flimgeeks.com

#LostARG – The Best ARG That Never Was

How Twitter created and killed the greatest game ever.

PROLOGUE:

The story really begins with Terminator:Salvation. I know, even less to do with Lost, and yet the root of the entire scenario (for me). Twitter in and of itself is still pretty new in the grand scheme of things, and I’m an old-timer (as it were) as I predate the huge TwitterBoom of Oprah and AplusK. I heard of a new interactive trivia game that was based on the new Terminator movie and I was ecstatic that my geekness could finally be utilized in the new medium of microblogging. Thousands of people trying to figure out the brain-teasing puzzles, each competing for a higher score in the hopes of some unlikely teaser, downloadable content, or even a nod from Future John Connor himself (not Bale or Dekker, the *real* John Connor because in *fantasy* all bets are off).

This was not the case. Nothing seemed more egregious to me than the very face of the human resistance being a twitterbot. No interaction, no head-scratching mysteries; nothing but completely mindless tripe. I don’t want to use the word trivia, as it was beyond stupid, it was borderline insulting. “Decode RONNOC, and make sure you phrase it exactly as the bot will not understand “CONNOR” without the exact formatting and hashtag in the right order. More fun after a complete frontal lobotomy. The only goal, and this seems common to most movie-marketing tie-ins, is the scoreboard with as much real value as the one used on “Whose Line is it Anyway?”. Even worse, they would *take away* points at random intervals with no explanation other than ‘you’ve been harvested’ with no way to avoid, or make those points back up. Bottom Line: Dumb, very dumb.

This brings us to the season finale of #Lost. I regularly check my Twitter minions (I loathe the term follower) and did so as usual just after the Lost finale. After all my incessant ramblings about Egyptian Myth and my ecstatic return of the ‘mystery’ in the show after months of theoretical quantum physics, I was in a particular frame of mind when I noticed a new minion with an interesting avatar, The Eye of Horus, and the name ‘SimeonHobbes‘. He did not message or @reply me, he simply followed and I followed in return.

ACT 1:

Shortly thereafter was the cryptic mesage ‘Follow the Phoenix’ which I didn’t think too much of, until DEBauslaugh was credited with ‘Phoenix found’ and the rumblings of a new Lost-based ARG began. I use the term ‘Twitterpanic’ often enough, and by which I mean the avalanche of RT’s and msgs and pleas for help to support a cause that gets passed from person to person, without anyone really checking facts before passing it on. It can be bad, like the apparent fiasco of a webdesigner sued for stealing his own work (I myself was just as guilty in that situation… lesson learned) but it can also be an instantaneous revolution, like #Amazonfail or in this case, the rise of #LostARG.

Clues would lead to more clues, cryptic messages, and quickly bouncing from an online latin-english translator to one deciphering Morse code. New clues lead to new accounts with avatar ciphers and riddles within riddles from Bible verse, to complex math, to (my particular interest) ancient egyptian and greek mythology. Suddenly the simple story of a missing brother (assumedly to Dharma, Widmore, or something Lost related) quickly snowballed into uncharted territory of Old Gods, Great Philosophers and Mathematicians, and the spread of some key words… Lies, Heretics, and Falsehoods.

My Tweetdeck had a new permanent column, #LostARG. I would check it incessantly, looking for more clues, answering riddles and sharing information with others to unravel the mystery. I was hooked. Even a couple hours away from my computer was agony as I knew that *something* was always going to happen. Twitter is very much about the *NOW* and not being a part of that zeitgeist during a revelation was deterring even the grasps of sleep. The office whiteboard was full of notes like “Epithet Alpa=First God”, and “PANTHEON *is* the Gods” as my Evernote booklet was catching notes from the multiple places I happened to think of random theories.

ACT 2:

As the ‘main’ character’s account was ‘hacked’ by one known only as ‘Aidoneus‘, this lead to FleurDeNoire, the usually errant and eclectic EsauSolon, and a new series of game-changing clues. As far as I know, she did what nobody else did before (to my knowledge)… she communicated directly. TandyQ told his side of a cryptic conversation with Menhit (FleurdeNoire), after my brief conversation with her seemed to fail/lead nowhere. Prodding each of these new accounts with guesses and translations finally warranted a response from Hotth.

FG: I once knew an Ibis who worked with a Jackal. The trio was not complete.
(meaning Thoth & Anubis)

H: Whatever side you pick, the outcome does not change.

FG: I do not wish to change the outcome, I only hope for progress.
(reflecting Jacob’s words in S5 finale)

H: Your words will not go unnoticed in the grains of Time.

FG: Are you, in fact, the Ibis, the mind, the recorder? Do you judge?

H: I am the Recorder. Judgment has already been passed.

FG: Judgment for whom?

H: All Judgment has been passed, and will be passed again.

FG: Are you affiliated with she who calls herself Menhit?

H: You are to be Entrusted - you will be contacted by another Follower.

And then very quickly I got a DM from TandyQ with the link and password to the ‘debunked‘ site for the ‘prophets‘ and a similar story of passing a test and being rewarded with a secret.

There is nothing in the universe more powerful than a kept secret, I thought.

Suddenly I was “Entrusted” and the entire game seemed to stretch out before me, and I felt enlightened. A moment of clarity empowered by a shared secret opened everything up. What I gleamed of the ‘rules’ was suddenly mirrored by the revelation of the ‘blueprint’ from Menhit in collusion with Thoth.

This is what I deciphered from the map/blueprint :

• There are 2 sides, Faith & Science (Man of faith, man of science – Lost)
• Hobbes was the beginning, but Alpha is the true gateway to both factions
• EpithetAlpha=First God, or conversely Pi Theta Alpha leading to math & science

If we follow the lines, as in pyramidal blueprints, it takes you along the path I took:
Mystery is revealed through Thoth (the historian) and then unto Jacob. The truth is disclosed to ’27 chosen’ recruited by Fleur (assuming she made the blueprint) and the ‘king‘ (chess piece) would evaluate the subjects. Troubled times are coming and beware the heretics and ‘wholves‘.

I could only assume that had I chosen the science or math ‘Choose your own Adventure‘, I would have been trying to decipher a different ‘blueprint’ as it seemed some others were. I began to jot down some names of the new accounts and move them from side to side based on compare/contrast or spoken affiliation. The two sides were clear. Those that followed the Old Gods created new accounts to emulate them with medieval avatars and anagrams usernames representing old egyptian gods. While the other side had classical philosopher inspired handles with math/science related photos. There were no ‘fake’ accounts, these were the players and this was the game. Filtering out the noise to discern the Truth and find the Way. The lines were drawn in the sand, and as this became clear the messages became ominous as both sides seemed ready for war.

ACT 3

I still had to follow and solve clues like everyone else, but suddenly it became Us vs Them to figure it out first as I waited with bated breath for the next clue to pop-up as I continued in my new role. I knew there were 5 (maybe 6) fellow ‘Entrusted‘ with part of the key behind the great and secret show, that there are no *fake* accounts. That each and every clue *and also every red herring* was part of the game. I could not tell my secret, but I could help others along the way I got ahead. I, like others, began spreading cryptic messages back and forth denouncing the other side. That the way of the Old Gods was true, and the path to Jacob… while ElliottGraves was a liar, that anything coming from that account would be immediately acted upon in the opposite manner. That the science crew were the heretics, and they would dissuade the unblessed from the truth. I could not ‘judge’, I could only pass along to TheEntrusted, who represented us all in a way, as a helper, one who would also ENGAGE and help the lambs along their way. Anytime someone would express frustration at the game, become completely confounded, or just ‘stuck’ in general, we would intervene, and try and lead them towards our camp. We had no direct information, but vague half truths wrapped in enigmas are always the best kind. I would shepherd them through ‘following‘ each other so I could DM in secret, and pass them along to TheEntrusted, who would basically just reiterate the most important clue at the time, and imply that the way of the Old Gods was the way to Jacob. Something people can immediately grasp, and now they belonged, they were on our path, and the power of the shared secret increased as #LostARG began to grow silent as each side had conscripted others into their own dark conspiracy.

ACT 4

JennyBalloon, a new ‘character’ comes along, and denounces the entire game in & of itself. “We’re college kids, it’s all fake, it’s not official”, and so on. I looked at the feed for this person ‘HenryGale‘ (the most dubious name in all of Lost) which included a snippet of convo to Charles [Widmore] and Levi (as mentioned in ElliottGraves ‘memo’ blog post) involving Widmore Labs and saw a brilliant plot twist, that this, much like the faked crashsite of Oceanic Flight 815 in the Sunda Trench was a giant red herring dangled out to weed out the non-believers. As the flames of ‘It’s officially fake’ from streams of people reading that one and only tweet began to spread, it was ‘confirmed’ by Lostpedia and DarkUFO… the only two sources for Lost information in the universe apparently, and I mean no disrespect to either as I am huge fans, they no doubt simply wanted to curb the tsunami of “Is it real or not” emails and messages they were bombarded with.

Genius I thought. ‘They‘ had spoken of a test of faith, of troubled times and the end of the need for codes.

This was it. All the non-believers, the occasional lurkers, the trolls and naysayers would be gone. There would be no more #LostARG, it would evolve beyond it to the secret war behind closed doors. TandyQ, myself FLIMgeeks and other aliases of Entrusted began to say goodbye to the Twitter search channel to return our ‘regular’ Twitter streams back to their ‘normal’ capacity, and the game would move to these new characters we so carefully introduced, as it seemed all the major players had. DM’s, cryptic @replies and coded videos and ciphers would be the new means of communication. Anyone smart and dedicated enough to want to know, could learn and be involved in the great mystery, while inherently weeding out those who truly didn’t believe in either camp.

ACT 5

I’ve seen this before. In fact, many times. I remember the summer before BlairWitch came out, when a fantastic site laid out the entire rich history and backstory of this haunted li’l burg. I saw the movie opening weekend, and armed with the prologue I was given and the 1st person camera pulling me into the flick, I was ecstatic with even the vaguest suspension of disbelief. Then the press found out it was ‘fake‘. Of course it’s fake. It’s a fucking movie. Even the slimmest ‘what if?’ possibility was shattered as everyone came out of the woodwork to let everyone know ‘the truth’. They would go out of their way to remind you how fake it was, and exactly why it wasn’t real.

David_Lynch never wanted to reveal the killer in my favourite show Twin Peaks. The question “Who killed Laura Palmer” was intended as only the gateway to this town, where it turns out Noone is Innocent. What we learned is that the general populace hates that. They want, “Who Killed Laura Palmer” to be quickly followed by “The Butler”. It doesn’t matter how, or why, or where… just the simple answer to the question so they can move on to whatever holds their attention for the next 5mins. Myself and others really got beyond this and dug deeper, and came up with theories about Dopplegangers, Lodges and Dugpas, and the importance of Tibet. Through constant discussion from the people that knew the show best, we refined theories and soundboarded ideas, organized co-ordinated viewings of the show and created a richer history and profundity than the show’s creators could have possibly imagined. Volumes of work remain from my Twin Peaks obsession.

So now #LostARG is as dead as Jacob in the season finale. Killed by interlopers, naysayers and evildoers in false guises after the prophets were warned of a test of faith. Is this just part of the game and truly killing the ‘mainstream’ ARG? If so, then the proverbial hat is off to Hotth and Fleurdenoire as the misdirection they threw into the game was absolute genius, and to me, much more interesting than some missing brother (at the time, the story had not yet unfolded)..

I knew it was too good to be official. Between licensing, marketing and lawyer wages somewhere along the line, anything ‘official’ tends to end up like Resistance2018. Lame and pointless for the general populace, and dumbed down for the Lowest Common Denominator… Wheel of Fortune before Jeopardy so people feel smrt. The power lies in the fans, those who live and breathe the source material. Those wacky crackpot theories that fit better than anything ‘canon’ but could never possibly be true (but are not necessarily *NotTrue*).

What is canon, anyway? If the game is based on the same ideas, and source material as the creators of the show used, why is it less valid? I fear that what could have been months of intriguing puzzle-solving and mindgames has been sacrificed by those simply looking for a simple answer to an incredibly complex question; that they would ruin everything so that nobody could enjoy it since they would not be rewarded with some blatantly obscure Easter egg.

END?:

And now I look at my Twitter stream, reading about whatever happens to be trending for that 5mins, or what any number of people had for supper, and I sigh at missed opportunities. Each time I check my direct messages, there is that split second apnea in anticipation of that DM from Menhit or Thoth telling me my faith & patience have been rewarded.

Note: If it truly is over, then please Thoth and/or Menhit, please contact me so I can follow you into whatever evil genius schemes you can think of next. Kudos. Seriously.

Update 05.21.09: Today, I got that message I was waiting for. :)

“The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist. And like that, poof. He’s gone.” — Keyser Soze

Anything Else, Articles, Crackpot Theories