Endless Thread - Snacktime: Who Is 'Batbrat?'

Episode Date: September 12, 2019

A Redditor named ‘batbrat’ has been quietly solving mysteries for years – identifying everything from a Victorian mourning ring from the 1800s to a single bone of a deer – and others have started to take notice. "Who are you?," one Redditor asked. In today's Snacktime, we find out...

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Oh, crunchy chickpeas. All right, I have a snack. All right, hit me. Here we go. It's very quiet. Raisins? Prunes? It's a yucca fry or a yuca fry, depending on how you pronounce it? But it's from last night, so it's cold.

Last night's cold, mushy yucca fry. Which is why it doesn't make a sound. That's cool, though. Sneaky fry. So, yes, it is snack time, time, the version of the show where we eat some snacks and talk about interesting Reddit ephemera in between our more heavily produced episodes. Okay, today's snack time is a bit different. We're going to talk about someone who embodies the true Reddit heroism of just jumping into threads, answering people's questions, and then disappearing like a magic genie.

And this magic genie's username is Bat Brat. Amory, how did we find out about her listener told us, right? Yeah, we got an email from a Good Samaritan named Nick Valarde. Nick, love you. Yeah, what a guy. And Nick pointed us to this thread that involved a Victorian mourning ring. Someone found a ring, a golden black ring, posted it to what is this thing? And this user named Bat Brat jumps in and says, oh, that is a Victorian morning ring.

I believe it was produced during this time. And here's what it means and blah, blah, blah. I didn't even know these things existed, obviously. No. Only this user Bat Brat did. But Nick pointed us to a comment on that post from a user that goes by Fufffffffff funk. Or there are four Fs before Funk.

Funk. Funk. And this user said, dude, in the last 24 hours, you correctly identified a dog's breed, a cat's breed, a single deer bone, a very specific men's suit, this Victorian morning ring, and gave well-founded advice on drawing tablets.

Don't get me wrong. I'm very impressed. But who are you? Exactly. So Nick sends this email and it's like, we got to know who is Bat Brat. Nick, good news. We now know. And without further ado, an interview about Bits and Bob's in solving mysteries with Bat Brat. Well, my name's Michelle and I'm from Erie, Colorado. And my Reddit username is Bat Brat. So we found out about you from another Redditor who noticed that you were solving a lot of little mysteries online. And they pointed us to this one Reddit comment in particular by the user Fuffa Faffunk or something like that. And Funk says, dude, don't get me wrong. I'm very impressed.

But who are you? So can you answer that for us? just an average person I seems like we seems like most people think you're above average well I do have probably a an above average interest in

certain things I of course like antiques and collectibles and I watch a lot of antiques road show so I know a little bit about a lot of different things that are collectible or antique so I'm able to help there. And I obsessively watch old films so I can, you know, identify an era or a style by a certain, you know, date look, that sort of thing.

What do you like about Antiques Road Show? A lot of these people go through their everyday lives and they're around everyday objects or objects they're familiar with. and they have just no idea what they are, no clue of their value or their history or anything like that. And that really fascinates me that you can just be, you know, sitting right next to something and never knew was something, you know, fascinating or important or valuable. When that like treasure sound happens on Antique Road Show, it's kind of like a treasure sound, right? Do you have like a Pavlovian response? It gets my attention. I certainly turn and look to make sure I'm seeing the numbers and everything.

But yeah, I definitely. It's like br-r-ring. Yep. I loved, especially on that Victorian Morning Ring, when you figured that one out, there was like a whole string of comments from other Reditors theorizing about who you were and how you know this stuff. Yeah, that was.

entertaining. People did speculate that I worked for Antiques Roadshow and they made comments about what type of work that I did based on identifying bones. Yeah, let's talk about that for a minute. Identifying animal bones, which I've noticed you are quite good at. Where does that come from? Well, that comes from my artwork. I illustrate mostly animals. I do pet portraits and I do horse and dog illustrations from my previous jobs. But you're not a witch. You're not a witch, right?

No, no, not a witch. Okay, okay. Although I probably know a few. Some of my best friends are witches. Yeah, the witches are down the street. Exactly. Okay, but illustrating Pet's is one thing, but you know their bones,

Michelle. Yeah, I did extensively study animal anatomy. I'd love to know kind of how you think about a mystery when you see a new one pop up on Reddit. Where do you begin? Yeah, I think it starts with just me being curious myself. I think I typically look at the style or the material that something is made of and can kind of guess a window of what time period it's from.

So I can narrow a search down that way or, you know, that sort of thing. But there is one item that I personally own that I can't find anything else about. And I'll look at that forever. What is that? forever. And it's really not even that interesting. It's a piece of pottery and it's art deco and it's a little, it appears to be maybe an ashtray or something along those lines and it's in the shape of a horse. And the glaze on it, it was only made by a few different pottery companies. So I figure it's probably one of those companies, but I can't find anything about.

it online. I can't find any evidence of it online anywhere. I've never seen another one except in a movie, a Shirley Temple movie about five or six years ago I saw it sitting on a table. And I know it's not a one-off because it's a molded pattern, but I have no idea what it is or where it came from or who made it. And I know there's more out there. I just I just can't find them. So I'm getting that, I'm getting that stirring inside that I get when there's like a new thing. There's like a new thing. I do. I do.

I want to solve this. I get this little like stirring in my soul that says I need to know. And I mean, is that what drives you to do this? Yes. That's exactly. You just nailed it. You just nailed it. You get a feeling that, you know, this is something that we need to find.

out, get to the bottom of, as my dad used to say. Oh, so this is a genetic urge for you, huh? Probably. I just always kind of remember him knowing everything. He just was one of those people that my memory of him is that he just always had the answer. There was a miniature painting that someone posted that I know was a story that maybe was a little less obvious at first. Can you tell us about that? Well, this was a website called Collectors Weekly, and this was one that I frequented before I, you know, was spending more time on Reddit, subreddits and stuff.

And Collectors Weekly people post something that they've recently purchased or found or whatever. And a woman had posted a photograph of a miniature portrait that she had, and I can't recall where she got it. And it was a tiny oil-on- ivory portrait painting. And I just was very drawn to that painting because the girl just looked, it was just very compelling. The girl was real pretty and nobody knew who it was. And it had been signed on the back and dated. And so I spent, you know, a good deal of time, I think probably several days.

or maybe even a week or so. And I didn't know much about portraits at the time, but what I found out when I was looking was that people would have their portrait paint and miniature portrait painted and they'd give them to their friends, kind of like we gave wallet photos as children to our friends. Probably nobody does that anymore,

but you would have one portrait done and then you'd have several copies made and then pass them out to all your friends and so forth. So I thought, well, there's a chance that there's another one like this out there somewhere. And eventually, sure enough, I found one. And it turned out to be a portrait of Queen Victoria's sister-in-law. And so I was able to solve that one. And it was, that one was a lot of fun.

I feel like just talking to you, Michelle, is like we're doing that reveal on the, Antiques Road Show. We should make that sound because we're like talking to you. We get to talk to you. You are the reveal. The person who's solved all these mysteries.

Cool. I don't think I could. There you go. Thank you so much for your time and for talking to us and also for your your nerdery, which clearly makes many people happy. You're welcome.

This has been fun. I've enjoyed talking to you both. Okay, that's it for now. Shout out again to Nick Valarde for suggesting we get in touch with Bat Brat, aka Michelle. She's going to have a guest appearance in our next episode, by the way. We'll be showcasing one of her other talents.

We'll be back next week. Stay Frosty. Bye!