The spectrum of theories

[jayhenry]

Updated from a post in the old forum:

BREE CANNOT TELL A LIE

Bree is a 16 year old girl. Daniel is her 18 year old friend. She's done all the things she's said in the video. She lives in a small town somewhere, is concerned about her privacy, and smart enough to know that means cloaking her geography. She has a shrine to Aleister Crowley in her room because her parents follow some variant of Thelema.

FOLLOW THE WHITE LIAR
Bree is a 16 year old girl, Daniel is an 18 year old boy. Most of the details are true. She's worried about privacy, as she said, and so while posting her diary for the usual reasons of catharsis, she has continued to sprinkle white lies to disguise her identity and geography. The Aleister Crowley shrine is perhaps used to deliberately distract people from her real faith.

Edit:BREE'S A SCHIZO!
See:
alissabrooke.proboards56.com/index.cgi?board=plot&action=display&thread=1157554521

TWO BORED KIDS
"Bree" and "Daniel" are two bored kids in a small town. Maybe those are their real names, just as likely, not. They don't have a lot to do. They started watching YouTube and just for giggles decided to create a fakish video blog. They incorporated varying degrees of truth into it. They registered this site for giggles. They're making it up as they go, or they plotted it all out at once. They're probably a little surprised with the success. Hollywood's calling. Perhaps they want to come clean without making everyone mad, and haven't figured out how.

ART SCHOOL PROJECT
"Bree" and "Daniel" and some of their friends are producing this as some sort of school project. They were initially doing it to hone editing skills, work on story development, etc., and now that it's spiralled out of control they're enjoying the ride?

MTV PITCH
This is the theory that Fine on Media claims to have verified on the businessweek blog. After that girl got an MTV offer out of YouTube videos, it's pretty obvious that more pitches were going to follow. "Bree" and "Daniel" with perhaps a small crew of close friends, probably college students, set to work, on May. 12 (right?), making a quirky VLog hoping to catch some eyes. They have, and they're just waiting to land a contract. Nobody heard of the Blair Witch people until they pulled of the Blair Witch project. Nobody recognized them from school.

Edit:A COVERT RELIGIOUS MESSAGE
The religious right is trying to convince the YouTube generation not to worship Satan. Worship Satan and you'll have only one friend, and he'll be dorky, and your parents won't like you.

Edit:THE PORN THEORY
Yeah, I don't buy it. But this has been floated in a lot of other forums. I guess in LA anything is possible? This is all a slick marketing campaign for a new porn site. I'll honest to God kill myself. But I guess it's possible.

MR. FLEMMING
Yeah, Brian Flemming denied it. But if it's all a lie, there's no particular reason to believe that he wouldn't just lie more. Yes, he offered a credible denial, but he's a smart man, if he pulled all the rest of this off, he could presumably lob a lie at us to keep the mystery going. It seems like the forum abandoned this possibility awfully fast.

HAXAN OR SOMEONE ELSE UNKOWN
This is a promotion for a television show or a horror movie. "Bree" is going to get sacrificed, or sacrifice "Daniel," and the resultant publicity compels us all to go watch "The Grudge: Part II" or "Zombie Girls Gone Wild" or whatever.

Edit:ALTERNATE REALITY GAMING
I refer here to Game Theory's posts. I thought Alternate Reality Games usually were open about the fact that they were games.

SOMETHING CORPORATE?
It's some sort of viral marketing, subliminal message thing, designed to trick teenagers into buying stuff that they don't want. LG will soon add Mountain Dew and Doritos to her list of advertisers: "Edward Hopper Art Galleries," "Target," "Napoleon Dynamite," and "The American Homeschool Society"

VIRAL USER THEFT
I think it's plausible that Revver was behind this as a way to drum up hype about their YouTube wannabe site. How mad would YouTube be, if Revver was behind this. I want Virginia to get a denial from Revver.

NOTHING BUT CORPORATE
It's a promotion for a major Hollywood film, "Pattern Recognition" has some similar themes, or some movie we haven't heard of yet. It's from a major corporate player, everyone is under suffocating Non-disclosure agreements. It's major talent! The girl from Hollyoaks in make-up. Oh, evil Hollywood. F*** off and die!

_{and, most important, The Apocalypse Theory:
"NO BREE DON'T PRESS THAT BUTTON" yelled Daniel.
"why?" Bree said, click.
WOOOOOO NUVCLEAR EXPLOSION!!!!EVEYRONE DIES!}

[Game Theory]

My vote: Brian Flemming + Brian Clark + Haxan. These guys have all worked together before - on a fake-documentary project with a massive fictional web "universe" that you experienced like a game.

And Flemming's denial is easily folded into the ARG - that's just what he would say if he is behind the game. It's not lying if you're playing.

Here's my worry - that this is a LONG term ARG. I mean, they've let us chase false leads for a week. No emails or phone calls like other ARGs. No place even to sign up to GET them.

They may be waiting for the true effect of community problem-solving to kick in. Maybe the clues are in front of us, but we have to put them together better.

And maybe this site will finally be a way to do this.

[newone]

Hey Game Theory--
I really liked your Flemming theory that you posted on the other board, could you post it over here to add to this thread?

[Game Theory]

Okay, I have an idea. It's just a theory, I'm not blindly committed to it, but I'm going to argue it strongly below just to lay it out:

This is an ALTERNATE REALITY GAME. We're witnessing the beginning of what is possibly the most elaborate ARG ever, and Brian Flemming is definitely involved.

And he has told us as much if we know how to listen within the rules of the ARG.

WHY THERE IS NO REASON TO BELIEVE BRIAN FLEMMING'S DENIAL:

If we can't believe Brian Flemming's denial, everything connecting him to LG15 stands. That should be obvious. Take that one little thing away, and Brian Flemming remains by far the most likely suspect.

To date, we have been taking Brian Flemming's denial at face value. But should we? Let's ask his collaborator Brian Clark:

"One should be careful in taking a denial from Brian Flemming at face value.
Never have I met a more accomplished or fearless reality hacker."
--Brian Clark

This is a Brian Flemming collaborator, who has been designed a number of internet hoaxes/ARGs, telling us not to take Brian's denial "at face value."

And he's saying this where? On a site devoted to ALTERNATE REALITY GAMING.

And look at the timing. As soon as Brian Flemming actually issues a denial, his partner is in the press saying not to believe it.

When the truth eventually comes out, Brian will be able to point to this. He can say yes, I "lied," but we issued evidence that I wasn't truly lying right along with it. I TOLD everyone it was a game, and that my denial was not to be taken "at face value."

Does anyone think that Brian Clark is going to give that quote about Brian Flemming if this is NOT a game? If that's the case, Clark is basically calling his collaborator and business partner a real-world liar. Doesn't make sense.

And if we need ANOTHER kick in the head for this, check out Brian Flemming's latest blog. It says:

"It's not about the girl, it's about the game."

The word "game" links to William Gibson's "Pattern Recognition." And the picture with the blog shows Lee Harvey Oswald being assassinated.

Blog

Photo

Look closely at the picture.

This is a game. He's telling us to stop focusing on "the girl" and to play the game. Put the girl in the background and focus on the conspiracy.

He's saying, recognize the pattern.

Just an idea.

[mettle]

We should add to the Spectrum the Covert Religious Message theory.

I have been thinking, today, that this could be a Christian anti-Satanism production.
Ever get one of those Jesus pamphlets while walking around campus? Ever read them? They're usually little vignettes about the danger of dabbling in "evil"; the main character is generally saved, however, if they have faith in Jesus.
With the whole "Left Behind" movie series, it's not too hard to imagine some group going multi-media.

This would explain the slightly inaccurate references to Satan/Crowley and the forboding "ceremony". There are certain insular Christian groups that could pull off the secrecy thing while having enough people involved to keep up with the amount of work required.
It would also explain the disproportionate number of Christians linked to her profile.

If it is, we can expect the plot twist to involve Bree rejecting the ceremony and embracing the Church of somethin'orother.

EDIT: The "Left Behind" brand has a video game coming out and seems to be an ever-expanding media empire of books, videos, books about the books, movies, books for kids, books on tape, etc.

- Is this the right thread for this post? I'm a little lost with the team-thing now.

[jayhenry]

I've never seen a far right group (especially one concerned that Satanism is tainting the youth of America) do anything nearly this subversive, clever, or effective.

But if people think we should add this in... I guess we should also add the Alternate Reality Game theory?

[mettle]

maybe they should be in distinct threads so we can discuss each theory independantly?

[waffle]

I have always found it odd that as a group we accepted Flemming's denial at face value. From what I understand, the guy is an accomplished hoaxer, and saying 'Nah, not me dude', in reponse to an early(ish) LG question, by no means rules him out.

[mettle]

jayhenry said:

I've never seen a far right group (especially one concerned that Satanism is tainting the youth of America) do anything nearly this subversive, clever, or effective.

then check out these guys:
www.leftbehind.com/

if mike seaver is into it, they must have a pulse on the youth of america.

[jayhenry]

*shrugs*

I added it to the list. Seems highly unlikely to me, and I just can't see that they'd go to these lengths to dissuade America's Thelemites. But hey, this has been so weird, who knows. Maybe I should add the P.Diddy-Cassie theory back up there as well.

[dd]

OUT 'EM.

The only way to end this is for Virginia to post their photos in the paper or online paper. 10/12/06 maybe Crowley's birthday, but it's no big release date of anything.

This will go on until they are spotted by enough people in public WHO ALSO KNOW ABOUT THIS and they come together in one location to say: oh, hey, by the way, I know Bree, she's...

That's ONLY going to happen if Virginia...

OUT'S 'EM.

Then, npr will post the photos (John Green and Brooke Gladstone) will make that happen. Then LA TIMES, London Times, etc. ONLY THEN will this be over in any reasonable amount of time. Remember, this is NOT as big as you think. It's just a small group of semi-talented people. They're not making any big statement because they haven't followed any religion accurately.

End this, and...


OUT 'EM.


I'm not very well read, nor well versed, but I do remember a part from Fahrenheit 451. The hero's being chased by a robotic sniffing dog. The chasers catch him by telling everyone (EVERYONE) watching tv to go outside. Our chased hero will be the only one running to escape capture.

OUT 'EM.

Can you do it, Virginia?

John Green thought of that. I can't take credit, but, until I see their photos on NYT, LA times, every USA Today in my hotel as I travel on business.... I'm not going to write any more. I'll just check Virginia's (NYT's) online website every other day (and remember, I was a big critic of Virginia at first, way back on old page), or I'll check LA Time's daily bree summary.

OUT 'EM.

l8r

-dd

p.s. Alissa: nice job on the site. It'll lead to us getting to the bottom of this. I just would like it to be sooner rather than later.

-dd

[virginia]

It's a good idea, and one that Jawed Karim (formerly of YouTube) also proposed. But I can't use the newspaper that way. I can write a story about a phenomenon, as a culture reporter, but I can't use the newspaper to further an investigation. The Times doesn't put most-wanted criminals on its front page, either; tracking down criminals--or hoaxers--is not the job of the press.

[johngreen]

Well, it's not the job of the New York Times, certainly.

but I bet we could talk the Post into it.

-John
www.sparksflyup.com

[mku77]

V
I assume,that as much as is practicable, your professional interests would never ever conflict with the views expressed by yourself on this forum,LOL
therefore you can post it to Ali on the "QT" and we promise we will never mention it,Honest.... scouts honour,DIB DIB DIB and all that

m

[detectivejoe]

whoa.................