Bold of them to assume I wouldn't steal a car

@@sethberry9185 Bold of them to assume I'm not posting this comment from my phone inside a stolen 2018 Honda Accord V6 6MT coupe with Nevada registration

@@Julianna.Domina is your phone a stolen iphone 7?

Gsl

@@sethberry9185😊

It’s fake. It was made by a KZfaqr named Joey Perleoni. He made a ton of fake videos of the anti-piracy screens. It even tricked JJ

@@camgreenee Well he did do a good job. You know you have succeeded with a video like this, when I'd rather smash up my DS right there and then than listen to any more of it.

We need this IRL. There isn't enough stigma against piracy.

i kind of shat myself too

@@camgreenee it didn’t trick me, I called the segment “phony anti piracy screens”

"the TV left me all alone" is a perfect way to describe that experience! waking up in a dark living room with that test pattern screen on the TV after you dozed off.. spooky.

I remember wanting to have the TV turned off before the end of the National Anthem so I didn’t have to experience the test pattern.

Interestingly the Soviet Union had there own test pattern with the National anthem played before it's a bit less unsettling but not much, but at least the uplifting music and images beforehand make it easier

Your profile picture terrified me as an adult

Same here. Sign-offs scared the hell outta me, and just thinking about them makes my insides want to scream and run away. Test pattern on its own, no problem. National anthem on its own, no problem. Add in the "end of..." announcement? AAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!

It’s because you wear that silly hat all the time.

@@joshuataylor3550 this fear is still in people who are white.

@@joshuataylor3550 He is very white... and god damn I need to catch up on my boy's videos, holup

hello

Police are terrifying, and generally of no use. I saw my very first payoff when i was nine or ten. Every time ive been robbed, they show up, take a few notes, and then disappear forever.

Do you have the book name? If so please tell us, sounds like a sweet read.

@@benjaminbustamante7924 it's a trilogy called "Apocalipsis Z" by Manel Loureiro. The first book is the scariest in my opinion since most of the time is the protagonist alone till he bumps into people, the second and the third are interesting as well but the third takes some peculiar twists that at some point make it feel like a different story than the first book. Still, a nice reading that accompanied me through my bus trips in my first year of university.

Looks like it was translated in to English too

Why was that happening? Does it ever say? Is it because since people were dying there wasn’t anybody to manually update

@@41052 as far as I remember, yes.

I’ve seen a compilation of emergency alarm systems recently. We Brazilians were represented in it too. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/itByoaekubWrpZs.html

The channel Harvester that JJ mentioned features a video on Brazil too

I'm scared of the Brazilian authority too

@@felipeitoanuatti it’s too creepy for me to watch it LOL

oh dang you nooob

I'd put it like this: You are off the map. You are in a place where not even the universal background noise of your society can reach you. Beyond here be dragons, or perhaps the Lord Humungus, the Ayatollah of Rock and Rolla. There's a sense of being all by yourself that comes from these things.

This, I think, is one reason why the zombie genre is a perennial genre in North American horror. You have two interlocking elements: One is the fact that there is a teaming mass of monsters that individually are often unimpressive yet in a heavily populated world can be abundant (which is why "period" zombie movies, with a handful of exceptions, don't work), and the other is the existential dread that you've mentioned. There are exceptions, but I think the reason why the genre hasn't taken root outside the Anglosphere, at least until recently, is because of this assumption of reliable social cohesion. Even Western Europe was torn by war less than a century ago; in Northern America millennials were told stories by their grandparents of gloriously saving the world, but in France, Germany, Poland, etc. millennials were told stories by their grandparents of dodging one high stake threat after another. At that time, it was really only the western hemisphere that was "safe" from war (although even Australia and the UK enjoyed a greater amount of security than most of Europe and southern and eastern Asia), and of that small set of nations really only the United States and Canada have enjoyed a persistent sense of security since then. A zombie movie seems absolutely shocking to those audiences, but to most of the rest of the world, the only thing unrealistic about that genre is the idea of flesh eating monsters. Everything else is potentially recent memory, if not currently happening.

We're DOOOOOOMED!

It's fear of change and the fear of the unknown

Not to sound morbid, but this is what it must feel like for the citizens of Ukraine. The hardest thing to watch is the elderly cursing the Russians for bringing hell in the last days of their lives. When they are no longer physically, or mentally capable it handle it.

Agreed, this is why I always look forward to his videos when the weekend comes. I always found those "alert" videos a bit unsettling growing up and it's interesting to see a guy break them down.

I was once handcuffed during a traffic stop because I behaved weirdly around the police, including by getting out of the car. Humiliating on two levels: being treated like a criminal, and not knowing the proper procedures and protocols for dealing with an authority figure.

I thought you were jokingly describing 5 Nights at Freddie's until you got to the point where you mentioned the customers.

@@jonhanson8925 Ha! I only thought of food service because it's fast-paced and slightly more intuitive than, say, figuring out a computer program at a desk job

This happened to me with two jobs. The first one was a restaurant, but I wasn't the only one there, so I figured it out and made through the first day. The second was at a dry cleaners, where I was the only person in the building and the only phone number I had to call for help was for the store phone I was calling on. I definitely charged people wrong that day.

This description sort of reminds me of that classic I Love Lucy where Lucy and Ethel have to wrap chocolates on a line! For those who haven't seen it: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/gZmRq7hjx5bIdJ8.html

That's just papa's pizzeria

watching the shutdown "goodbye" card felt chilling lol. IDK why

do you think abs cbn will be back on the air sometime in the future?

@@jonnathan1869 they probably won't be. it's rumored that the mastermind behind the shutdown will be appointed as the head of marcos jr.'s justice department. even if somehow abs-cbn is able to come back, their news department will probably avoid criticizing the administration in fear of being shut down again.

Can’t wait till next 2020

That’s interesting! I think if the CBC shut down in Canada I would be singing songs of joy.

Yes. I was in Disney plus the other day and was watching some early Pixar shorts from the 80s Tin Toy or Red's Dream I think and they are super unnerving. And I hate shitting on those shorts because I know so much hard work was put into them at the time and they laid the groundwork for the amazing CG animation we have today. But the shorts themselves they're still really disturbing and creepy. Heck as I get older movies like Toy Story (which I adored so much I wore out my VHS copy) are somewhat off-putting now too. I notice the animation limitations and errors of the time and it feels off.

Yeah, anything pre-toy story seems jarring to look at. I'm just a year older than you btw.

I remember being put off whenever I saw an episode of Re-Boot growing up.

This was a pretty interesting comment. I was born in 1987, and can _just about_ recall some of the CGI from my childhood in the 90's. Whenever I look at 90's media now, being a man in my mid-thirties, I'm always struck by just how badly aged and bizarre it is.

I was born in 98, and I don't find early CGI that creepy. It's weird, but also kind of fascinating.

This is a great insight. I think 1984 was probably the first major work of literature that posted a theory in which the middle class could be enslaved.

What also keeps it relevant is the fact that it isn't so much fantasy as reality. Reading about life in the USSR, the state that inspired it, and current events in Russia and China make it shockingly clear how close to reality the book is. Really makes me appreciate my middle class life in a free country like the USA despite our myriad flaws.

Same thing with a handmaid's tale.

@@JJMcCullough "1984" even emphasizes that the lower classes are in a sense more free--they're grindingly poor, but the state basically leaves them alone and allows them simple pleasures as long as they don't stray outside of narrow parochial concerns. It's the people with a little more privilege, the society's "knowledge workers", who have to be mentally under the boot 24/7.

@@JJMcCullough)I think most dystopias are about middle class (most protagonists from dystopian works are middle class) enslavement with, for example, Brave New World focusing on enslavement through materialistic contentment, 1984 through tyrannical oppression, Fahrenheit 451 through mass apathy and anti-intellectualism, etc. (If I'm not mistaken in all three books the lower class is depicted as some combination of dumb, ignorant, simple, and/or easily manipulated. Which is probably how most of the middle class view their poorer counterparts.)

Good point. I have to say that one of the unexpectedly disturbing element of the pandemic was the changes I saw at my local Walmart, first seeing bare shelves in the food aisle and then seeing the hours cut so that I could no longer reliably turn to them for all my late night needs. It was a stark reminder of the fragility of modern society.

That is such a good point. Feeling that certain institutions are stable and consistent is so important, especially when traveling or in an unfamiliar environment. Another good example of this would be fast food restaurants always strive to be consistent and serve the same food across all of their different stores, to provide a consistent and stable experience that you don’t have to gamble on.

At least in my language it is translated as "neplatná operace" (invalid operation) so it doesn't sound so terrifying

Lol here in mexico is "operacion invalida" i dont know if i could survive the 90s

Blue Screen of Death will invoke horror in older Millennials/younger Xers. Much more real visceral horror than the crappy effects used by Hollywood.

DOS is scary AF. From the old days of dual boot Windows...if something went wrong and it switched to DOS on you that was horrifying.

When i was little i was playing around that Pivot animator thingy and it suddendly blue screened, it also made a weird creepy noise, i almost had a heart attack

Ah yeah, Infomercials. Instead of the Test Patterns, usually what would happen is after a certain point and until a certain point the TV stations here would just run advertising for all sorts of products for anything from cookware to Girls Gone Wild.

You know what's _really_ weird? You'd still see commercials for things like medications and whatnot on Cartoon Network, during children's programming! I remember as a kid how there seemed to be a disconnect between the advertising and the actual demographic of the program that was airing.

@@movezig5 made you realize this isn't your world

@@movezig5 Gotta target the demographic that's stuck watching the kids show I guess?

@@movezig5 Same. Like seeing the anti-drug PSAs on Nickelodeon. Would anti-drug PSAs be counted as middle-class horror?

I remember watching one about some guy going on a rampage and becoming too angry to die

One that I personally love, is the radio warnings in black mesa about the resonance cascade, they are so realistic and frigtening.

I recommend David Lynch's "Blue Velvet" (1986). Perhaps you've seen it. That's what comes to mind when you mention "dangerous, sinister, or other worldly lurking" in the suburbs. If you haven't seen it, it is very violent, sexually sadistic, and bizarre. And it still is after 35 years.

@@maxshea1829 Thanks for the recommendation! I've heard good things about that film, guess I'll check it out!

tfw the thin mask over your normal world slips off.

Exactly! Makes me wonder if there are horror that is specific to lower class America. You know, other than food scarcity and other obvious things.

also i dont think jj would see this but i love your videos about horror type stuff

I wonder about voting machines malfunctioning being Middle Class Horror.

i hate when that happens

​@@zerotwoisreali even had to change passwords.

I'd specify that the desire is more to be contrarian that to openly rebel; to irreverently defy but within the boundaries of authority. To also use Stanley Parable as an example: the player doesn't actually want to break the game, but to go against the narrator within the established confines of the game.

You're onto something with that Streisand effect, but I can't be sure anyone else knows who she is anymore.

Can you tell me a bit about those things

@@JJMcCullough They’re fictional stories about some sort of unimaginable, Lovecraftian-type horror told through the medium of VHS tapes. Most of them present themselves as training videos or informational until they take a dark twist into the horror aspect.

@@JJMcCullough Gemini Home Entertainment is a story about an alien disease that can possess planets and that can transform you into just your nervous system and bones while wearing your skin to pass off as you as a way to lure and infect other people told through informational and promotional VHS tapes made by the Gemini Home Entertainment company. It's very creepy stuff, and it's not as gory as it may sound like

@@JJMcCullough The Mandela Catalogue is essentially a collection of recordings both from official and non-official sources from the 90s to today of a phenomena that has been terrorizing the citizens of the county of Mandela by unknown beings known as "Alternates". It's genuinely terrifying at times. Gemini Home Entertainment is an archive of those 80s/90s style educational tapes, but with a deeply Lovecraftian bent to it. "The Backrooms" isn't one particular series but more of a general universe setting that coincides with another concept called "liminal spaces", which are generally these creepy in-between locations where something just feels off about it. There's a fantastic video called "The Backrooms (Found Footage)" that should give you a good idea of it.

@@JJMcCullough The backrooms specifically is a very interesting continuation of drawing fears from our current understanding of things. Specifically computers, videogames, and the existence of Simulation Theory. The latter of which argues that life is a computer simulation, and thus we can apply this "computer logic" to not only ourselves but also in situations we may find bizarre, paranormal, or unexplained. The Backrooms specifically were first described as a 6 hundred million square miles of mono-yellow wallpaper walls, the stink of moist carpet, and the maddening hum of florescent lighting. Seemingly an unfurnished office space that goes on forever**, where finding oneself there would assuredly mean death from isolation and madness as you're essentially trapped within a never ending maze. -- The never ending maze having been modeled off a "Liminal Space", which are their own rabbit hole that you should look into if you haven't already. But the major crux of the Backrooms is that in order to get there, one has to "NoClip" out of reality. NoClip in this instance being the same as when in videogames, characters or objects may clip/pass through walls unintentionally. -- Circling back around, the existence of The Backrooms implies that we are all in the Front Rooms, the stable and correct part of the simulation where the world exists as it should be, and so to enter The Backrooms is comparable to going to places the developers of this simulation never intended us to see. People have now taken this idea and run with it, now describing The Backrooms as having multiple levels, countless perhaps, with each one having varying degrees of intrigue and survivability. Much like a game. One that Includes search and discovery, helpful and hurtful items, as well as avoiding scary monsters. -Things that perhaps might not make sense to past generations, but is instantly understandable to those who have grown up playing videogames for our whole lives and wouldn't have to think twice about the jargon. Which makes total sense when you learn that the original meme/image that kicked off the idea was first posted to 4chan.

life noggin?

favourite*

@@justawful8404 favorite is the american english way of spelling it

Life noggin? Wut

I wonder if this sentiment led to the popularity of true crime, creepy pastas, and icebergs.

Worked on in what sense

@@JJMcCullough made up some lore and story for the series! if there's proof needed my name is in the end of the finale credits it was fun, I started producing an epilogue for it a little over a year ago

I remember reading that Soviet media played Swan Lake whenever political tension was happening - it got to the point that seeing Swan Lake on Soviet TV was an indicator that something was happening at the Kremlin

Now I know why TV Rain, a Russian network forcibly shut down for "misinformation" earlier in 2022, played that as its final broadcast. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/grJooLN7scyyc2w.html

Hmmmmm. I guess there’s probably some truth in there. I definitely think fear of the fragility of middle-class life is a pretty omnipresent theme in a lot of psychological horror. But I also feel like a lot of that takes the form of some aspect of middle-class existence turning against the middle class heroes, as opposed to some manifestation of the lower classes invading their space or attacking them.

Oh, definitely. Look at the context in which "The Walking Dead" got popular!

There's also a borderline masochistic aspect to it also, as personified in the fascination with dead malls. And the Victorian Italianate houses that fell into decay after one of America's many boom & bust cycles. These were the McMansions of their day, but transformed into the setting for American horror. I will also put this out there: I used to live in Transylvania, and no one kept wooden stakes in their homes for fear of vampires. But in America, many of my fellow countrymen stockpile an absurd amount of guns and ammo for "the zombie apocalypse." I don't know which is worse: the prospect that they are in any way serious about that, which is ludicrous obviously, or whether it's a coded way of referencing the above mentioned phenomenon. I can't help but think back to that wealthy couple in St. Louis some years ago, when the protesters used their street to transit to the next location of protest, they came out of their house brandishing an AR-15. And these people were known to be devout liberals until that moment. What I can see as a through line for all of this, in the middle class horror genre, is a tacit understanding that our civilization is very complex, and while that complexity makes it a marvel of human achievement, it also makes it into a very thin, very fragile veneer, which could shatter at any moment.

@@DanCapostagno Interesting. Wooden stakes. LOL! Dead malls. I was teenager in the early eighties. That was the apex of mall culture. Dead malls haunt me because they remind me of my youth. My youth is gone. I see my own mortality.

@@maxshea1829 Likewise. Grim to be sure. But on the upside, sometimes when I'm at the supermarket, the oldies radio they pipe into the background will play Haddaway's "What Is Love" or Technotronic's "Pump The Jam." So sometimes our decay can manifest in forms that are both surreal and magical. On a similar note, one more Romanian anecdote: I enjoy the music of Ace of Base, because it gives me feelings of intense nostalgia for my youth and reminds me of those more carefree times, but my Romanian friends are giant fans for an entirely different reason. During the early 90s, when the Sign was atop the charts, they were fighting a brutal street battle to oust their dictator, Ceausescu. After the tanks fell silent, and the people were free from totalitarianism, they turned their radios and publicly broadcast Western radio for the first time, and what they all heard was "I saw the sign, and it opened up my eyes..." So to this day, they get the feels when they hear it, because it has a literal mental association with freedom to them.

I like the backrooms stuff. It reminds me of the feeling I had when I had to stay late at school sometimes. Sure there would still be some teachers and janitor around but some areas were completed deserted and it's and erie feeling for sure.

@@Zekana0 same. I've been to events in the building where I went to middle school after dark, with the hallway lights off and the gym eerily empty and quiet. Like I remember these places but I remember them in certain contexts with certain emotions, and removing those contexts and emotions feels so wrong.

My favorite description of the backrooms is one I wrote that embodies the suffering I envision to be the most horrifying it could embody. I'll try to conjure it up right now. You wake up in a hallway. The walls and carpet are yellow. The air is a pleasant, neutral temperature. The carpet is slightly damp, but not mildewy. It's well-lit with the lights a cold white. There isn't another person in sight or earshot. As you wander, you find more halls, but no doors nor windows. You do not tire, you do not feel hunger or thirst. You do not feel hot or cold. In short, your body is maintained in perfect homeostasis and your mind in perfect wakefulness. This is your forever. Bland, empty, lonely. When and how do you break?

It’s a good example. Border crossings and airports tend to give a lot of middle-class people anxiety because it is often the only times that they are forced to deal with state authority figures.

Wearing guns & frowns.

I've always been afraid of thief detectors at the store exit even though I've never stolen.

@@ShadowFireXX Whenever I hear an accidental sounding of the shoplifting alarm at a supermarket or big box store, I always immediately think "was it me?"

I mean, this is true

That’s so true, this idea that the “secret forbidden banned episode” or whatever somehow represents the TRUE agenda of the producers.

Check out the Garfield comic strip where it’s just him alone in an abandoned house and he can’t get out.

I saw something that states how the game is also heavily centered around the intent of the artist vs the interpretation of the player. This is basically since the narrator wants to tell a story about Stanley rebelling by getting the good ending but creates narrative dissonance in making it so the player doesn’t feel like they themselves are since they have to listen to the narrator completely to do so. I do have to say it is crazy how much narrative depth is within such a seemingly simple game

@@plugshirt1762, true!

I could see it playing before the world ends. Like in case of CNN being forcibly shut down by a military junta for being "fake news"

It's interesting that abandoned malls, liminal spaces, anti piracy warnings, computer errors, TV sign offs and test patterns all seem to make people uncomfortable What is it about these things that have that effect? And why, as JJ suggests, do these things scare the middle class but not the working class?

i was thinking of that song too!

Was thinking of that as well--great song!!

Not only is the authority inescapable but also necessary to climb the societal ladder.

I feel that this fear might also manifest in the lower strata of society.

You can be lower class and have things to lose. Maybe not as monetarily valuable, but stuff that is valuable to you. Especially in terms of survival or general comfort.

​@@snm56693lower,middle,we all have things to lose,which explains why we're susceptable to horror(really just fucking terror)

I remember that. At work my bosses were nonchalant and clueless and I actually had to straighten them out. They didn't want to send somebody home who was constantly coughing. After speaking to the manager I convinced him that he indeed had the authority to send people home and eventually he did. I knew that in light of such authority, compliance was key because the problem wasn't going to be solved for us.

@@professordogwood8985 "In light of such authority, compliance was key, because the problem wasn't going to be solved for us." Do you realize how terrifying that sentence is? This is the attitude that upholds tyranny.

@@RianeBane Yes, tyranny that saves lives. I embraced my inner tyrant during the pandemic.

if you find a video of it can you link it?

​@@Anonymous-bi5pv Here's the British test card that is being referred to kzfaq.info/get/bejne/ap6eqc2S2bmqlI0.html

@@Anonymous-bi5pv upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/52/Testcard_F.jpg

I will leave it to somebody who is more familiar with upper or lower class life to do that. But I think that zombie take is a fair one! I think it’s harder to explain zombie horror through a middle class lens. I guess that’s why stuff like The Walking Dead tends to focus more on the collapse of civilization angle.

Lower class horror is 99% of Hollywood horror. Explosion go boom monster go bite thing go bump in night.

Exactly

Being in the upper class, these things were never scary either as I knew the police were there to protect my property.

@@soulfuzz368 see its my own cool middle class fear 😎

The thing is, many of us 2A advocates are not middle class, not materialistic and have no such fears. We do for ourselves because we have to. We know the law, what laws are enforced and what laws are ignored. We know how to deal with threats from those who would abuse us and often that abuse comes from various government agencies. They make guns illegal, we'll make them ourselves. Many of us already do for fun already anyway. We'd turn the bans into money makers as there is a market to fill, starving mouths at home to feed, machine tools and we have skills. Middle class is so very unaware of what lays outside of their protected bubbles. We are the ones that facilitate that comfort you enjoy. We make the stuff you love and keep your houses working.

That’s a good insight! Banjos, fiddles…. Even classical music really

@@JJMcCullough Seems almost like anti- nostalgia. Instead of provoking the wonder of childhood it provokes the helplessness and fear of authority of childhood.

Old time folk music (Circa 1800s) is actually kind of dark. It’s the music of working class Americans who lived through some pretty rough times (E.g Slavery, the Civil War, Westward Expansion, etc).

"while I don't consider myself conservative, I'm kind of afraid of capitalism"... yeah, don't worry, I don't think that comes off as conservative, these days at the least, lmao :)

@@ByzantineDarkwraith Well, that's not where I was going with that thought. Typically conservatives don't like regulation by the government (I.e., not liking the government telling them what to do whether it be about taxes, regulations, gun laws, etc.), that's why you often hear they are fans of 'small government'. That's all I was saying bruv.

I think the idea is that their are going to be certain neurosis associated with any group in any society and so examining the neurosis of the modern west doesn’t necessarily entail it being less desirable than alternatives

I would also add that it's about the "found footage" nature of the material. It's the same principle that a book is scarier if it's old and decaying rather than looking new and fresh off the printing press. Anything that gives it a sense of history adds to the mystique.

I don't know if many British people are involved in the whole creepypasta community, but I'm honestly amazed British PSA's aren't as prevalent an inspiration in the field. I suppose we have that eerie "hauntological" music and philosophical fiction instead (like Andy Sharp or Richard Littler)

I was thinking this, too!

It’s difficult for me to share a perspective other than my own

@@JJMcCullough totally get that, but you’ve done some great videos before where you shared insights from your viewers… like, Jake in Namibia says “we eat pineapple on our pizza’s too”… that kind of thing can be very insightful and I think this topic can benefit from some of that. It might be a niche audience though. ;-)