Channel: Atrocity Guide

Category: Entertainment

Tags: unfictionbizarrehorroralternate reality gamealfa-tsentratrocity guideinternet rabbit hole4chanthe sisterhoodjunko junsuiweirdmysteryrussiaargcrazyinternet mysteryalfa-arkivcreepy

Description: Join me for a look into one of the Internet's most controversial alternate reality game: Junko Junsui. A note from Patrick, co-creator of the Junko Junsui ARG: "Thank you for making this wonderful video about our experience, Atrocity Guide! I am impressed by some of the old material you collected that I have not seen in years. Just wanted to correct a few factual errors — (1) our team NEVER gave out anybody's personal information save referring to some forum members by their real first and last names (which was readily discernible via their social media). It was rabid fans on 4Chan who decided to do things like actual doxxing or DDoSing; (2) The Alfa-Tsentr site was NOT that of a real company but rather one we designed. Realize this is a very generic name for a company in the Russian language, so much that in 2013 an actual private security company by a similar name (Tsentr-Alfa) was founded in Russia, sealing the legend; (3) The Sisterhood was NOT a real terrorist group but rather a completely fabricated one. We filmed and edited a "terrorist video" of our friends firing automatic weapons that looked "authentic" enough as to fool a very uncritical private contractor terrorism database company. They just copied our nonsense report on the fictional group verbatim from the video caption! /// All these ILLUSIONS of danger we created were supposed to be in the service of our story and were only possible by painstaking research and some admittedly devious plants (e.g., co-opting some of the most popular players to work with us and then report back to the community exaggerated tales of dangerous encounters). I would really question the characterization of any of our tactics as "dishonest", especially since most were basically just techniques from interactive theater, ported to the online world. Yes, it was a bit of a social experiment, but we were also trying to entertain people by inserting them into a thrilling adventure set against the backdrop of real world crises. And we did it out of love of the creating and never profit. (Believe me, there are much easier ways to make money than construct an elaborate 8 year transmedia piece involving hundreds of your artist and actor friends all over the world lol!) Yes, we made obnoxious characters like political fanatics and duplicitous Russian agents but they were simply that — characters. The real people behind the project love and respect the game's fans. We wanted to give people something different than just another boring corporate brand promotion. ;) " Link to the UnFiction forums: web.archive.org/web/20170625210038/http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=28153 Link to the Mind & Machine interview: youtube.com/watch?v=fjK4yrsFDd8