teaandqueerbaiting:

221bloodnun:

tjlcisthenewsexy:

tjlcisthenewsexy:

tendergingergirl:

tjlcisthenewsexy:

tjlcisthenewsexy:

whimsicalethnographies:

221bloodnun:

whimsicalethnographies:

euphoriccalliope:

tolkieny:

this is?? so fucking weird?? @tjlcisthenewsexy

This looks like a public call to bloggers and journalists to pay attention to what is going on on @tjlcisthenewsexy ‘s Tumblr page. Unsure if real or ARG-devised, but either way there may be some wider attention focused on all of this fairly soon. The bitly link is a shortened link to the Vivala.me homepage – its purpose is likely to track how many people are using that particular link to check out Vivala.me. Brace yourselves, folks.

Fucky….

For those that don’t know already, he works for the company.

Literally this is what my ask to them was about, a research project on posthumous death ritual.

ANSWER ME

Umm. Ok. I’m not sure if I quite understand what’s going on here.

The header image of “Sabatiel”’s twitter is a reference to the group Anonymous. They wear Guy Fawkes masks when appearing in public.

@jenna221b @gosherlocked @marcespot @toxicsemicolon @the-7-percent-solution @teapotsubtext @inevitably-johnlocked @may-shepard @worriesconstantly

He is a Digital Marketer & Marketing Specialist. This might actually e the ARG?!

From wiki: “Anonymous is a loosely associated international network of activist and hacktivist entities. A website nominally associated with the group describes it as “an Internet gathering” with “a very loose and decentralized command structure that operates on ideas rather than directives”. The group became known for a series of well-publicized publicity stunts and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on government, religious, and corporate websites.

Anonymous originated in 2003 on the imageboard 4chan, representing the concept of many online and offline community users simultaneously existing as an anarchic, digitized global brain. Anonymous members (known as “Anons”) can be distinguished in public by the wearing of Guy Fawkes masks in the style portrayed in the graphic novel and film V for Vendetta.

In its early form, the concept was adopted by a decentralized online community acting anonymously in a coordinated manner, usually toward a loosely self-agreed goal, and primarily focused on entertainment, or “lulz”. Beginning with 2008’s Project Chanology—a series of protests, pranks, and hacks targeting the Church of Scientology—the Anonymous collective became increasingly associated with collaborative hacktivism on a number of issues internationally…..

…Broadly speaking, Anons oppose Internet censorship and control, and the majority of their actions target governments, organizations, and corporations that they accuse of censorship. Anons were early supporters of the global Occupy movement and the Arab Spring.^[15] Since 2008, a frequent subject of disagreement within Anonymous is whether members should focus on pranking and entertainment or more serious (and, in some cases, political) activism….Brian Kelly writes that three of the group’s key characteristics are “(1) an unrelenting moral stance on issues and rights, regardless of direct provocation; (2) a physical presence that accompanies online hacking activity; and (3) a distinctive brand.”

Anonymous is also the one who sends Sherlock puzzles

And is ‘Anonymous’ also the one that hacks John’s blog?

It probably won’t lead anywhere, because Anonymous is such a huge entity, but their Twitter is /YourAnonNews/, and so is their Tumblr blog. @tjlcisthenewsexy @worriesconstantly @tendergingergirl @whimsicalethnographies @teapotsubtext @teaandqueerbaiting

what the FUCK is going on

He also posted stuff about vivala on the 7th. How long have we known about the site? I feel like it’s been less than a week, but idk anymore

Uh, a marketing specialist with hardly any followers or tweets?

🚨🚨huge red flag🚨🚨

And if he is indeed that…then he just wants to use is so…I think it’s time we take a huge step back from this you guys. Thelostspecial.com was fun. Now it’s just getting super weird and dark weblike

Dear Thelostspecial.com site owner

Hi. Greetings. *waves*

I know I probably shouldn’t fan the flames of this, and you probably won’t see this post. But I’m making it anyways.

I’ve read over the message on your website.

Oh boy.

I don’t know exactly what you were trying to get at with all of this.

Maybe, like, 02% of the TJLC fandom + others genuinely believed that your site meant something. I know that percentage is completely pulled out of the air…and I’m not about to do an actual calculation here. BUT I see quite a bit of fandom traffic everyday being an archive. I know and see what people are talking about. What they agree with and what they don’t.

You’ve made something out of nothing just like you say TJLC did. (Oh the tangled webs we weave for ourselves).

That 20 minutes a week you say that work on your site? Yeah, no.

There is no way to 1) design and code pages 2) read through all of our theories 3) come up with codes and clues 4) mange a website, Twitter AND your regular tumblr account with 20 minutes a week. IT’S NOT POSSIBLE. Even if you are a web designer of some sort.

I spend an hour day (AT LEAST) reading through theory posts. And some of them I even skim. There’s just too much posted everyday. And that’s not even taking into account reading though posts about your site! Honestly!

And with the website comes paying for bandwidth and the domain name. I’m not a IT person by any means, but there’s probably other things that cost money to run a website (besides your time). We sure has heck didn’t lose any sleep or money over this.

Regardless…thank you. I mean it! You gave the fandom one last BBC Sherlock hoora! Most of us didn’t get that with s4. We played your game, had some fun together before we all start going our separate ways over the coming months and years.

I was never TJLC. I read the theories just like any semi/regular academic essay in college. I joined the fandom years ago to stretch my theory muscle. And to learn what I could from those who posted metas and ideas into the tumblrsphere. If anything, you showed me the fandom that I came to know over the last 4 years. They are smart, able to write academic length essays with sources and quotes quickly. They are funny, taking PR goofs to the extreme and making memes that make me cry with laughter. They are kind, being considerate of those who decided not to stay in the fandom after s4. They are all those things and more. And if this is the end of BBC Sherlock, or at least the end of an era of fandom, I thank you.

Because your website gave everyone the opportunity to be so amazing, smart, funny and wonderful one more time.

Even if you aren’t the nicest person for thinking that the fandom needed to learn a lesson.

Thank you.

Some quick musings on the new update

whimsicalethnographies:

thelostspecial.com

Here is the text, with my first thought comments in bold:

I was going to draw this out longer but the truth is, I’m
bored.

OK

There is no Lost Special. There never was, and there never
will be.

And you know this
objectively?

Once again, in their need to keep this midnight train going,
TJLC fans created something out of nothing.

Even if that is that
case, why do you care?

Seeing this obsession with “The Lost Special,” even though
series 4 was clearly over, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to run a
sociological experiment with a vicious fandom in denial.

Steven brought it up,
not us. Also, even if the series is
over, that doesn’t mean it’s over. They’ve
repeatedly said they have through series 5 mapped out. It was only in December
2016 they started hinting at “we don’t know, this could be it.” Sure Jan.

My poorly assembled website took not more than twenty
minutes to cobble together (as some people rightly pointed out) and very little
effort to maintain.

This is a lie.

“By the pricking of my thumbs (something wicked this way
comes)”- I edited an ominous message into the code and title, referencing the
Macbeth quote used in The Six Thatchers. It was strange to see how many people
didn’t recognise the “pricking” quote and even criticised the website because
it allegedly didn’t call back to Sherlock in any way- except that I was
directly quoting a series 4 episode.

Except most of us did
recognize this? What about your dancing
man code reference to Unto the Breach?

Watching fans defend how shoddy the website is, in their
need for thelostspecial to be real was especially funny. It was also funny to
see the people who guessed the website was fake and said as much, but didn’t
even care because they desperately needed something to hold onto, with Sherlock
over.

Whichever, why do you
care? Why would it be funny to you?

Then there’s the people who clocked that thelostspecial.com
wasn’t “real”… and yet never question their own dedication to TJLC and/or the
existence of a fourth episode of series 4, concepts entirely created by Tumblr.

The lost special site
was only one of hundreds of indications something is fucky.

Anyhow. Next, I threw a random bunch of numbers and photos
out there to see how people would scramble and react, and you didn’t let me
down. Mostly I chose the first photo I found of a character that I liked the
look of, in Google; there wasn’t real logic. I re-used some images out of
laziness. I used an online generator to make the Dancing Men/Henry V code post.

So the meanings we
found in everything, tying it somehow back to Sherlock, or ACD canon, or anything
else were all coincidences?

What do we say about
coincidences?

40, 27, kra, the various “hints” you think you found on the
website and found countless possible meanings of, they were chosen at random.
Even the elephant photo was chosen at random. It wasn’t until after I edited it
into the main website photo that I discovered the poor thing was named Mary and
had been shot and executed for killing a man (on 9.13.16. Everyone overthought that
one too much.) So I used that info
because it was serendipitous. “The universe is rarely so lazy?” Friends, the
universe is often lazy.

“They were chosen at
random.” “The universe is rarely so
lazy?

Sure Jan.

When I added a black image with five pixels of colour to the
website, you did not let me down. People played with the image until they
became convinced it was QR code spelling something out. It was just five
meaningless pixels of nothing, created in MS Paint.

Yet you did the whole
thing in 20 minutes.

The static gif was taken from a YouTube video of TV static
from some movie, with an old Moriarty close-up thrown in.

We know, 28 days
later. With Moriarty loaded in. Again, whole thing in 20 minutes.

The photo of John and Sherlock sitting in the watery 221B, I
got it from Farfarawaysite.com, and scaled it down a little because the photo
was large. That’s it. I didn’t change the proportions in any way, or alter the
colours, or add anything to the photo. Anything you saw in it, you imagined. I
left the big black header on the website as a hint to keep your eye on those,
since the thing I changed on 2/11 was in the similar Twitter header.

”That’s it. I didn’t
change the proportions in any way, or alter the colours, or add anything to the
photo. Anything you saw in it, you imagined.”

Like Murderous Mary
being photoshopped into the back picture?
Sure Jan: http://whimsicalethnographies.tumblr.com/post/156824256785/221bloodnun-whimsicalethnographies

I changed the plain black header of the Twitter to a black
one with a word embedded in it. The profile photo was changed to a plain black
photo with XX hidden in it. No one bothered checking it, though clearly the
account was active again, so I changed the profile photo to show the Xs, as a
hint to look deeper. Finally people found the “clue” today, not that it
matters. The word spelled out there is another blind alley that leads nowhere.

Then accept all our
follow requests.

MMTE: The source code message was a hint toward Murderous
Mary the Elephant, which some of you guessed but no one looked for it.

murderousmarytheelephant.tumblr.com

(Don’t bother trying to access it, there’s nothing in
there.)

DON’T LOOK NOTHING TO
SEE HERE, EVEN THOUGH THERE’S A PASSWORD.

There was no set schedule for changes to thelostspecial. I
used intermittent reinforcement to keep people frustrated but coming back for
more. That’s why I added and removed things at unexpected times. There is no
pattern.

Ok?

For people wondering, wow, why would anyone take so much
time to do this? Well, I didn’t. Creating the plain black squares with a few
letters, throwing a message into the source coding, and uploading the new website photo of John
and Sherlock took maybe 5 minutes. Creating a side blog with no posts and
keeping it private takes one minute.

Except the
photoshopping you DID do as established would have taken more. Even searching for the first image you found
would have taken time.

Overall, it takes less than twenty minutes a week to do
this, once it was set up, because really? You do all the work for me. You all
did what TJLCers do best- you took a bunch of random data, inflated it into
something much more complicated than it really was, and created your own
narrative out of it. Even knowing it might be nothing, and was probably just a
fan-made site, you’ve still allowed yourselves to get worked up over it and
allowed yourselves to hope. You’re reading into nonsense and finding clues
where there are none, and naturally most of those “clues” pointed exactly where
you wanted them to point to. Confirmation bias at its finest.

Well all I get from
this is that we’re smarter than you are.

Learn from this.

Stop falling into conspiracies. Trust yourself when you can
see that something isn’t real or likely. Alternately, find something that
doesn’t make you feel sad or heartbroken.

Seriously? “Trust yourself when you can see that
something isn’t real or likely.”

Instincts are to be
trusted, John.

Also, my instincts
have gotten me into a pretty good place.
I’ll keep trusting them, thanks, and they tell me something is
fucky. We’ve seen this episode before.

Goddamn you’re
arrogant.

A few final notes:

“And in conclusion
*jerk off motion*

I was somewhat entertained by the several dozen times people
attempted to reset the password for the website and access the control panel.
If I was petty, I would’ve logged your IPs and reported you to your ISP. (Don’t
worry, I didn’t. I don’t care that much.)’

You cared enough to
look.

I didn’t send the “mole” anons or any other messages on
Tumblr. I think other fans decided to join the game. I imagine they’ll continue
until they get bored, too.

Read: I can’t say why
everything else is fucky too. Must be
more people like me.

The only twitter account connected to thelostspecial.com is
twitter.com/thelostspecial. I have no idea who runs the “contact” twitters but
I’m positive they’re fan accounts. (If you think BBC-sanctioned accounts would
post like that, I have a bridge to sell you.)
As for my twitter, I set up the thelostspecial twitter account, followed
some BBC-related accounts and left it alone for a week while TJLC fans went
wild trying to suss out who I was following. That’s all I did with it.

Then accept my follow
request. Seriously, YOU’RE SO CLEVER I
need to follow you to learn your secrets.

I didn’t start thelostspecial Instagram account. Someone
else did that, I don’t know who.

Nobody asked. Actually, I didn’t even know there was an
instragram account. Did anyone else
know?

And if you enjoyed hunting, try a legitimate online riddle
game, such as Amnesya.com for a challenge! All the fun, none of the TJLC and
fandom “fucky” business.

Well, since you
brought up “fucky business,” why are they screenshots of the Shrewd Living
posts in the “Museum?” Did you do that too?
Wow. In charge of a scam
website. Oh, you don’t know about
that? Then why put it in there? Why, John?

Nah.

Sherlock Series 4 is over. This is the end.

Thanks for playing TheLostSpecial! Goodbye and God bless.

Seriously, we’ve seen
this episode before.

WE’VE SEEN THIS
EPISODE BEFORE.

poiuypoiuyp:

screechingdazesoul:

fear-is-contagious:

johnlock-empire:

And the creator? They’re a massive arse. What the????? This was a really nice game. They could’ve thanked us, explained and left us alone. But nooooooooooo. They needed to mock us in a two-page essay. Fuck this whole thing .-. it was fun playing this, but getting mocked like this is just bad.
@the-7-percent-solution

Thank you? For what? For proving that TJLC is just a whirlwind of confirmation bias and herd mentality?

They weren’t mocking you. They were explaining how easy it is for people to buy into false information because it helps fuel their theory. They simply explained confirmation bias and how it is prevalent within the TJLC community.

If you read that as mocking, it shows just how far gone you already are.

^ Well said.

^ I think this fear contagious user is the anti behind this wreckage. They’re literally too involved and responded to many asks in the tag. Look how angry they are at seeing people not crumbling down crying over the fact that tls website is fake. Lol
Also it was mocking, as a person that’s not into tjcl I can still recognise a condescending tone, thank you very much. Also, yall antis are so desperate to depict Johnlockers as crazy that yo literally can’t see the reality of things…

love-in-mind-palace:

Keep reading

thepurplecarbuncle:

so some bitter crusty asshole bought a domain, created an entire website to mess with people, then probably went on tumblr and sent anons to get people to actually visit it slaöfjsdfkösdjflkdfj went through all this trouble, edited the website multiple times……. and tjlcers are the ones who are pathetic for analysing it? öaslkdfjsldkfjsldkfjsdf what the fuck buddy. what the fuck. don’t you have anything else to do with your free time

warmth-and-constancy:

So, basically, there are two possibilities here that I can see:

1. Someone spent actual money on a domain, and far more time than they’re letting on (because they had to have been spending lots of time to collect all those screenshots, keep up with the theorizing, etc.), just to be a sad asshole who probably lives in a basement and wears a fedora, and accidentally ended up giving us several weeks’ worth of fun times with our friends (LMAO THANKS DUDE), or

2. Unfuckable Emily is right and it’s still part of an ARG.

Either way, the bit about how “there is no fourth episode, Tumblr made that up” fails to account for the fact that Steven Moffat coined the “Lost Special” rumor and Radio Times and the official Sherlock YouTube channel blew that spark into a flame – that is, the rumor originated outside of fandom, not with fandom – in which case, Scenario #1 involves a fedora-wearing sad asshole who spent money on a domain and doesn’t have any idea what they’re talking about, and Scenario #2 is a “doubt your own memories” sort of thing.

Anyway, ShrewdLiving.com,

warmth-and-constancy:

Since I was ARG-skeptical until ShrewdLiving.com appeared in a truly strange and suspicious fashion, and because I remain at least partially ARG-skeptical, I just want to point out that my belief in the fourth episode is based on:

Steven Moffat’s own words

The official Sherlock YouTube channel teasing the idea of a fourth episode

Radio Times pushing the idea of a fourth episode to a greater extent than the online fandom was, early on in the rumor’s life

The significant amounts of missing footage/setlock irregularities

The deafening showrunner silence since TFP aired

The way the Russian and Turkish leaks were handled, including by BBC News

The chess promo photo having fuck-all to do with the episode we were given

That weird billboard in TLD most likely having some actual significance

TFP clearly being “fake” (by which I mean that there is strong evidence for its being a hallucinatory episode a la TAB, and clear ways in which it calls attention to its being an “interruption,” such as Mycroft’s romance film being interrupted by a horror movie)

To a lesser extent: the subject of Radio Times’s favorite “fourth episode” theory, Apple Tree Yard, ultimately being Sherlock meta (I only watched one episode, but I’m taking the word of various smart TJLCers who reported similarities in the scripts, visuals, etc. which were so uncanny as to make my eyebrows shoot up)

So if an anti really did make the Lost Special website, I can only say to that person: I am still unfuckable, you cannot fuck me, I have never been fucked,

johnlockeverlasting:

warmth-and-constancy:

astudyinkink:

theveryunnecessaryfeelings:

astudyinkink:

warmth-and-constancy:

I try to be skeptical but I honestly can’t see how ShrewdLiving.com could be anything other than part of an ARG. Why would a website which has no visible means of generating revenue (no actual advertising except for a single banner ad for Red Cross donations, no “promoted” product mentions even in the articles that do exist on its website, no store), no articles that couldn’t have been generated by one of those “publish your own ‘journalism’” websites, no contributor credits on its articles, no corporate name (”Shrewd Media LLC” etc.) attached to it, and no content dated after 2014 be spending money to advertise specifically to Sherlock fans on Tumblr in the year 2017, especially when the website itself has nothing to do with TV, video streaming, or entertainment in general?

Also known as: someone is having a laugh, used to own a website, and had a few bucks lying around to keep seeing you guys dance.

*sighs*

One year ago, it cost 25 000 $ to advertise on Tumblr. I don’t think it has dropped to 25 $ in 2017 so… who would hate us this much, really ?

Even if the 25k commitment is still true, it still could easily be explained by someone who already has an ad contract (because they own or work for a company) and just ran those ads in a one day slot.

The BBC literally told us to shove it up our asses, they don’t give a shit about us. Unfortunate, but true.

Why would someone who had an existing, hugely expensive Tumblr ad contract run ads directing Sherlock fans to an obviously fake website which has no noticeable links to any company or organization with an existing ad contract

Are you actually suggesting that this thing that has all the hallmarks of one of the actual viral-marketing ARGs that have been run by PR teams for movies, video games, and even a Nine Inch Nails album is not an ARG, and is actually the owner or high-ranking advertising/marketing officer of a company with a large advertising budget (and who is presumably answerable to no one about spending that budget?) who has chosen to use that budget to fuck with a small group of Sherlock fans on Tumblr by directing them to a fake website that they created in 2012 and updated while S4 was airing

Either a coincidence or pure fuckery

This is a code. Your blog came up when I searched “Cryptography.” Any chance you could help out? espnd hw of lsepe i mhi ni iwhottu iwll in rcae thwa satr reoasn nda tseals ym be twha be ewest wlil my ym elif tsar lilw fiel herat ktae to

tjlc:

vengeful-half-vulcan:

mixedbag:

Hello- I’ll do my best! (@ those on mobile – apologies for the long post )
Firstly, the frequency analysis of this is unusual given that all the original common letters of a, e and t have their usual percentage of appearance – This means that they are likely being used in their original context and were not substituted for other letters. This is shown in the following graph:

Considering this, I used Word Unscrambler in order to generate the next part. The one irregularity is the hw which of course rearranges to mean nothing.

Now I’m going to take a guess and assume hw may be a typo and is meant to be he given the him mentioned in the message.

“Spend he of Sleep I him in without will in race what star reason and steal (this particular word could be something else like least or tales or even tesla!) be what be sweet will my my life star will life heart take to”

My, will, star and life are the most common words. These words have heavy connotative meaning. It is important to remember the context of the message is just as important as the code itself. Who was the code intended for? How was it meant to be received? What sort of person is sending it?

A rather dark interpretation that manages to fit all the words evenly is the following. This is unlikely to be the original message though given the immense multitude of combinations that emerge when rearranges the letters. However this deconstruction could potientially led deciphering the original message – especially once we learn the context.

My star
I will sleep without him
He will steal my heart and race to take my life
Spend in life what will be sweet
Star, what of reason.

Other versions could easily follow this pattern:

I will spend my life with him
My heart will race and life will be sweet

I will take my life without him
He will be sweet reason to sleep
Take my life and my heart

He is my star and my heart in life
With him I will spend my life without reason

Thanks! If it helps, this code was an anonymous ask to a Sherlock Holmes themed blog.

This was one of the first codes sent to us of what appears to be a multimedia ARG surrounding the release of a secret fourth Sherlock episode which will conclude the show with romantic endgame! Thank you so much for your help, I think we came up with a few similar solutions ourselves but these dif suicide versions are so interesting bc that’s a major theory about what is to come! We’re still receiving a plethora of codes if that is of any interest to you, it’s cool stuff! Thanks for the help. All the best, xx