Add Violence Back Cover...ARG?

[Kyle]

Given that EP3 is currently only a few words in a notebook, almost certainly not.

He stated he knows the overall story of the final EP so it depends what you mean by written. Music certainly not but I think more than a few lyrics were.

[Toadflax]

The email subject is intriguing though. Why the [TEST] in the subject line? Wonder if somebody at the store just fucked up?

Not possible. It's Sandbag.

[tadbot]

Are there users so old school and so tech savvy that they have the means to descramble the Burning Bright video like it was some old analogue cable video signal?

This video's pseudo-random noise looks ripe for a hidden message. 'Burning Bright' immediately brings to mind "What immortal hand or eye, Could frame thy fearful symmetry?"
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyger#Poem

My guess: the Burning Bright video can be decoded using symmetry, maybe something such as:
• hold a mirror up to the video at a specific angle/position, cf: https://www.google.com/search?q=sgt+...r+mirror+trick
or
• http://ijcsits.org/papers/vol6no32016/12vol6no3.pdf

[Kyle]

Are there users so old school and so tech savvy that they have the means to descramble the Burning Bright video like it was some old analogue cable video signal?

I have enough practice from my youth that I can confirm there are no boobs in the video.

[Bajoobatron]

Not possible. It's Sandbag.

It's true. Sandbag doesn't fuck up. We should all expect early D/L e-mails from them at about 8:37 based on this evidence.

[arsenic]

The email subject is intriguing though. Why the [TEST] in the subject line? Wonder if somebody at the store just fucked up?

it's likely the name of a category or a group of emails created for the mailing list and they weren't expecting it to appear in the subject line. So yeah small mistake on their part, those things happen all the time : )

[GavinCollins420]

I didn't get an email. Any other way to get the track? Does anyone know what the selection criteria was? I'm assuming AV pre-order of some kind (which I have yet to do.)

This has been a super fun read. I hope it leads somewhere. The Year Zero ARG happened when I was a 15 year old kid. I am now an adult man. I don't have time for this, Trent, but fuck me, I am excited.

Sent from my E6653 using Tapatalk

[ikillbambis]

Put me in the screen shot, fam.

[kode_name]

Well, I made a rip of tiff frames from the 4k YT video, but it's 225GB over 6982 frames... SO, looks like I won't be able to upload that. Best I can do right now is a 4k grab of the last frame of the video: http://imgur.com/bQDoQr6

[kode_name]

That looks like such a boring, low rent site. No way the people who made the Year Zero ARG are making that site.

This glorious YouTube channel, on the other hand...

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuw...l=AmplifyChaos

I agree, but I thought maybe this was a way to introduce someone named Brandon into the whole thing. Because some of the source code seems strange:
<meta property="og:site_name" content="brandonamplifychaos.com" />

Then again, it really could be nothing. Just seems weird someone would have a site up THAT quickly as just a 'fan' site.

[Xvostya]

Well, I made a rip of tiff frames from the 4k YT video, but it's 225GB over 6982 frames... SO, looks like I won't be able to upload that. Best I can do right now is a 4k grab of the last frame of the video: http://imgur.com/bQDoQr6

more sharp:
http://www.echoingthesound.org/commu...642#post362642

[kode_name]

Ah, should have seen that one earlier. Trying to keep up.

[LiquidEngineer]

odd. I got the Test email with the download, but no lyrics. User error I'm sure .

[bgalbraith]

Are there users so old school and so tech savvy that they have the means to descramble the Burning Bright video like it was some old analogue cable video signal?

I went and looked at a bunch of the individual frames in a row. While not definitive, they appear to be largely random grayscale images likely generated by Perlin noise and other noise generators. It's possible there is a clue embedded there, but it's not scrambled NTSC.

[Skwez]

TITP was released about 9 hours ago now. It's clear due to the Cedocore package (and the 42 Entertainment team being given credits on the video) that it's definitely tied to Year Zero. The question is, why haven't we found anything substantial? Maybe this isn't a step by step puzzle like before, but multiple pieces that don't make sense until you see them all?

[Xvostya]

TITP was released about 9 hours ago now. It's clear due to the Cedocore package (and the 42 Entertainment team being given credits on the video) that it's definitely tied to Year Zero. The question is, why haven't we found anything substantial? Maybe this isn't a step by step puzzle like before, but multiple pieces that don't make sense until you see them all?

I guess tomorrow there will be a LOT MORE questions.

[sick among the pure]

So last night I listened to Less Than (then NTAE) while being not sober, and typed some scattered ideas I came up with regarding the EP trilogy and ARG in a text document.
Today, after only listening to This Isn't The Place once, I'm focused in on the "I thought we had more time" line, and I feel like maybe some of this stuff is interesting if not a little bit plausible.
I mean, with some of the speculation we've been having, nothing is really too "out there" right now.

Add Violence is current day NIN’s album that didn’t get sent back in time with Year Zero's data. We are living in Year Zero now, it happened sooner than it was initially supposed to, our timeline got fucked up when they sent information back to warn us.

The 3-EP set is scattered pieces of information that lead up to the "true" Year Zero part 2 (whether it is a show or album or who knows what). Trent already has the lyrics/ideas written down because he only had to change a bit of the basic structure of the Year Zero continuation story he had thought of years ago to add in some current day elements.

The Physical Component from NTAE was sent back from Year Zero.

[nooneimportant]

I'm wondering if this is a slow burn. NTAE being apart of YZ wasn't even connected in anyones mind at all, but now we get to Add Violence and suddenly some things are starting to leak out. I'm thinking the 3rd EP is when it goes full blown. Just a thought.

I would like full blown YZ shenanigans to happen as soon as tomorrow at this rate. This is cool stuff.

[Frolick Shiawase]

I've listened to both songs in mono (due to Red Horse Vector) and nothing too interesting came up.
A bit of percussion and details were lost due to the downmix, but another idea crossed my mind:
I never listened to NTAE in mono.
Doing that now.

[.dH]

That's a different panel K. Multiple workstations multiple simulations, etc.?

Yes, the box in the video is a different box with different marks and screws and different colored lights and such, but of the same general design, labeling, and control settings. each "simulation" seems to get the same settings

The abort light is lit in the video, but the same bulb is off in the back cover image, and there is a hole just below it where something broke through. I think this is a reference to the story of the first EP where the burning soul broke through "the surface" and could breathe.

Both boxes have the same estimated termination date; not a coincidence! maybe that is the expected date when the flies will surround the world and blacken the sky like locusts or however those lyrics go.

[Graceless]

I would like full blown YZ shenanigans to happen as soon as tomorrow at this rate. This is cool stuff.

As I recall, we didn't have long periods of downtime during the Year Zero ARG. I think we can probably expect developments regularly. I do think that last time around, there were more people taking part. I know that there are discussions happening on the NIN subreddit. Any other places people know of where this is being dissected?

[nooneimportant]

As I recall, we didn't have long periods of downtime during the Year Zero ARG. I think we can probably expect developments regularly. I do think that last time around, there were more people taking part. I know that there are discussions happening on the NIN subreddit. Any other places people know of where this is being dissected?

Unfiction is chiming in, which is a forum dedicated to ARG's.

http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/v...04700a#1071173

[Frolick Shiawase]

Listened to all of NTAE in mono again, and there's just some details that come forth, like some guitars on FOF and percussion on TIOY.
No Red Horse Vector here. Nothing on the spectrogram, too.
Now, should we dig into the non-included lyrics on NTAE too and try to link them to this newfound ARG concept?

[DRanged691]

As I recall, we didn't have long periods of downtime during the Year Zero ARG. I think we can probably expect developments regularly. I do think that last time around, there were more people taking part. I know that there are discussions happening on the NIN subreddit. Any other places people know of where this is being dissected?

Various NIN-related Facebook groups are discussing it.

[jamesd553]

I remember when NTAE physical came I found a youTube page for Null Corp. It had two videos or 3 vids from Trent and Atticus but they also created a playlist thermographic paint: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...sig3ACqmJn49sO
Which are 4 vids about thermographic paint. Has anyone tried any of these techniques on any of the cards from physical component. ?

[xolotl]

Perhaps the people/organization running these simulations aren't aware that they're also changing the nature of their own reality, hence the differences in equipment from covers to video. Almost as if their tests are bleeding through?

See what I did there?

[Hesitation_Marks]

I'm wondering if this is a slow burn. NTAE being apart of YZ wasn't even connected in anyones mind at all, but now we get to Add Violence and suddenly some things are starting to leak out. I'm thinking the 3rd EP is when it goes full blown. Just a thought.

I would like full blown YZ shenanigans to happen as soon as tomorrow at this rate. This is cool stuff.

Hey now I've been saying I thought NTAE could be related to Year Zero since December.

Not the Actual Events, and Another Version of the Truth just rang too similar in my mind. The physical component also just felt like the ARG, even though it seems fruitless.

[Bajoobatron]

NOTE: I copied this from the "This Isn't the Place" thread since I started to diverge from the song itself into general ARG territory.

I sort of take the lyric "I thought we had more time" as a meditation on the fact that, when Year Zero was released a decade ago, though things looked rather grim, they didn't look this grim.

Now we actually have people really pitching the creche schools that were part of the fictional ARG; there's really a "Syria - before and after" (from the comic exhibit, I think); the U.S. president wants to demolish pretty much any and all climate protections; he and a large number of people who believe in him want to build a wall between countries and dole out the kind of tax cuts that would make this not so much an interesting artistic depiction of an idea as a sad rendering of a reality; there's a huge rise of quasi-fascist movements around Europe...

Year Zero was supposed to be a work of speculative fiction. It seems far less speculative just ten years later. I'll bet he, as author, thought we had more time before his speculative fiction became less outlandish and something more akin to next year's journalism. I did, too.

I know it's not truly Year Zero-level bad yet but...it ain't exactly lookin' good.

This is spot-the-fuck-on with what I believe.

[Graceless]

Listened to all of NTAE in mono again, and there's just some details that come forth, like some guitars on FOF and percussion on TIOY.
No Red Horse Vector here. Nothing on the spectrogram, too.
Now, should we dig into the non-included lyrics on NTAE too and try to link them to this newfound ARG concept?

Can't hurt to try. Please forgive me if this has already been addressed before on the board, but the extra lyrics for branches/bones are pretty disjointed. Has anyone been able to piece them together into something more coherent?

[theNewYou]

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/tr.../1100-6421781/

I strongly believe that there will be a virtual reality aspect to all of this.