This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Orphanology on 2024-10-12 14:16:02+00:00.
When you grow up on the internet the internet grows up in you too. You can't escape it. Codes get in your head, binary whistles at the edge of your hearing. You see forum posts in raindrops on dead leaves. People drive to work and then back again, every day the same thing, like they were long GIFs spiraling in and out of the frame. The web is inside all of us, spreading out in our neurons, mirroring the fiber optic cables spawning across the ocean floor.
They say there are server farms in Utah that when you see them from above they look like human silhouettes. They say that wasn’t the way they were built.
I keep thinking about this because of 0rw3ll.
I’m watching one of his videos now. He used to be my favorite YouTuber. I had watched him for over a decade, back when he started as a dumb prank channel. I had that that strange closeness with him, like we were friends even though only I knew him. A parasocial relationship, although that word always makes me think of infections, of parasites, of something living inside a body that shouldn’t be there.
He uploaded the video I’m watching right now two days ago. There are almost a million views, 148 comments. He’s updating his relationship status which is, as it historically always has been for him, very complicated.
I’m staring at his eyes as he talks. They’re blue, ocean colored, like they’ve always been. Nothing’s changed. Everything is the same in the ocean, but every wave is new.
I look on his discord. No one is talking about this upload, or at least they aren’t talking about what I’m looking for. I respond to some DMs while I’m reading comments. I used to just lurk, never post. That was my whole thing. Sharing too much info online weirded me out. The more you put on the Internet the more it feels like you’re making another version of yourself. There’s irl you and then online you. Both can feel separate, distorted mirrors of each other.
It was a few months ago, back when I still wasn’t commenting, when I noticed people on the server using a running phrase: the hidden videos. I didn’t know what it was and no one ever elaborated. I assumed it was just an inside joke, but there was something off about it. A lingering weirdness.
Then I started to see it in other places. Comments on YouTube videos, hashtags on the hellsite. Eventually, I started asking in the chat what it meant. No one ever responded and googling got me nowhere. Every site online that seemed to have any information was log in restricted, which led me to revive my nearly dead social media accounts. That was when things changed. I guess I got so used to logging in and responding to messages I started posting other stuff about me too. Small things at first, stuff like complaints about not finding things I was looking for, then links to articles I found interesting or depressing, talking about my day, pics of my dog. At some point I remember uploading a selfie, watching a little accumulation of hearts grow under the picture. The petite endorphin shot companies talk about that keep us posting, keep us on their platforms, keep us online.
A this point I had started to assumed I would never find out I what the hidden videos were. Everything was a dead end. I had decided to write it off as another univalve Internet mystery, like who buys the most glitter. Bedsides, I had convinced myself this whole thing was a dumb joke, an elaborate troll no one talked about. I felt like I had spent two months asking what updog is while everyone tried to not laugh.
Which is when I got the DM.
It was just a link, nothing else. The kind of thing you’d guess was spam and delete, but it wasn’t spam. The hyperlink test read: here are the hidden videos.
I went to the person’s profile who sent it but there was nothing there. Completely blank. No comment history. No links in their bio. Their user name was just a jumble of letters and numbers and when I searched the combination I got no hits in response. I messaged them but they didn’t respond.
How long did I spend looking at the link? It felt like hours, the text glowing blue the way fires do in ghost stories when the devil is near. Then, finally, I clicked it.
There was barely any text on the site. I was so used to the overabundance of information on most sites the staggering amount of empty space seemed almost sinister. No menu, no links to anything, no about button to click. Just six embedded videos with dates under them and “the hidden videos” written at the top of the page.
They videos were 0rw3ll posts, all from three years ago. Two were from two separate days. The final four all from the same day. I bit my lip and learned forward to study the images in the thumbnail. All stills of his face, but I didn’t think I had ever seen any of them.
My heart racing, I clicked play on the first video.
It seemed totally normal, just him talking about his day. Uninteresting, kind of boring. Then he said, oh one weird thing did happen.
He went out late to the burrito place across the street from his apartment, the one he always went to. The main burrito guy, Adam, laughed when he saw him. Back already, man?
Adam the burrito guy was a reoccurring character in 0rw3ll’s videos. He had a thick Massachusetts accent and frequently told 0rw3ll stories about accidents in his workplace.
Orw3ll said he asked Adam the burrito guy what he was talking about. Adam said, dude you were here an hour ago. Orw3ll explained he just got there and Adam said holy shit you have a twin. Do you want to watch the CCTV?
“I told him that hell yeah I want to watch the CCTV footage,” 0rw3ll said. He cracked his knuckles. “I thought that would be fucking baller. So we go in the back and he fires it up. I felt pretty cool. Like I was on some surveillance shit. We fast forwarded through some customers and then, bang, there was the dude. Guys, he looked EXACTLY like me. Like clone level. Adam was helping somebody else, so we watched Jai make his burrito. Oh and Jai, if you’re watching this, Adam said you gave him too much guac. Just thought you should hear it from me, bro. Anyway, he gets his burrito and pays and then looks up at the camera, like he was watching the camera, watching us instead of us watching him. Total weird shit. But dude, if you see this or someone knows you, I want to meet up, all right? I would love to chill with you. Clone club style. Ok, I’m out, smash like and subscribe, prescribe, face reveal.” Hs turned the camera off.
That was the end. Frowning, I clicked on the next video.
It was from a few weeks later. He looked a little ragged, his hair messier than usual. After a long pause he began to start talking, apologizing, saying he had tried to film the video twice, but it hadn’t worked.
“A few days ago I posted a video about some guy who looks like me,” he said. “But that video is gone. Which — dude, I don’t understand. I didn’t delete it.”
He looks away from the camera and when he looks back he said, I think someone is messing with me.
“Sadie and I — we’re sort of back together — went to the grocery store tonight and I saw him. The guy who looks like me. We were in the cereal aisle. Sadie’s getting cereal, by the way. Not me. I’m still doing the all toast breakfast challenge! Rise up toast family!” He raised his arms up and made what seemed to be a “bread” symbol with outstretched hands. Them he lowered his arms and the enthusiasm vanished from his face, replaced by indecision and concern.
“But yeah, this dude. He was at the end of the aisle. No cart. Nothing. Just standing there, staring at me. And this is the weird thing. Sadie was looking at ingredients on some package and when I said, hey look at this and she turned, he was gone. She thinks I’m crazy, I think,” he said and laughed. But he didn’t look like he thought it was funny.
“I’m going to find that old video, and reupload it. If anybody knows that guy, tell him I still want to hang but I’m going to need him to be at least fifteen percent less creepy. Maybe twenty percent.”
He turned off the camera.
The next three videos were short, each under a minute. He was filming outside, taking footage of a crowd. You could hear him whispering, but it was unintelligible. I watched them each again, but I couldn’t make anything out, then I saw him at the far edge of a frame. Someone who looked exactly like Omrw3ll, staring at the camera.
The final video. I hesitated and then clicked.
He seemed frantic, panicky. He was in his house, the living room where he always filmed, talking about how none of his videos were posting. How everyone thinks he’s going crazy. But he’s not. There was someone with his face following him, he said. He’s seen him. He’s filmed him. He didn’t understand what was happening, but he needed help.
Then he froze, his eyes wide. He was whispering no, no, no and then he got up, his knee hitting his camera, sending it flying. The picture went sideways, upside down, tilted, and then stabilized, pointing to the couch where he had been filming. I could see an area of the room leading to the kitchen. I could see only the bottom edge of the room, his legs, his shoes.
And then someone else walked into the him walked into the frame.
They stopped a few feet away from 0r3ell. The sound must have gotten screwed up when the camera fell because everything was a hard buzzing. It sounded like a swarm of wasps.
Their shoes and legs — they were the same as 0rw3ll.
The video...
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