Who Buried Paul? (1999)
ludix.com
ludix.com
Yes, and then it couldn't be argued anymore, it was a confirmed fact.
Wonderful conspiracy theory, and a wonderful conclusion from all of it.
Careful what you make fun of, and carry a mirror.
A lot of people who "today make fun of conspiracy theorists" weren't even alive back then.
How does such legends begin?
Well, first they begin with a rumor, a rumor of it being real. With the launch of Game I & II, fans started speculations of it being a real story - about a real pizzeria, with real kids involved, and a psychopath who might have murdered those children, or a pedophile.
Then, began the hunt for the plot. Fans began searching for clues in the game play, like the dates on the salary slips, the posters on the walls and artifacts in the halls, the mini games with in the game. Some even sought the protagonist. Some dug of news archives to look for actual events in past that involved pizzeria, kids and murder.
And after v2 launch, some suggested that version II was actually a prequel to version I as the dates were old and the minigames & the game's story line suggested this too. Some even went & tallied the hourly wages during 1960s to validate this.
Fans are fans and they do just anything.
People discussed the game characters and the protagonist. And then began the hunt for the relation between the hotel manager, the purple guy, the kids who died, the kid who wept all the time, the spring lock suits andthe ever-returning-persistent security guard who refused to give up & returned, perhaps with a different name in the sequel. Was it a rebirth? Or did he simply changed identity? Who knew?
Had Paul answered the phone call while he was away on family vacation at some unknown remote scotland country side, there wouldn't have been any space for the frenzy. Since the game creator intentionally lived a life deviod of attentions, fans & their questions went unanswered. And this is the key.
Fans were waiting for the launch of v3 as it would give more clues to who actually was the purple guy. But they were betrayed once again. The game maker, Scott Cawthon, made the plot even more confusing. After the version III, people couldn't place it anywhere. Some said it was a prequel, some said sequel, many said they were confused.
And then came the v4 where fans saw a panting boy running across the house in panic. And some noticed the flowers & suggested it was a hospital & since the kid is in fear, they thought it was a case of schizoprenia & a case of a challenged 4 year old boy.
In the absence of the SSOT (single source of truth), fans began speculating, collecting & piling evidences. They began their own versions of conspiracy theories. The game became "the most talked about game on youtube" by the end of 2015 as fans began making videos with their version of the theory.
Finally, Scott came out of his hideout & made a public comment that this game was not what people thought, and what if all of it was just a dream? And this comment was unhelpful and an insincere attempt to answer the questions of the fandom.
This observation can be carried to more interesting plots of businesses, like stock market trends, venture capital funding, or app usages. Insider trading simply takes the fun out of Stock markets, and hence, it is illegal. Rumors fuel investments. A large group of people with a lot of money without the ability to think what to do about it, often hit with the FOMO, jump into radicalism & make zillion dollar investments. And while the generation X is clueless how to use snapchat, millenials are obsessed with it.
Inquisitiveness is a common trait among primates & us, hominidae aren't excluded from this. All you need to do is, to keep a veil of mystery. As programmers, or physists, or mathematicians, we don't like facts, we love to solve problems & arrive at facts. Fact is a destination where the road ends. Fact finding is a journey where you explore the unknown, meet the unmet, see the unseen and that's what makes life beautiful.