He will first add you as a friend, and then materialize in reality, teenagers believe.
On the night of May 10, when people looked out for fireworks from the windows, teenagers hid under blankets and trembled with fear. Brian Westbay, a ghost from the social network Facebook, came to Russia. This creature, whoever it was, marched triumphantly across the Western world, collecting a generous tribute of horror, shook Southeast Asia, and now - now with us.
“I want to go to the toilet, I turned on the light, I'm afraid to go anyway…” - “Hey, you've seen him before, are you alive? Answer !!! Why are you silent??? - “I got under the blanket, a tooth on a tooth does not fall” - “People, he is really creepy (terrible - KP), he looked out the window, one eye is red, the other is yellow, and his face is gray”.
What is it all about? Read it if you want to know why your child came out to breakfast anyway.
Three years ago, an unremarkable page of a man (?) Named Bryan Westbay appeared on Facebook. There is no information: no photos, no where he lives, nothing. If you add to him as a friend, he will immediately reciprocate. And he will start sending strange messages. For example: "AAA-AAA-A61", "IamGoingTo - $ - $ 2-2 ++ - 2 # - + × £ _ ¥ MyFriend" ("I'm going … my friend"), "999909990099099090990009900099", and so on. Among this gibberish, the refrain sounds obsessively: "Now we are friends", "We are friends forever." But this is just the beginning of the show. Suddenly, you will find "Brian" on all social networks - on Whatsapp, Twitter, Instagram, everywhere. And then … Then he will send an audio file that will make your hair stand on end. Rustles, groans, screams. And finally he will send his "portrait". This awful picture has an unpleasant property: it will appear in the dark. He only put out the light - he materialized, looked under the bed - he was there.
Laughter and laughter, but Facebook blocked "Brian" due to numerous user complaints. "Brian" immediately "resurrected" on several accounts at once. Now, if you go to Facebook, there are ten of these "Brians".
Users put forward two versions. According to the first, this is not a human being, but a bot (networked robot) with artificial intelligence. It was created by the military, played, and abandoned. And the bot went for a walk on the Web, frightening people. Ghost robot. According to the second version, it was a real guy, humble only. Girls did not like him, and the Network sucked deeper and deeper. And sucked it whole. Something bad happened to the real guy, but his spirit remained on the Internet. Horror, and nothing more.
All these fears were pounded on the social network Reddit. It is the largest in the world, and everything is discussed there, from the US president to the monsters. Reddit has replaced parents for Western teenagers: they always have no time, they handed over their grandmother to a nursing home, there is no one to talk to, so they hang out on Reddit all night long. But there is only English, so the network in Russia is unpopular, just as it is unpopular with our teenagers and Facebook (they prefer VK). Accordingly, nothing was known about "Brian" in Russia. But the virus, although it is network, and not biological, is why it will appear sooner or later. On the evening of May 9, a popular Russian-language channel on You Tube re-told the story of "Brian" as it was recounted on Reddit. Within a few hours, the video has gained hundreds of thousands of views. And the teenagers crawled under the covers.
Promotional video:
All this is very reminiscent of the "Queen of Spades", which the Soviet pioneers called in the camp after the lights out. In fact, it is. Only earlier it was necessary to take a mirror, shine a candle into it, and now - send a request "to friends". Technological progress has changed the exterior, but not the human essence. However, experts keep a close eye on such things. Everything that happens on the web, as a rule, turns out to be not what it seems.
From time to time, “nonsense” happens on social networks, which at first glance are not beneficial to anyone, they just exist, says Dmitry Sidorin, head of Reputation House. For example, recently a “very sick boy” has reached Russia and needs urgent help. No money, no fraud. Just like it. Better yet, repost. It would seem who benefits? Nevertheless, the "boy" is very tenacious and has already bypassed almost all countries of the world. However, money is sometimes present in such stories, but certainly not as an end in itself. Recently there was a phone app called “I am rich” on the web that did nothing but cost a thousand dollars. The developers were not going to deceive anyone and immediately warned that the application was completely useless, says Sidorin. Nevertheless, the people began to buy it,and there was such a stir that it was even blocked. True, the author of these lines just got on the Web and found him, and even the fourth version. Like Brian, Rich is indestructible.
In fact, we are talking about serious research work, says Sidorin. Someone studies the reaction of the audience of this or that country, of this or that age. How will they react, what exactly will they respond to better? This information is invaluable and can be used as you please. For example, this information helps to advertise products more effectively. Or spread rumors. Or … think for yourself. Accordingly, the organizers of such "stupid" actions can be both large companies and special services. So the version that "Brian" was invented by the NATO military is not so far from the truth!
"Brian" could be the training of any social media specialist, says Silicon Valley developer Semyon Kleiman. "Brian" didn't really cost his "founding fathers" a dime. A Facebook profile is created for free, each of us is able to record a "scary" voice message, breathe ominously into the microphone, and that's all. And to create a program that communicates itself, for a programmer in general, it takes several hours. Moreover, "Brian" is sending an obvious nonsense, which is produced by the generator of random messages.
Another version, adds Kleiman, is someone's joke. In Silicon Valley, as well as in the IT community as a whole, there are a lot of pranksters, says Kleiman, including those who can spend a lot of money on pranks. The famous "Cicada" was such an expensive joke. We will remind, several years ago unknown people began to throw sophisticatedly complex riddles to Internet users. Those who decide were promised a job for very cool uncles. A rumor immediately spread that the "world government" was recruiting personnel in this way. The movement took over the whole world. And young people ran around Moscow looking for secret messages from the "Cicada", which were found on some pillar in Golyanovo. But the tasks turned out to be incredibly difficult, and only a few people passed through the screenings. They were hired, but who would know. Established a trial period. Forced to do difficult and meaningless work. Then they announced that they "did not fit," and cut off contacts. It was the costly, highly intelligent trolling of some bored Silicon Valley millionaire, Kleiman suggests.
The artificiality of "Brian" is striking when you crawl out from under the covers and google a little. The key is "last name", Westbay. To the American horror fan, this word will immediately remind the most famous abandoned house in the USA, a huge abandoned house on the shores of Lake Westbay in Wisconsin. In 1916, workers doing repairs there saw a ghost and shot him with a revolver. This is already too much! - the ghost got angry, and went into lawlessness. From now on, the walls of the house change shape. Gathering in the kitchen, you will find yourself in the hallway. Doesn't it look like anything? Yes, there was such a horror film, and its plot was taken from this legend. Books have been written about the house, reports from a terrible abandoned place were even printed in the respectable magazine Life.
"Letters of Happiness", "The Queen of Spades", and now also network horror films always arouse the keen interest of sociologists. At the time of the collapse of the USSR, some such specialists saw in the pioneer horror stories signs of a crisis of Soviet youth, who, they say, are not satisfied with the communist ideology and are looking for an outlet in mysticism. We now know that this was at least a serious stretch. The passion for the unknown sits in our nature, but it is exploited in the dark, against our will. This is the real "ghost" that hid behind the monitor and will get you, whether you want it or not.
EVGENY ARSYUKHIN