Game Theory - Lies Of The Founder (Ranboo: Generation Loss)

Episode Date: August 7, 2023

Join Game Theory MatPat as he breaks down the LORE of the newest installments in Ranboo's Generation Loss! Credits: Writers: Matthew Patrick, Tom Robinson, Mike Keenan (The Pokémon Biologist) and Zach Stewart Editors: Dan "Cybert" Seibert, Koen Verhagen, Tyler Mascola and Shannon (Bomb0i) Sound Designer: Yosi Berman

Hello internet, welcome to game theory, the show that always votes for lore! It's time for us to talk about the triumphant return of one of the internet's most mysterious projects to date, generation loss. Over a year ago, we did a theory covering a 28-second video released by former Dream SMP Minecrafter Ron Boo. It was a strange video, involving a lot of flashing images and text telling us to learn the history, find the founder. All stuff that on the surface is just a bunch of gibberish. But to theorists like me and you, it was clearly the start of an ARG. unfolding. So, I did what I do best. It took a 28-second video and turned it into a week's worth of research and then ultimately wound up with a 17-minute theory about two fighting factions,

censorship, and the most frightening thing of all, analog media. And while we didn't have a huge amount to work with, it seemed like we may have gotten a few things right. It is! It is! It's exactly what I wanted! And what was more exciting was the tease of a second video coming soon. And so patiently I waited, and waited, and waited. But that new three-minute video never came. I was starting to worry that I'd scared Ron Boo off, but then, out of Nowhere, after nearly a year of silence, Generation Loss returned, and this time, there was a whole lot more than just 28 seconds of video. Fast forward to today where there's several teasers, a couple more minute-long videos, and a whopping three live streams totaling up nearly four and a half hours worth of watch time. It even made its way onto the Emmy Awards ballot.

Just a shame that I didn't get the nomination, but what do you expect? Hollywood's never been the biggest fan of YouTubers. If the first video was our appetizer, this is a full-on buffet that I get to shove down my gullet like it's going out of style. there was one thing that I couldn't shake. Well, by the end of this first batch of content, we know the plans and identities of these warring censorship factions, we still know nothing about the most important character, the one that was teased from day one of the project.

We still don't know anything about the mysterious founder. We were tasked with finding the founder, and or killing the founder at the end of the last video. And now we know that a founder's cut of these three live streams is coming soon, so who is this person? What exactly are they doing and why? I mean, this person must be incredibly important to the wider generation lost universe.

It is the centralized figure of it all. So, strap in theorists. And Ron Boo, considering you're probably reacting to this one live again, because I believe I figured it out. I know who the founder is, and let's just say, Generation Loss might have been right in the first place when they told us to trust no one. In our last theory, we concluded that there were two main groups,

one speaking to us in red text, and one speaking to us in white text. There was the Generation Loss faction, speaking to us in red, that was actively censoring the information presented by the original creators of the tape, those speaking to us in white, slowly degrading the truth over time until it became unrecognizable.

The videos that have since been released also seemed to confirm this idea. Throughout multiple videos, we see a white-logued company, Showfall Media, presenting us with information and entertainment, only for their videos to be hacked and their posters graffitied with red text. These two factions, Showfall and Generation Loss, are at war. And Generation Loss is the one sending us these altered tapes. Why would they do that? Well, we know this based on the second main tape, the inauguration. It's not about inaugurating a president like I initially assumed,

but instead it's about inaugurating us. the viewer into their ranks. This Choose Your Own Adventure-style video forces you to kill a random stranger on TV rather than yourself. It's twisted, but when the goal is to kill the supposed founder, what are a few casualties along the way? They have to make sure that you're committed to the cause and willing to do what must be done. And this battle between the two organizations all came to a head with the massive three live stream extravaganza, the social experiments.

This live event was huge. At one point, over 55,000 people watched our hero, Ron Boo, as he tried to survive a point-and-click-style horror game, a Saw remake, and a Left for Dead escape sequence from a mall, all while the audience got to vote on what happened to him next. In addition to the audience deciding what he does, throughout the streams, Ronbu interacts with a character dressed in red, known as Hetch,

also known as The Savior. Hmm, a character in red that's hacking the showfall media systems trying to actively save Ronbu while revealing the truth, I think we've got ourselves a match for that red text generation loss faction that we've been theorizing about this whole time. In the final episode, Hetch reveals to Ronbu what's really going on, that the whole world that he's been trapped in is a set, designed to entertain some sort of audience that's watching him.

Everything you've been through, it's all been broadcasted. To some sort of audience. Like I said, it's a show. We even get to see the day one plan and day two plan on whiteboards in the showfall media offices, each with rough outlines for how that episode was supposed to play out. Everything that we've been watching is an in-universe show. The haunted cabin, the slime demon, the saw puzzles. All of it has been fake.

Well, all of it except for the deaths. So, as you'd expect, Ron Boo tries to escape, only for Hetch to pounce on him in the final moment, and give the audience one final vote. Kill or save. Hetch was never trying to save Rambu. He was just making the content more entertaining. He was part of the plan all along.

And there absolutely was a plan. In the office where he find the day one and day two whiteboards hidden all the way in the back. Through a doorframe and a blink and you'll miss a moment, you can briefly see a third whiteboard, a third whiteboard that denotes all of the events that are going to happen in day three. Hetch and showfall media are working together,

one in the same. Hetch's entire spiel was to lull Rambu into a false sense of security. lead him to his potential demise. And so Ron Boo just stands there. If the audience chooses to let him live, he'll continue to be a part of the show, forever tormented by showfall. But if we decide to kill him, then his suffering will finally end. He begs the audience to let him die, and we did exactly that. The audience has voted for you to die.

And that's it. Ron Boo dies in a Christ-like pose, an innocent man sentenced to death by a manipulated crowd. At least, that's what Ron Boo wants you to believe. This ending, while certainly powerful, is just like everything else we've seen. It is far from the reality of the situation. In fact, I suspect that Ronbu's been in on it from the very beginning. On day three, Ronbu has to choose a code to enter into the heart of the facility. However, despite it being put up to the audience vote, he decides to go with his own option. What are you doing?

They picked red. I don't care. I don't care. Doing this sets off alarms and releases a horde of mindless Shofall drones that chase him into the epic finale. You could say that this was because he wasn't playing along with Showfall's plan. His eyes had been opened by Hatch and so he made his own decision. But at the time he makes this decision, he still trusted Hetch. So far, he'd done everything that Hetched told him to do.

So why didn't Ranbu go along with his advice and let the audience pick the code to be input? If anyone was likely to have found the code in the environment, it would have been a group of theorists like us cheering him on. And that was exactly the problem. Showfall needed him to pick the wrong code in order to set off the chain of events that would lead to the grand finale. And I believe that Ronbu knew exactly that. The code had to be put in wrong so that the rest of the stream would play out,

and he couldn't trust the audience to get it wrong. In fact, they don't get it wrong. If you look at the tally of the vote, they were telling him to input the correct code. Even after he shuts down the facility, as Ranbu wanders towards what he believes to be the exit, he purposely ignores the sign that tells him where that exit is, that it's to the right. Instead, he walks directly forwards to the door that ultimately hides Hetch's betrayal and the gruesome finale. I get that this guy is supposed to be exhausted at this point, but if you were desperate to escape from the situation, you'd follow the very first exit signs that you see, right?

But no, he ignores it. He keeps walking forward. He was never aiming for the exit in the first place. He was just doing what he had to do to keep the show on track, walking directly towards Hetch's surprise reveal so that the audience could finally complete the task that was the end goal of this entire experiment, killing another human being.

Except, do you remember specifically who we've been asked to kill? All the way back in that first video, there's one name given to someone we are actively being brainwashed and try and kill. The founder. That's right, theorists. Ron Boo is the founder. That's why he was doing things that lined up with Showfall's plans,

because they were his plans, along. He was actively trying to keep the social experiments on track and he knew how it all had to end. During episode two, when the group finds a clue that helps reveal the exit, Ronbu is very quick to question whether it's the correct door. It says to go there, but I feel like that's a trap. Which leads to Ethan dying as he actively tries to find another solution. What if we put on like this shoe? Oh god!

The door is the way. All of this death is part of the entertainment, so he purposely deceives the other contestants to keep the entertainment value up. It's why he doesn't participate in searching the extra doors or being and part of their silly ideas. He knows what's behind those doors. He needs to get to the end to have the audience choose to kill him. The only time that he really risks his own safety is when it's the correct answer. Look, it says behind you.

That's got to be the exit. Well, I'm not going first. That's all right. I'll go. Ah, guys, look, it's the next room. Coincidence? I think not. Ron Bu's knowledge of everything that's happening is on show even from episode one.

When he frees Sneeg from under the stairs, he states that he's been there for six months, to which Sneeg replies, Six months, I don't know that was to say. I've no idea. Sneeg never gave Ronbu any sort of indication of how long he'd been down there. Ron Boo slipped and gave out the information without being prompted, because he was the one who put Sneeg down there in the first place as a part of his grand plan. He then tries to brush it off to distract Sneeg in order to not raise suspicion. Characters like The Puzzler also seemed to be scared of Ronbu.

At the beginning of episode two, the puzzler electrocutes Ronbu so much that it almost kills him. Oh, I thought I killed. That would have been awful, considering there's a lot more going on today. about that, I honestly didn't mean to do that much. If Ronbu was just another randomly selected victim, I can understand why he might still be panicking, given the plans that he has for him in the finale. But there is no reason for the Puzzler to apologize here. I mean, this guy's meant to be evil.

Loss of human life isn't that big of a deal to him, unless of course, killing him would have meant killing his superior. If Ronbu is in fact the founder, then he hired the Puzzler to do this job. And if he'd ruined the plan by killing Ronbu before the finale, I'm sure there would have been dire consequences to pay. Ronbu even corrects the Puzzler when he makes a mistake. The puzzler responds to Ronbu's question like this.

Well, that's for you to know and for me to find out. To which Ronbu responds if he meant it the other way around. Now, this could just be a flubbed line, but I actually think it's the mask falling a bit. He's presented with the guy who's in charge of everything, and he almost kills him by accident. So he's going to be super nervous at this point. And that's why when Ronbu asks how long the game is, him saying, that's for you to know, is quite literal.

Ronbu's the one who knows everything about this game. The puzzler is just here to fill a role. And why's Ronbu doing it? All in the name of helping humanity. That's why Ranbu is called the hero, after all, throughout the videos that lead up to the social experiments, why he's hung up on all this Christ-like imagery for his death. He literally sees himself as the savior of this world that he controls. All of this convincing the audience to kill him, another human being willingly,

it's exactly what he believes humanity needs in order to survive. You know, these social experiments remind me a lot of the real-life social experiment conducted by Yale professor Stanley Milgram in 1961. For the test, he gathered 40 men between the ages of 25 and 50 from a variety of occupations, backgrounds, and education levels. In the experiment, these men were put into the role of the teacher. They were instructed to give electric shocks to another person called the learner whenever that learner made a mistake in answering questions. But here's the twist. The learner was actually an actor told to get a lot of the questions wrong, and all of the electric shocks were fake. They pretended to be in pain whenever the teacher administered a shock, but in reality no harm was being done. The important part of the experiment was that there was an authority figure, a scientist in a lab coat called the experiment

who would instruct the teacher to keep giving higher levels of electric shocks, even if the teacher felt uncomfortable doing it. The experiment aimed to see if the teachers would continue to obey the authority figure and give the shocks, even when they thought it was hurting someone. And they did. They did a lot. In fact, the results were shocking, pun definitely intended. You see, many of the participants continued to give shocks just because the authority figure told them to. By the end of the experiment, 65% of the men tested administered a shock that would have been so strong

that it could have killed the learner if any of this had been. real. In a lot of ways, this is the exact same sort of experiment that's been run on us throughout generation loss. Can you convince normal humans to vote to kill another human rather than just standing by their morals against an authority figure? Showfall and Hatch are the authority figures here, assuring us that we must be willing to choose death of another person when that option arises. All the way back in that second video, we learned that death is the quote-unquote correct option, but unlike in that video, in the social experiments, we're shown the person that we're going to be killing. We meet Ranbu, we see him in

desperation. We watch his painful journey and then we're asked to kill him anyway. And just like with the Milgram experiment, it's all fake. The shocks that the learner was experiencing never existed. Just like how Ranbu's death was staged. As the founder, he needs to stay alive to carry on his experiments. We actually see evidence of this all the way back in episode one of the social experiments with these brief reality show-esque cutaways that get inserted into the main live stream. I'm hungry and when I'm hungry, I get the grumpies. So when I'm cooking, I like to do a little bit of you know, chopping and chopping and dicing. Consider how these cutaways in reality TV work.

These aren't natural by any means. The cast member has sat down and asked to interview questions that relate to specific moments after they happen. That proves that Rambu was aware that this thing has been a show since the very beginning, not later in episode 3 when the artifice is suddenly revealed to him. But more importantly, it reveals to us a timeline. See, these sorts of cutaways aren't filmed before,

or even during the events that are unfolding. They're filmed after the fact. If the producers notice a moment that they feel is important for them to focus on, they'll then gather cast members to discuss what happened so they can splice it into the show. Meaning that Ronbu wasn't doing those reactions live. They were happening later. Except there's one problem with that. The social experiments take place over three days,

and we pretty much see Ronbu go straight from one day to the next to the next without a break. So when would they have been able to film him saying all this stuff? Simple. After the show was over. After Ron Boo's quote-unquote death. Obviously, this is far from the end. At the finale of the streams, we're treated to a little sneak peek of what's to come. The Founders Cut.

There's a lot of things that I want to make more clear story-wise. You're going to see new angles. There's going to be stuff that I'm going to add in. There's going to be lines that I'm going to re-record and add in as well. Ronbu even said that he plans on making the ending even sadder than it already is. And you know what that is? That's manipulation. Manipulation of the audience.

It's Ronbu, the founder, deciding what is truth, what is canon, and what's fiction. It is, in a very literal way, the definition of generation loss. A copy of a copy. where that original event is thrown out, and the newly altered copy remains until eventually nobody even remembers what happened in the original. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if once the Founders' Cut is released,

the vods of the original streams just quietly fade away into the background. He'll deny their existence, gaslighting us all into thinking that his version of events are the version of events. The founder is going to curate our experience, control our thoughts, replace our memories with ones that he's created.

The only question is, are we going to let him? Seems to me like the true social experiment begins now. But hey, that's just a theory. A game theory! Thanks for watching!