backwards and started speaking, in broken English now. This is roughly what it came out to:
“You are watching? Do not turn off, okay? This is important.”
He moved back towards the machine, before turning around and typing something on a control panel. I couldn’t make out what it was, so I decided to inspect the machine some more instead. There was a monitor near the top of the thing, displaying some numbers in green text. It only took me a few moments to realize what I was looking at.
It was my IP address
Following this revelation, the man turned around to face me again and smiled, before saying:
“You will be helping. Thank you.”
I didn’t like the way that he said it one bit. That isn’t even to mention his smile. It wasn’t genuine. There was some kind of façade behind it. Some subtle facial movements that told me this “help” I was giving him was going to cost something.
I clicked off the video immediately following that. I started stewing on what I had been seeing. I didn’t go on YouTube during that time. There was something about all this that I just couldn’t understand. I mean, strange looking men in space suits who somehow had my IP address typing things into a weird machine and footage of what appeared to be an apocalyptic event happening on another planet? I didn't even know if they were connected or not, but I really had no desire to find out.
However… I decided to go back to the trending section one more time. I wasn’t planning on actually watching the videos, though. I just wanted to see if they were still there.
And as it turns out, they were. This time, the thumbnail wasn’t the logo. Instead, it was the quarantine symbol. The one they use in every zombie apocalypse movie. The title was in English again, reading: “Please watch all way through this time. Very necessary. Danger coming.”
I didn’t watch it. I saw some more of these pop up intermittently after that, but I just ignored them all. Eventually, they stopped showing up completely.
It’s been about four months since I last saw those videos. But as far as I’m concerned, nothing strange has happened, so I think that we’re in the clear.
Hopefully.
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