You're in the place where mysteries and the missing meet. We're conspiracies lurk around
every corner. Welcome to the deep Dark Truth. Welcome back to the deep
dark Truth. I'm Mo, I'm Chip, and I'm Liky, And today
we're going to be talking about various Internet rabbit holes that I've fallen down that
never became full episodes. I've got a couple too, and one of these
during the course of this became its own full episode. So today I'm going
to be talking about Cicada thirty three oh one. On January fourth, twenty
twelve, a mysterious image was posted to four chan. Soon it would be
one of the most frequently discussed Internet mysteries. The image was simply a block
of white text on a black screen. It read, Hello, we are
looking for the intelligent individuals. To find them, we have devised a test.
There is a message hidden in this image. Find it and it will
lead you on the road to us. We look forward to meeting the few
that will make it all the way through. Good Luck thirty three oh one.
The intelligent people did not engage with this, so they failed the test
already. When the image was decrypted, it took you to an immager link,
and that imager link it was a picture of a duck and it said,
whoops, just decoys. This way looks like you can't guess how to
get the message out. But if you were to take the words guess and
out using a scenography tool called out guests, you got a different message,
and so on and so forth. It then directed you to a Reddit form,
and naturally it took off on Reddit, and as Reddit is the living
room of the Internet, Tales of the Cipher made its way into mainstream Internet
culture. Every One wanted to know how to solve the mysterious puzzles, but
in order to reach the next puzzle, you had to solve the previous ones
in no particular order. The rest of the puzzles contained book ciphers, QR
codes that were posted all over the world, mysterious answering machines and trips to
the dark Web. I do want to take a second, though, and
post one of the examples, which is this answering machine message which you can
hear right now. Very good, you have done well. There are three
prime numbers associated with the original final dot j peg image three three zero one
is one of them, you will have to find the other two. We
don't apply all three of these numbers together and at a dot com on the
end to find the next step. Good luck, goodbye. There is also,
like I said, QR codes that were posted on telephone polls and various
places found in many major cities throughout the world, showing that this puzzle had
at least global connections whoever was associated with it. There was also web pages
using the tour browser. But who was thirty three oz one a hacktivist group
like anonymous, a cult, a secret society, or maybe they didn't really
exist at all and the puzzle was simply a recruitment tool for a three letter
agency then say the CIA, the FBI, LSD, whatever. Those who
solved the first set of puzzles in twenty twelve leaked the alleged email they sent
when they reached the end is now a direct from Wikipedia quote. The first
puzzle was solved by Marcus Wanner. According to him, those who solved the
puzzles were asked questions about their support of information freedom, online privacy, and
freedom and rejection of censorship. Those who answered satisfactorily at this stage were invited
to a private forum where they were instructed to devise and complete a project intended
to further the ideals of the group. He did not finish his work on
a method of general decryption, and the website was then later removed, which
is the case for a lot of these puzzles. In fact, at the
end, the original image was then replaced and said simply again a black image
with white text. Hello, we have found the individuals we sought. This
is our month long journey ends for now. Thank you for your dedication and
effort. If you are unable to complete the test or did not receive an
email, do not despair. There will be opportunities like this one. Thank
you all thirty three oh one. It also says ps and has a long
bout of numbers, then backslash long bout of numbers, backslash long bout of
numbers, indicating that there's at least three different words or sentences or messages within
it. Allegedly, the original email was then leak thirty three O one Cicada.
This has been modified from your original text in order to remove your Uber
Secret identification signature. If you think it belongs to any particular applicant, it
does not and you do know what I mean. I'm guessing this is the
leaker put this through some type of encryption code so that they wouldn't be immediately
outed as the one that leaked the email. Do not share this information.
Congratulations, your month of testing has come to an end. Out of the
thousands who attempted it, you are one of the only few who have succeeded.
There is one last step. Although there will not be any hidden codes,
or secret messages or physical treasure hunts, this last step is only honesty.
We have always been honest with you, and we shall continue to be
honest with you, and we expect you to be honest with us in return.
You have all wondered who we are, and so we shall now tell
you. We are an international group. We have no name, we have
no symbol, we have no membership rosters, we do not have a public
website, and we do not advertise ourselves. We are a group of individuals
who have proven ourselves much like you have by completing this recruitment contest, and
we are drawn together by common beliefs. A careful reading of the texts used
in this contest would have revealed some of those beliefs that tyranny and oppression of
any kind must end, that censorship is wrong, and that privacy is an
unalienable right. We are not a hacker group. We are not a war
as group. We do not engage in illegal activity, nor do our numbers.
If you are engaged in illegal activity, we ask that you cease any
and all illegal activities or decline membership at this time. We will not ask
questions if you decline. However, if you lie to us, we will
find out. You are undoubtedly wondering what it is that we do. We
are much like a think tank, and that our primary focus is on researching
and developing techniques to aid the idea as we advocate liberty, privacy, security.
You have undoubtedly heard of a few of our past projects, and if
you choose to accept membership, we are happy to have you on board to
help with future projects. Please reply to this email with the answers to the
next few questions to continue. Do you believe that every human being has a
right to privacy and an animity and it is within their rights to use tools
which help obtain and maintain privacy, cash, strong encryption, nimity software,
etc. Do you believe that information should be free. Do you believe that
censorship harms humanity? We look forward to hearing from you. Thirty three oh
one. The Cicada in Cicada thirty three oh one comes from the imagery associated
with the puzzles of you guessed it a cicada plot twist? Is it like
a metaphor because they sleep for seven years or whatever and then they strike?
That would be really cool, But I do not think so so, because
he did do puzzles for several years. The last public and verified communications from
Cicada thirty three oh one was in April of twenty seventeen. Oftentimes, those
communications have been verifying that they weren't associated with some sort of hacking that happened
or some sort of something that was bad. We're not quan on. Yeah,
people speculating are they a terrorist cell? Things like that, and only
had they actually commented and released statements if news organizations picked up those things.
If that makes sense, real news not read it. Yeah, not just
like online speculation, but like, hey, now ABC News is speculating that
we're hackers that were not hackers. So the original message was posted to four
chan, but it was posted to four chan's paranormal board. So I'm personally
of the opinion that we were like witnessing the creation of a creepy pasta or
some type of like alternate reality game, a purposeful splash to the Internet,
if that makes sense. So, like the puzzles were real, and there
was involvement obviously from people all over the world because the QR codes popped up
all over the world. But I really think that it was like an intentional
conspiracy versus what they say it is, if that makes sense, like viral
marketing, but not it didn't actually come to perruition as marketing. Yeah,
like I could just see us doing it, Oh yes, what I'm saying,
Like I could just see us being like, we're gonna do this,
but we Also that's the thing that I don't understand about the motivation. You
would use it as a tipping off point, Like the last clue would be
the QR code and it just like goes to our Spotify, you know what
I mean, Like we would use it for something, even if it sends
somebody to a petition, I would understand, but the end goal is so
unclear. While it seems like but they don't believe in censorship, and this
and that, But they're not a hacktivist group like they say they're not a
hacktivist group. What's the point if you're not actively working towards specific goals,
to reaching those goals versus like, oh, I just don't like this,
we don't like censorship. Okay, Well, then you're recruiting people to do
something about it, right, But it seems like that we recruited you to
do something about it part never happen. Where's the call to action? Exactly?
Where's the call to action? If you're watching us on YouTube right now,
we need you to smash the thumbs up and don't forget to ring that
bell subscribe? But it's like it's raising awareness type of we're not actually asking
you to do anything, but just raising awareness is in self a thing.
But I feel like the reason awareness part didn't come until the very end.
And I also feel like that's not the part that people focus on. And
so you have to realize people aren't going to focus on that part when it
seems like you're recruiting for a secret society, right, you have to realize
that that your message will be completely lost in the puzzles. What they claim
is their goal. Then they were successful. We don't know how many people
recruited. Maybe everyone answered no, I don't believe in freedom. How many
people in the world with the conspiracy and around this and around the QR codes
and around everything and around all that, we're thinking about that now, like
there are two main points that they wanted humanity to think about. And I
see, and that's what I'm saying. I think that maybe that was their
message. But I just don't see how I couldn't see that that message would
be lost because while we're bringing up the fact that's what their end goal was,
that's not the intriguing thing about it. And it's not the thing that
if you're telling somebody quickly, sure, what is Cicada thirty three one?
You probably never even mentioned that, right, I say, Oh, it
was this series of puzzles. It started on the internet. Everyone was trying
to figure it out. It was crazy. There was all these different parts
to it, and you had to like solve one to get to the next
one. But at no point are you like, yeah, they were probably
recruiting to like stop censorship. I don't know. Yeah, yeah, their
heart wasn't the right place, I guess. But if we did it,
and we didn't have, you know, the Spotify link. It would just
be because we want to be extra. The real excitement around it was having
this massive conspiracy that wasn't planned until until it was just said that it was
just a message and this is who we are and this is what we want
to promote. So like, I kind of disagree that from hearing it.
From my perspective, I didn't even know about this at all. I'm more
intrigued by their message and it has got me thinking about it, and that's
the thing that I would remember most about this. I'm surprised I didn't I
didn't know about this or knew it and forgot it. Yeah, you probably
knew it and forgot it. Probably you know who knew about it and didn't
forget it? Hank Green. This is a second book of his, Like
some of it sounds like it could have been a quote from the book.
I was. I'm sitting here like, oh, so he just lifted this
straight up from Missicada? Got it? How long did these games trials?
Things go on? For the first puzzle started on Jadruary fourth, twenty twelve,
and it was about a month long, and then the second the next
year on its anniversary January four, twenty thirteen, and then there was another
round on January fourth, twenty fourteen. But that third puzzle nobody ever solved
it all the way through. There wasn't one post sent January four, twenty
fifteen, but the following year, since the previous twenty fourteen puzzle was not
ever completed. There was a clue that was posted in twenty sixteen about the
twenty fourteen puzzle. So are we are we saying that the people who solved
twenty twelve got an email and then a new puzzle came up entirely or were
they all the same line? First puzzle January of twenty twelve. They last
one month, the people get the emails that they have made it all the
way through. Then there's a second round the following year in twenty thirty,
so they're distinctly separate. So they're distinctively separate it It does not appear that
it was still ever solved, But then again, someone could have solved it
and kept their mouth shut as they should. There might just not be any
leaks. Yeah. Yeah, there is a website though that will be at
the top of our sources that walks you through the first set of puzzles in
great detail and you'd like to learn more about them. Also even tells you
how exactly to solve them, whether it's various websites or various cryptography sites to
use, etc. Etc. Just kind of bookmark that for D and D
puzzle ideas. Okay, got it? What hell you're like, all right,
there's a QR code that is in Switzerland, Send us the puzzles,
send us the third puzzle, and we will say, oh, okay,
I make none of those same promises whatsoever. We will chip and I will
solve I See. The thing is, it's not even that I don't think
that people are capable of it. I think that just the kind of people
that hyper fixate. Like to me, deciphering binary just sounds a miserable,
like that doesn't sound like a good time, Like a lot of it just
doesn't well, Yeah, like a lot of places you just throw it in
a translator, but a lot of like the kind The only thing that I
would have super been interested in. But this is just specific to me is
the part of the first set of puzzles there was a book cipher It led
to this original text by Thomas Bullfinch that was all tales about King Arthur and
the Knights of the Ground Table and and very specifically the Holy Grail. This
puzzle is nicknamed the Holy Grail because of this specific passage that it's taken,
and then it just forms a new separate like there's a sentence that's fun,
like going page to page. And there is a genre of experimental fiction.
There's this book s by Doug dorriston JJ Abrams, and there's another book called
House of Leaves, and those books are are similar, like very specifically with
House of Leaves, some pages are meant to be read out of order or
upside down, or there's different hidden codes within the book that I find fun.
The rest of it, yeah, I don't find if. It's just
like this is busy work essentially, I have to just sit here and go
through. I think it's very much like the solving the mystery aspect is what
pushes a lot of people. But there is a lot of code and sourcing
involved, and if you don't know where to look, then you're just googling
to try and figure out what you should even be using to un encrypt something
or decipher or something, and that's just not fun, right. This is
where a chip comes in. Google food Master Mikey is putting you to work.
I'm the intern. Do you guys have any theories? Just based on
what you know? Obviously not getting too crazy deep into it, but based
on what you've heard. Clearly it's someone just fucking with everyone. It's just
us in a different timeline. It's fun to make people go on a red
herring, Mikey, what about you? I think the opposite as a meaning,
I think it exists. I think what they say is true. I
think they're just a think tank that creates change. But secretly I want that
to be true if I agree with their ideals. But I don't believe in
optimism, so I want to believe in a secret society. I also want
that to be true. I know that there has to be some type of
international involvement, so it's not that I doubt it being true. I don't
understand if that's their purpose. Why they thought that that would be what most
people got from the puzzles. Well, supposedly their thing. They don't care
what the general public knows. If they're going by what they say, it's
to find people who are helpful to them. Well, that's true. I
think they're just trying to find diligent, good moral people who are hard working,
diligent, determined smart. It's just that this test it shows that someone
is stubborn and will solve a puzzle. It does not have anything to do
with morality. Yeah, exactly to me, the puzzles and like the mystery
of it. Yeah, but then coupled with the honesty aspect of it and
probably the reason they chose them in the first place. If it's a call
out to the whole Internet, the kind of people that it attracts are going
to be people that want to solve the mystery, not necessarily people that it's
their dying passion. Like, for example, I can say, yes,
I believe censorship is bad and I agree with these ideals, but that also
doesn't mean that I want to make that specifically my cause that I'm doing a
think tank for definitely my priority, even if I think right. Also,
you could just lie that says just say yes, I do. Like the
if you do illegal activity, please see saw the legal activity. This was
my favorite part of the whole thing. I love it. They want to
make it very clear that they are not endorsing any kind of illegal activity,
and like, if you came here because you wanted to be a activist or
this or that, they want to make it clear that this isn't the place
for you. I do think the messaging because going back, it's a way
to lead out people who that may be immoral or cheat or take the easy
way out, and that's not the type of people that they're trying to collect.
Yeah, but it just seems like that you would say that at the
beginning. I'm not doubting what they did, but the order in which they
did it. If they would have said it at the beginning, we're a
think tank, or even like the second puzzle, we're a think tank.
This is our mission. We want to make sure that you agree with these
ideals, saying somebody has already done all this labor of doing this before they
find out what the mission is. And I think they would have attracted more
like minded people if they told those people like, hey, do you hate
these things too? Do you like these things too? Do you want to
make change? We're looking for people that are highly intelligent, blah blah blah,
and included that in that statement. Sure, where there's a margin of
error that you might not get interested because you come out the gate with and
now you know it's that's a completely different tone though, if you do it
that way, and it's if you're like, hey, come join our liberal
think tank. Here's some puzzles. Does not come off the same as here
are some puzzles. That's true. I just feel like there was a better
time in the process then right at the end. Yeah, most of those
people might just be like, yeah, I was just here for the puzzles,
thanks, man, you know what I mean. You don't want that
to be and that's fine. Maybe they're not looking for numbers though, that's
true. Maybe they're just looking for like the dedication. Yeah, they're testing.
It's one big giant test. But you're it is weird to lay all
the eggs in the basket at the end and really only test them on like
what I mean, your ability to solve puzzles. Determination and intelligence maybe and
perseverance. That's yeah, And I feel like there's other ways to be intelligent
and bring things to the table that have nothing to do with puzzles either.
There is this thing about if you you do small asks and the more a
person has said yes, to here last, the bigger the thing, they'll
go to a bit of a sunk cost fallacy. So once they've gotten to
the email sort of got them in a way simply because they did this whole
fucking thing, and they're like, I saw that fucking puzzle. They're invested.
Yeah, they're invested at this point. Yet. So, Mikey,
as our resident boomer, do you know that everything has become crab? Crab?
Everything become crab? No, you're not anili No, Well, as
the Internet will tell you, everything in the world is becoming crab. The
one true evolution of nature is that crabs just keep evolving. It's a good
shape. So I was like, I wonder why that is. And the
answer is it's not that interesting. It's not that interesting, But let me
tell you about it. So what you're basically saying is that crabs are like
evolving more so than most of the species on this planet all the time.
Is that what you're saying, Well, there's been five instances entirely separate from
each other, where the crab shape the crabness has evolved. And that's interesting.
I see what you're saying. More species are starting to evolve towards the
crab shape. Is that what you're saying. Yeah, I would prefer to
be a lobster. They're immortal, but that's just me. Yeah, what's
that about. What's the I haven't looked into that? That should be your
next Internet rabbit hole, Mike. We've contributed. It's so bizarre. I
would very much like to be immortal. I mean, the ANSWER's got to
be within them. Depend It depends so much on the rules of the immortality.
And where's the phone of youth? Well, it's obviously in the lobsters.
Have we looked it's also the jellyfish is a jellyfish. Yeah, that's
true. If you bred a lobster with a jellyfish. Things are becoming more
crab like. Period. Why well, first, what is crap? What
are we calling when we say something evolved to be crabbly? It's a relatively
flat, round us body shape. There's the flattening and bending of the pleon,
which is the abdomen type thing of the lobster, the dobster tail ish
type thing. So there's that, there's the lack of a significant tail,
and then the like certain things the sternites have fused into at least partially a
single sort of Sternham type thing going on, and that one's complicated. Don't
ask me to explain it in detail. Meaning instead of having like two rib
cages, it's kind of being coming one type. Yeah, yeah, something
like that. Similar to that, you have sort of the reduction of certain
muscles, specifically the ones and the legs that do the forward and backward,
not the side to side. Got it. The reason we think this is
interesting is because there were like five instances of entirely unrelated crustaceans that move towards
this, And it's interesting because they're in vastly different environments as far as the
ocean is concerned. These ones lives on a volcano, an underwater volcano,
and these ones live on the coast. What do you mean they both became
crab. That's weird. It see. To me, ending up in like
a flatter shell shape makes sense because of how heavy the ocean it actually is
when you're on the bottom of it, and so to me, it makes
sense that they would become flatter in the same way that sting rays became flatter.
But also my biggest thing is protection, probably because basically creating a back
shape and exoskeleton and flattening the surface can protect your internal ones underneath instead of
being exposed outward, so that they're coming in and their internal organs that need
protecting are underneath their biggest surface, you know. Yeah, And they would
keep their legs and not swim for that exact same reason, because then their
their belly is never exposed to anything except for the ocean floor. Those are
basically some decent guesses as to like, you know, all just aren't certain
why this happened, but here are some hypotheses. Having the pleon bent in
under you is less surface area for a predator to grab, no lobster tail
grabbing. You have a lower center of gravity. That's probably helpful. There's
lots of gravity down there. Defensively, it's really good. All of them,
I guess all of them hold their eggs with the curved under pleon,
and so if that's underneath you, that's a lot easier to protect. For
the ones that do have the side to side movement, running side to side,
when all your predators expect you to run forward and backward, that helps.
It's confusing them and maybe the flatter rounder body is better for like hiding
in crevices or under rocks or shit like that, or looking like a rock.
Yeah, so why isn't this a full episode because it's it's not that
interesting. It's just that down a rabbit hole and ended up with a dead
end. Yeah. Yeah, sometimes that happens with rabbit holes. Sometimes you
think it's going to be a very interesting I prefer those because the three day
rabbit holes aren't fun. Yeah, the three day rabbit holes are a lot.
Right. I want an answer, but I don't want a boring answer.
These were only crustaceans who evolved into it. There's no not even crustacean
that's evolved crablely. There's a lot of species, more than five I think
that evolved away from crab. They're like, we're done with being crab.
And it's just a specific example of convergent evolution, and there are lots of
those. For example of really interesting one, there are animals that can sleep
with half their brain while the other half is awake. It's called uni hemispheric
slow wave sleep, and it evolved separately in migratory birds like thrushes, dolphins,
whales, manatees, and seals. Yeah. I think I maybe knew
that about thrushes feels like a Brennan Lee Mulligan bird fact. Not everything become
crab it boring convergion evolution. It's interesting. In general. Those are Internet
rabbit holes I've fallen down. If you want to suggest some that you think
we should check out, you can send them to the Deep Dark Truth Podcast
at gmail dot com or text them to the tipline at three one three three
five three four one one. Until next time, I'm Tho, I'm Chip,
and I'm Mikey wee by by by. That's all, folks, You
just listen to the Deep Dark Truth Podcast. See you next time, and
remember your local cryptids want to meet you.