When the Pronunciation Book YouTube channel first appeared it tossed out helpful pronunciations for words like “Bruschetta” and “Bolognese”. Then in April of 2012 with the video entitled, “How to Ask for Help in English,” it employed two phrases, “Please help me escape from this place” and “I need your help with something, Chief.”
There now seemed to be a creepy militaristic tone to the majority of the videos, sparking conspiracy theories. Here’s “Bruschetta” so you can get a sense of what the videos were like before everything got weird.
Video: Pronunciation Book – Bruschetta
[youtube]http://youtu.be/HKH8hGe75Jc[/youtube]
Tame enough, right? Then suddenly this summer it got EVEN WEIRDER and it loaded its first number and started counting backwards. It started with “77” and it wasn’t just telling you how to pronounce “77.” The video just deadpanned, “Something is going to happen in 77 days.” It then got a dark tone and maintained the militaristic theme with a few sentences in the videos that followed, all ending with “Something is going to happen in [insert number] days.”
I’m currently writing this post on Sunday and the countdown has reached “2.” To leave the final day at Tuesday, September 24th. Extending the search beyond the YouTube channel leads to an Alice-like rabbit hole with theories linked to the Let’s Talk About Systems Tumblr, which is a part of a real world/online alternate reality game that apparently has shared some quotes from the videos. Other have speculated it to be a Battlestar Galactica or a Halo reboot with the constant “Chief” mention. It’s even been thought to be a promotion for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. airing September 24. Here’s the latest video, as of me writing this.
Video: Pronunciation Book – 2
[youtube]http://youtu.be/SIKajSoyIDI[/youtube]
Whatever it’s leading up to, it’s more than just the videos. There are long periods of silence with background whirring after the final voice. Here’s what the wiki says about the sounds at the ends of the videos. Yeah. There’s a wiki for all this.
Attempts have been made to decode whirring sounds found in the non-speaking portions of the videos starting with 77. Spectrographic analysis of the sounds seems to indicate that they form an image which so far appears to be a figure pointing at the viewer, reminiscent of a propaganda or recruiting poster.
And the decoded picture…
C-RAZY, right? Whatever this is, we’ll be sure to follow up on September 24th when “something” happens. Until then if you’d like to check out the theories and mysteries for yourself, start here with the wiki or here with the YouTube channel. Good luck. See you Tuesday.
