[drumroll] Greetings children, Captain Disillusion here! We have done it! We've cracked teleportation! Eighty years of scientific research in quantum
entanglement have turned out to be irrelevant, because in the end, the first interstate portal was opened in the
bedroom of a YouTuber named FunkyFatHead. He achieved this by playing just the right combination
of audio tones of different frequencies through a Bluetooth speaker, until a mysterious glowing window leading directly into
Sedona, Arizona formed above it. FunkyFatHead - "It is a well known, uh vortex
phenomenon, there's several of them there, "and you are witnessing a gate, portal, wormhole,
stargate, whatever you want to call it, "from this bedroom to another state." You know, as I watch the number of views on the video
steadily approach a million, and the credulous comments about the experiment
outnumber skeptical ones, I can't help but ask; WHAT THE F*** IS WRONG WITH YOU!?
WHAT THE F***!? - "Whoa, Captain, take it easy..." DON'T F***ING TELL ME TO TAKE IT EASY!! WHAT AM I
DOING!? WHAT HAVE I BEEN DOING THIS FO- It's important when you... disagree with someone's point
of view, to make sure that you... fully understand it. If I showed you that this collectible T-1000 Terminator
figurine seems to be somewhat alive, you'd be right to immediately assume I faked it with a bit
of digital warping. And if I suddenly made a big deal of how a decorative
turtle shell keeps falling off my shelf for no reason, you'd be right to suspect there's a simple explanation for
how that happens, But if I took my time and engaged you in an interesting
story about these events, you might find my cheap tricks start to look more
convincing. You'd be seeing them in a specific context. I call this trendy web content technique the
"Piecemeal Paranormal." It's when someone shares little tidbits about odd things
they've been experiencing, or experimenting with. Each individual anecdote is not that crazy, but over time they get more interesting, and add up to a
disturbingly compelling paranormal narrative. And a compelling narrative often feels like compelling
evidence. BuzzFeed-contributing cartoonist Adam Ellis understood
this well enough to break out of the painful mediocrity of his webcomic
by starting a long Twitter thread about "Dear David," a ghost of a little kid with a bashed-in head who makes
appearances in Adam's apartment. The tweets began as sections of a first-person horror
story that had a clearly fictional tone. He saw David in a dream, he dreamt about another kid telling him the rule of
how not to get killed by David, don't ask him more than two questions, and then dreamt about inexplicably breaking that rule,
and now David haunts him. But after the huge audience response, Adam's tweets
transitioned into earnest reports, complete with pictures and absolutely terrifying videos
of paranormal activity. [Captain screams, gasps] Faceless Russian YouTuber known as Korney
also understood this when he achieved viral success with an early video on
his pseudoscience channel "How to Make." In it, he explained how to make a homunculus by
injecting a chicken egg with his own... sperm, and after a few days, extracting a misshapen creature
that appeared to move. This made the internet somewhat curious, and after
studying viewer reactions and suggestions, Как Сделать spun off an entire series of progressively
wackier homunculus experiment videos. His attempts to make a healthy one and getting sprayed
with acid, Как Сделать - "BITCH!" Growing another, feeding it, creating a third,
naming them after Pokémon, letting them interact until one absorbed the other, and
discovering that the resulting hybrid had teeth, and was partial to pieces of meat soaked in human
blood. [cough[ Spoiler alert. So our friend FunkyFatHead wanted in on this piecemeal
paranormal trend, and started his own channel. Like the others, he used what's available to him. Adam Ellis lives in a dilapidated building and owns a
creepy doll, Как Сделать has access to laboratory equipment, FunkyFatHead has... some tacky wall art. And a bed. FunkyFatHead - "Uhh, yeah, I know, sounds nuts." His first few videos focus on pretty creative
demonstrations of the "Mandela Effect," but eventually, he discovers that certain sound waves
seem to create a physical disturbance above the bed. A frequency of 432 Hz opens up a dark mass... FunkyFatHead - "...there it is." ...and gets 710,000 views. 528 Hz fractures space-time, and earns a less-interested 292,000 views. But playing a combination of 528 Hz and 525 Hz
opens a gateway to the red rocks of Sedona! A natural reaction to something like that is of course,
"I want to try it myself to see if it works!" Several viewers did just that, and... were unable to
replicate the results. But they didn't follow the protocols closely enough. I've got the exact same Bluetooth speaker that
FunkyFatHead used. I've also got my own creepy girl painting, tacky wall art,
white bedsheets with gray pillows, and the same Szynalski tone generator ready to go. So let's do this. Roll sound! Roll camera! And... action! So, uh, a, uh, linear light aperture appears to be forming. It's, uh, becoming semi-circular in nature. I'm starting to see some features in the center. I think it's... it's... ...custard, encased in a pie? Whoa! I may have missed some small detail. Oh, right, everything on FunkyFatHead's channel revolves
around the idea that his bedroom contains some sort of
transdimensional pocket. The anomalies happen in it, but not outside. So don't bother trying to replicate them.
For all we know, they might be unique. FunkyFatHead - "It's just a strange thing that's happening
to me right now, so..." This is a staple of piecemeal paranormal accounts. There's always some special condition making their
claims impossible to verify. Adam Ellis's hauntings happen only to him, and only at
his apartment, so you'd have to be there with him, and even then they don't happen all the time, so
you might not witness it. But here are some weeeird Polaroids! Как Сделать claims his homunculus can be made
by anyone, but also shows it takes countless attempts and
doesn't always work. The eggs have to be from a small farm, and a bunch of
other special requirements. And when commenters challenge the validity of his
"science," he answers with all kinds of evasive explanations
involving alchemy. These creators aren't just moving the goalposts,
they've strapped them to their backs. And that's why you need me. I don't "know things" or "talk to people." I stare at videos. The frames making up those videos, the pixels making
up the frames making up those videos, and the metadata hidden behind the pixels making up
the frames making up those videos, until I notice something. Like the fact that only one video on the channel has
a framerate of 29.97, the standard for American camcorders, and it happens to be the one upload that doesn't show
anything paranormal, it's just a vlog update. The rest of the videos, even though they seem to have been shot with the same camera, are at an even 30 frames per second, which 29.97 often
gets rounded up to by prosumer video editing software. Does that automatically mean visual effects were used? No, but these beautiful volumetric light rays occurring
in a small, smokeless room definitely look like the ones taught in this AfterEffects
tutorial by that guy who's too busy to make tutorials anymore. How dare you keep us waiting for free things
that you make for free! In order to align the 3D-like effect of the rays, you have to track the camera motion of the shot by pressing a button and waiting for a little bit. This also lets you accurately place other things in
the scene, like an inexplicably flat portal that just happens to be
facing in your direction. Of course, why would you build and animate a whole
3D model of a cool spherical anomaly when drawing a simple flat shape and wobbling it with some
procedural noise impresses your audience anyway? In fact, at the beginning you don't even need to 3D-track
the camera. Simple point tracking and quick pans do the job nicely. But with a 3D camera track, you can use the flat portal
as a mask to reveal another object. In FunkyFatHead's case, it's a large flat plane with a view
from Airport Mesa, a tourist spot where every hippie goes to experience
magical "vortexes," and every stock photographer takes pictures of this
same vista. Except this isn't a still picture, we can see the tree
branches moving in the wind. That means it's a static video of the view which,
if he didn't film it himself, narrows the stock choices substantially. And maybe, if we build a composite of the view, we can all pull together and find the exact piece of
stock footage he used! Or maybe it was this live webcam. Hey, let's talk about this lamp! Before the portal appears, the light from the lamp
overexposes the wall. Once the portal is in the shot, the camera supposedly
auto-adjusts exposure, and the background gets darker. But it wouldn't really look like that. Reducing exposure doesn't dim everything together
like the brightness knob on a TV, it makes the camera less sensitive to light, so darker parts go way darker, while bright parts get less
bright, revealing more highlight detail. The highlight on this wall stays the same because there
was no detail to reveal, because the camera didn't really adjust, because
there was no portal in the shot. Because, whether or not flapping air molecules at
certain frequencies can open a portal across space, It can't. whether mysterious vortices exist in Sedona, They don't. and whether or not FunkyFatHead's bedroom is home to
a transdimensional anomaly, It's not. this video is definitely, 100%, fake. Now your reaction might be: "Wow Captain! That's incredible! But you're missing the point. "People GET that everything on these channels is fake,
AND THEY LIKE IT!" Do they, though? I tried to tally some comments from each of these three
piecemeal paranormal purveyors to see if viewers who definitely think the content is fake
outnumber those who definitely think it's plausible. But I got bored and threw my computer out the window. On the homunculus video at least, it was exactly
half-and-half between believers and skeptics. And maybe that's the goal; to create ambiguity. On one hand, Как Сделать's videos are subtly funny and just preposterous enough that maybe they're
brilliant satire. On the other hand, Adam Ellis just straight-up says that
everything he reports about his "Dear David" ghost is completely true. It cannot possibly be true, but he can write that and
it doesn't seem to matter. If I secretly installed cameras in his apartment and
offered the world definitive proof that he's making it up, if I procured raw footage of the homunculus videos
before any warping was added and showed them side-by-side, if I deconstructed the rest of the visual effects on
FunkyFatHead's channel, each of them would just shrug and say
"Dude, of course, it's not real! I was doing art! "Don't you know? It's a cool new ironic form of
social media infotainment! "Letting a little bit of fear-based fiction bleed into reality
for fun and profit!" But I don't think it's cool. In art, or health, or politics, in any aspect of life, this blurred line is how you get confusion and mistrust, and $22,000,000 fruitless Pentagon UFO threat
research programs, It's how you get 2017. Do you really want another 2017? So keep that line sharp. Enjoy, or hate, or argue with friends over things you know
for sure are entertainment, but keep a cool, critical eye on what's real and true and
important in everyday life. You know, love with your heart, but use your head
for everything else. And let's hope for a less uncertain New Year. [to the tune of Auld Lang Syne]
♪ I never learned the meaning or ♪ [to the tune of Auld Lang Syne]
♪ the lyrics to this song ♪ [to the tune of Auld Lang Syne]
♪ But I just like the sound of it ♪ [to the tune of Auld Lang Syne]
♪ so I try to sing along ♪
The fact videos like this even require debunking makes me afraid for humanity.
Good to know Adam Ellis is a straight-up liar as well as unfunny.
Dude's production quality and acting has really been stepped up in the last couple years. This is one of the "content creators" that will survive YouTube's transition to a new form of commercial TV (which appears to be their plan). He's been "ready for TV" for a couple years.
One of the best videos he has made on his channel. The "Custard" part made me laugh out loud, and he made some good points at the end. All beautifully animated.
Like always, Captain Disillusion doesn't just explain to you how it's done, he shows you how it's done. Love it.
Gotta love the Cap's attitude. Someone with his skills could easily just make bitter and misanthropic videos about how easily fooled people are, but he seems to genuinely care about honesty.
I know it is said every single time a Captain Disillusion video is posted, but it is so depressing seeing how few subscribers he has for such incredible content. His channel is like a good back rub, I enjoy every minute of it, all the while in fear of it ending.
Ooh boy, what to say, what to say. This felt like a season finale with that song and message at the end.
I also love how most of his videos (especially the two presentations he did) all come with some sort of message that you wouldn't expect with it. You go in wondering how a certain video was faked (if at all), and you leave with some new insight on things you didn't even know you needed.
I've always known that Captain D was a great entertainer, but he's surprising me more and more as an actor and a performer as time goes on.
Perfect message, smartly presented and amazingly executed, you really are leagues above anyone else in educational entertainment, D.
Actually got a little emotional when you started singing, I have no idea why (I'm not from the USA).
Love you Captain D, keep making the world more vigilant