Game Theory - This Place Is NOT Happy... (Happy Meat Farm ARG)

Episode Date: July 24, 2023

Join Game Theory Host MatPat as he breaks down the hidden secrets of the Happy Meat Farms/Alex Bale ARG Credits: Writers: Matthew Patrick, William Ryan Sheehan "El Fodder" and Tom Robinson Editors: Tyler Mascola, Pedro Freitas, JayskiBean AbsolutePixel, Alex "Sedge" Sedgwick and Shannon (Bomb0i) Assistant Editor: Caitie Turner (Caiterpillart) Sound Editor: Yosi Berman

Internet, welcome to Game Theory, the show that actually knows how the sausage gets made. Over the past several months, if there's been one thing that I've seen requested constantly in the comments on the subreddit and on Twitter, it's more fnaf. To which I say, why? How? What do you expect? But if there are two requests that I see constantly, it's one, more fnaf, and two, to solve the horrific mysteries that are happening over at Happy Meat Farms. Not to be confused with Happy Humble's Burger Barn, completely separate things. Just a lot of joyful beef products dominating the indie horror space these days.

Couldn't tell you why, but hey, as long as it's not killer animatronics or haunted toys, I am all about it, friends. Anyway, for those of you who don't know, happy meat farms is a video series currently being uploaded onto the YouTube channel, this place is not happy. When I saw so many requests coming in from you guys, I knew I had to check it out. But when I went to the channel, there were only three videos. It's not a whole lot to work with. Or so I thought.

Watching them, it immediately becomes clear that this is far from a nothing burger. Three short videos quickly spiral out into a very complex, very expansive ARG filled with juicy lore. All about a meat manufacturing company engaging in some very unsavory practices. Let's just say cruelty-free, this is not. But the most interesting part of all is that this one isn't finished. The ARG surrounding this evil corporation still has presumably one more video left to release. It's been a good few months since the last video, so it's unclear when we're likely to see it. But I figured now's as good of a time as any to do.

dive into the mystery because I believe with what we already have, I can tell you what Happy Meat Farms is up to and what the missing video is gonna reveal. Things start out with a warning message that lets us know that only authorized Happy Meat Farm R&D personnel are allowed to view the video. It also asks that the parties who view the video sign a non-disclosure agreement. The video shows us three rounds of genetic treatment testing. Each experiment lets us see the subject name, animal type, age, sex, status, and recommendation for the next step. Special shout-outs to the cow test subject here, which is code named M-Z0-0. You get it? You get it? It's a cow, moo. Top-shelf internet humor right there. In the first two rounds of testing, we see that things aren't going so well.

After treatment, the test subjects have developed large tumors and eyes on parts of their body that probably shouldn't have eyes. Others have mutated to such an extreme degree that they outright blur the photo entirely. Because, quote, looking at it causes extreme discomfort. Thank you, happy meat farm for your thoughtfulness and foresight. Except, uh, you know, there's just one problem with that move. The last frame the image is on screen, the blur filter disappears. Well, most subjects are either kept for further study or outright killed to develop extreme growth and are then sent to HR. Not exactly sure what human resources are going to be doing with a gross lump of mutant chicken, but clearly this is heading in the direction that they

wants. And when the final animal, M0101 escapes the facility, the whole things declared a success and Happy Meat Farm moves on to begin human trials. But hold on, there's something else here. Something in that legalese that appears at the very beginning of the video. If you bother to read the entire disclaimer, as I'm sure you always do in any agreement that you go into, you'll see at the very bottom, for more information, go to happymeetfarms.com. And you know what? Yeah, I would like some more information, please. So let's head on over and it's a very normal, very corporatey looking website. SquareSpace did you well, my friends, you got everything you need, your list of products and services, your company history, your glitching welcome video with hidden text. Hold on a minute, that's not

something that you usually find on a corporate website. And if that one didn't tip you off, the copyright right will. 2023, huh? It's copyrighted from the future? There's even an employee portal that can only be accessed with an employee's unique Happy Meat Farms ID, which you know we're eventually going to have to hack into. Let's start off with that glitching video on the homepage, shall we? If you pay close attention to the video, you're going to start to notice something odd. The transitions are inconsistent. Throughout the vast majority of the video, they use slow, gentle crossfades to complement the sweeping beauty shots of their pastures. But every once in a while, you have a transition that goes like this. A hard cut to

the next scene and therein lies our key. This ain't my first rodeo here, cow poaks. There's a place to hide single frame Easter eggs, it's during hard cuts like that. That one frame between hard cuts tends to be overlooked by someone who's just casually watching. In fact, the Happy Meat Farm Welcome video has four of these single frame moments, some of which might look familiar. There are little experimental monstrosities from the first video, p-0113, c0174, and our good friend moo. But what of these things is not like the other? At 24 seconds into the video, there's a single frame with the code ZX-159G. And if we haven't to put this into the password prompt for the Happy Meat Farm employee portal, it opens up.

We are behind the curtain, friends. Use it, use it. I'm going to use it. Make sure it's right. Let's find out. Open that file. I like that. Or we will be in a second because I'm not done with this welcome video yet.

Well, the hard cuts are certainly the most obvious secret thing in here. They're only hiding an even bigger piece of the pie. That's right, Frendo's Happy Meat Farms is using secrets to distract you away from the other more hidden secrets. It's a pretty clever move, I gotta say. You see, at 44 seconds into the video, if you haven't to be watching in full screen, which, why would you be but sure? There's a bunch of random letters that are nearly blending in with the background. Ladies and gentlemen, break out the togas. It's a Caesar cipher.

By plugging it into a decoder, we see that it reads, quote, Host assimilated, mother colony established, preparing the reconnection. That's a, it's a bit consistent. bit concerning. The terms mother colony and assimilation make me think aliens. Are aliens somehow involved in the animal testing we're seeing here? Possibly, but there's nothing else from the previous video that comes close to expanding on the idea. I'm gonna need more information here before we can fully commit to the tinfoil hat on this one. So for more information, let's go back through that newly opened employee portal, shall

we? The employee access page gives us a glimpse of what life is like for someone who's working at Happy Meat Farms. Their employee orientation video emphasizes how important privacy is to Happy Meat Farms and openly admits that stress and trauma are expected as a part of your every day. To combat this, Happy Meat Farm has offered mandatory therapy, and it assures its employees that anything odd they see is all in their heads, and they probably shouldn't worry about it. This couldn't possibly be gaslighting, could it? No. They're just listening in on our private conversations with our therapists in order to know which ones have seen too much and which ones to bump off. Look, there's even a list of benefits that we get for working here, including compensation

in the event of our untimely demise, when your likelihood of death is expressly called out on the employee homepage, might be time to start looking for a different line of work. There's also the not-so-settled mention of being part of the New World Order. See, editors, I told you working in the dungeon wasn't so bad. What we're dealing with here, my friends, is a corporate culture that's constantly monitoring its employees, knowingly exposing them to disturbing events,

and offering therapy to gaslight them into silence. Basically, it's Amazon. Beyond the employee benefits an onboarding video, the portal has two very close. clear passwords that we need to find. One to access the R&D department and the other to access human resources. Maybe then we'll finally be able to figure out what they're doing with all that chicken goo. Elsewhere on the site, there's a quick backstory for the company. Apparently, the company is based in Florida, because of course, the weirdo alien food mutation company is based

in Florida. And was founded in 1998 by a woman named Ramona Binds, who aspired to, quote, give animals the best quality of life. Uh, I think the gooey chicken in the corner might want to have a word with you. Happy Meat Farms almost went bankrupt in 2014 until it was bailed out by a new unnamed partner who helped them turn things around, which could explain the shift in the company's goals. Although they still claim to use no genetic modifications or growth supplements, elsewhere on the website, we learned that they lobbied to kill a bill that would require groceries to put a special label on anything that was genetically engineered.

Seems like that be something that a totally organic farm would want, but what do I know? I'm just a dumb creator. Politics are above my pay grade. Speaking of creators, we see the website mentioned that they've started to partner with up-and-coming creators like the cynical critic and fellow SpongeBob theorist Alex Bale, of all people. Guys, maybe you should do a better job of vetting your brand deals in advance. Take it from me. This is the type of stuff that will get you canceled on Twitter.

On the other end of the spectrum, in one last very meta-twist, you can see that the company appears to be having an ongoing dispute against the This Place Is Not Happy YouTube channel, the place where our investigation began. Happy Meat Farms claims that the videos being uploaded onto the channel are fake and doctored. But I think we know the truth. It's leaked footage from the R&D department. Footage that we see spoken about in a different part of the website. So, knowing that we have ourselves some more passwords to find,

let's go back to the whistleblower YouTube channel and see what else they've uploaded recently. On November 24th, 2021, This Place Is Not Happy, Released its second leaked video, titled Happy Meat Farm's genome modification test 47. Skipping tests 44, 45, and 46, I see. Which you gotta say, I don't hate, I can only see so many deformed chickens before my appetite for McNuggets is gone for good. In this video, we see the shift to huge. At the beginning of the upload, we see employees have themselves the exciting chance to volunteer and be a part of the tests.

Two weeks vacation, a 401k, and untested growth hormones injected directly into my arm? Woohoo! Where do I sign? Only four of the test subjects we see are actual volunteers. The rest are classified as insubordinate employees, outsiders, and non-compliant journalists. It's great to see so many people willingly step forward and not coerced at all to help the forward march of science. Just like last time with the animals, any subjects that show significant growth are immediately sent to HR, but it's subject H0027 that ultimately stands out. She's a 47-year-old female classified as a host. Odd word choice there. There's no picture of this

extremely dangerous subject because it turns out that they've escaped. Usually not something you want to have happen after you mutate them into a horrendous flesh monster. It's also worrying that this one is labeled as extremely intelligent. Despite the escape, they declare the test of success, sufficient growth has been achieved, and the video ends with the phrase, mother will be pleased. There it is again, mother. Right after testing on an older female that was explicitly labeled as host. We know from the website video that a mother colony has been established and that a host was assimilated. Could mother actually be a single entity?

With the colony aspect being something more akin to the aliens franchise, where a single mother alien, the queen is planted somewhere. Say a 47-year-old female host and then begins the process of reproducing to create an alien colony? Certainly seems plausible based on the evidence so far. After the tests, the video returns to the original employee video, which thanks us for participating and for being a small part of the new world order. Then the video glitches once more, and we see something moving. Well, it's meant to be a distortion of the hands that are holding the earth. When it begins to move, it almost looks like another test subject.

Big black eye on one side, pale, patchy skin. Plus, we hear a distorted voice. Don't feed them. The way the voice sounds, yeah, I could imagine that coming from one of those horrible flesh piles. But what does it mean? them. What them? And why do things keep getting sent to HR? My guess is that these experiments are being used to feed whatever mother is, and that HR doesn't actually stand for human resources. But to prove it, I'm going to need to access one of these new login pages from the employee portal. And wouldn't you know it, this new video is the key that we need to unlock it. Doing it, though, is going to be a bit of a slog. Instead of just looking for hard cuts, this time we're looking for letters that show up prior to any of the others. Normally, the letters start blurred and then become readable. But at different points, certain letters, just appear without starting off blurred. Putting them all together in the order that they appear

gives us the code CM-042T. And with that, we head on over to the login pages. And while it doesn't work for HR, it does unlock the R&D portal. And it's on the other side of that link where Happy Meat Farm's mask begins to slip. As soon as you land on the R&D page, you'll notice that we aren't in Kansas anymore.

The soft colors of the employee and customer-facing pages are ripped away, replaced with just plain white text over a black background. By looking at the page, we can actually see that the R&D department is currently working on two major projects. The first is one that we're already familiar with, Project Chimera. This is what we've been seeing via the leaked footage over on YouTube. Experiments meant to increase the amount of living biomass in an animal

so it can be sent to Happy Meat Farm's HR. They do this by injecting some sort of foreign DNA into the test subjects. Where is that DNA from? Unclear because the text has been redacted. It would seem like not even upper-level employees are able to get this classified information. However, if you highlight that white redacted text, it actually reveals what's written there. Why is no one good at their jobs? Anyway, it reveals that this DNA has come from none other than mother herself.

It's her DNA that seems to be causing the extreme growth, increased intelligence, and also overwhelming aggression that we've been witnessing in these test subjects. Under the project summary, there's also an incident report which provides some additional detail on the escape subjects that we've learned about through the YouTube videos. While the first two, an acidic chicken and spider cow, have been contained, human subject H0027 is still at large. According to the report, during their escape, H. 0.027 stole files from the main server, likely meant to expose the company.

My guess, the missing files are the videos that have been uploaded to YouTube, and H0027 is the voice that we hear at the end of that second leaked tape. Don't feed them. The other ongoing R&D project listed here is Project Vulnerability, an effort to introduce diseases into the population using intentionally contaminated meat products. These diseases are intended to create weakness in the population that mother can later exploit to create her so-called New World Order. And that's about it. Gotta admit, for being two layers deep, I expected a bit more.

That said, we still haven't broken into the most secretive area of them all, HR. I mean, that's the place where all the successful experiments go and the place they never return from. So, something's gotta be going on over there. Who knows? Maybe even mother itself. Luckily, subject H0027 gave us a final leaked video on the This Place is not happy YouTube page. Happy Meat Farm's HR orientation video. Perfect! Finally we get ourselves a sneak peek behind the padlocked steel doors. In the video we're told that there are three rules every HR employee has to follow. Don't touch

anything, don't look in anything, which is weird because the rest of the video is a tour of the HR department specifically asking us to look at things. And finally, have fun. Great to be in a positive work environment. The HR building looks to be abandoned. However on the tour we see all the things that you'd expect. Desks, lacklester birthday decorations, rabid, mutant dogs. They even have a creepy IT guy named Jared who works out of the industrial refrigerator. Like I said, all the normal office stuff. Of course, there's some unusual things here too. A room full of hair, walls of flesh, mouse traps lining the walls. And finally, the tour

ends with us getting to dine alongside the big boss woman herself, mother. So it seems like that's Happy Meat Farm's primary goal, using all the successful biomass experiments to feed this giant tentacled monstrosity. Quick side note, is this tech, Technically cannibalism. I mean, her own DNA is being used to make these creatures grow. Does that count as eating yourself? I could only eat things that literally have a part of me inside of them. That is a weird dietary restriction, I gotta say. Then again, who am I to judge? I don't really like mushrooms.

So who's the real weird one here? I guess it's just reassuring to know that she approves of her own product. We're told once again that mother is pleased before we cut back to a video of Ramona Binds, head of Happy Meat Farm, thanking us for our support. Except, something goes wrong. The video distorts and we hear a voice Tell us, it's not me. Now this is huge.

By using the identifying word me, it informs us of two things. First, that we shouldn't believe that the woman on screen, Ramona, is what she says. That somehow she's a clone of Ramona. And secondly, that H0027, the person speaking to us through these leaked videos, she isn't just any volunteer employee, she's Ramona Binds herself. It's not the only evidence pointing towards that conclusion either. When the deformed dogs are shown during the HR video, we see, I never wanted this to happen appear within on-screen glitches.

A sentiment that's completely in line with Ramona's original goal of creating a farm that gives animals the best quality of life. Later, when we visit the Pink Room, a recreation of a child's bedroom, the name Ramona is posted over the bed. But H-027 comments here, how did they get every detail right? This is Ramona's childhood bedroom. And for H-027 to know that the details were all correct, it means that she has to be the real Ramona. She was captured by her own company, she was experimented on, and then, mutated beyond recognition, only to be replaced by some sort of a clone, an exact replica so that no one would notice that she had gone missing. Luckily, this real Ramona did manage to escape, grabbing the video evidence off the servers to expose their plot.

And that's not all that we see by going slowly through this video. Further examination reveals pink letters that are written on the walls throughout the HR department, WF71A, which gives us a password and access to the final employees-only section, HR. On this page, we primarily learn about the third and final Happy Meat Farm Initiative, Project Nightmare. We're told that mothers apparently had a bunch of kids over the years, Mazel tovdavd her, and that these children are the reason that Happy Meat Farm needs hosts. It's left vague, but the children need to digest something from each host in order to reach

their final form. Only then can the mother and children share the digested stuff and then be reconnected. There's just one catch, though. We're told that these children can't just take over by force. They have to be willingly handed control by the host. That's where Project Nightmare comes in. A series of psychological torture that's meant to weaken a host and make them more compliant. The hair room, the flesh room, all part of the nightmare.

But what exactly is being digested here? What is all of that redacted text? If they've already broken down the will and identity of the host, what else is there to give? And what does any of this have to do with reconnecting with mother? Well, loyal theorists, that's where the SpongeBob conspiracy finally comes in. Right at the start of all of this. On the very first page of the HMF website, there's a small blurb that mentions Happy Meat Farms sponsoring up-and-coming online creators.

And these aren't just random, made-up names like Ramona Binds. These are actual real-world creators with actual real-world channels and videos that you can watch right now. Channels like The Cynical Critic, filmmaker Wesley Herald, conspiracy Carl, and of course, the SpongeBob guy, Alex Bale. Happy Meat Farms is an animal farming company that offers a variety of different delicious meat products. It seems like they're connected to this and entire happy meat farm conspiracy, but how? What exactly is going on here? To date, Alex Bales released nine SpongeBob theories, and they start largely how you'd expect. Well-crafted

deep dives into the lore of SpongeBob looking at the exact sort of stuff that we'd cover in a typical episode. Or the characters, the result of atomic testing? Is this all part of an underwater documentary? Why are there multiple rulers of the sea? But from theory number three onward, we start to see a much bigger story start to unfold. At moments throughout the video, Alex begins talking to a monster hiding in the shadows of the sea. his garage, a fleshy tentacle monster that he calls the muse. Great, glad we're on the same page. You know, I'm sorry about all the shouting and the craziness.

You know, I won't have anything against you personally. I think if we just communicate it better, we could have, you know, avoided a lot of the issues that we were having. I'm glad we finally have an understanding. And we see that this title of muse is very appropriate for the creature. This thing in the shadows is the one that's providing him with the SpongeBob theories. Can we get one of those? What are those muse things? Because having someone just deliver the scripts to us on a silver platter would be pretty sweet.

However, the muse doesn't do it for free. It requires feeding, specifically raw meat. Yeah, about the muse thing I was just talking about. Still totally worth it. Buy a bunch of meat at the grocery next time you're there. At this point, you know, I gotta call it out. A monster that hides in the shadows, has long, fleshy tentacles, and requires large amounts of raw meat to sustain itself.

Now, why would that possibly sound familiar? Hmm. And while some of us would welcome a script delivering meat monster in their garage, Alex apparently sees things differently. It's clear that he isn't exactly thrilled by the arrangement. No, no, this is not what I wanted, okay? This isn't worth it. We are done. My boy, we both know you can't go back now.

Okay, this is the last time and then I want you out of this house. Not only do we see this in the narrative moments of the videos themselves, but his cry for help is even hidden in the channel's banner. That might look like just a black image, but good theorists know that black images are always worth checking. By cranking up the exposure, you can see the words, don't feed the muse. Ladies and gentlemen, we're not down on the farm anymore. This is a whole separate related ARG dedicated to the muse takeover. He's trapped by it.

Forced to make more and more SpongeBob theories despite his creative frustrations, and he's not alone. YouTube channel banners have to be made to fit all different devices that you might want to watch on. So what you see by watching on mobile or desktop is just a tiny fragment of the complete image on there. There's a much bigger image that exists that no one ever really gets to see unless they're watching the channel on a television. And even then, I don't know if I've ever actually found it used on a television. Anyway, pulling the entire banner image is a bit of a hassle. You have to go into the source code and then find the lines about 2120 wide TV banners. Then you gotta fix

the URL manually. But anyway, if you manage to do all of that with Alex's banner image, you actually get yourself a second secret message hidden there outside of the typical line of They are everywhere. Loyal theorists, there's more than one muse. But if they're out there, where are they? Before Alex's fifth SpongeBob theory, he uploaded a short horror film called Late Night Snack. It did fine, 200,000 views, which is great. At least until you compare it with the SpongeBob theories that can get upwards of 10 million views.

To add insult to injury, another YouTube channel, the cynical critic, real name Mark Mayhew, did a review on that very short, digging into how bad it was and really pushing it. was and really pushing for Alex to just stick to the SpongeBob theory stuff that he's good at. Alex, go back to making SpongeBob Theory videos. No one wants to see your awful horror film. Admittedly, it's a really harsh review, but if you stay to watch the whole review until the end, you start to notice black liquid dripping from the ceiling vent. The same black liquid that we see appear in Alex's fifth SpongeBob theory, black goo that comes from a muse. So it would seem that the cynical critic also has himself a muse in the background. And when we see that we see

Wait, wasn't Mark also one of the creators that was sponsored by Happy Meat Farm? Now you start to see how these puzzle pieces come together. During the cynical critics responding to hate comments video, we see a brief flash of his Gmail account. Based on the subject lines and the email previews, we get basically this character's entire backstory. It explains that his mother has lost her health insurance and can't afford to pay it. He also appears to have had a falling out with his business partner, Anthony, because he's started to lean heavily into clickbait and aggressively negative videos. It's almost like someone, or something, has given him advice on how to make his channel more successful. And wouldn't you know it?

One email later, it's a receipt for a bunch of raw meat. Looks like someone ignored the warnings and fed the muse. Shortly after that, we see a notice that Anthony has disappeared. Before finally, the big stuff. Happy Meat Farm emails wanting a sponsorship. Forget your best friends on timely disappearance. It is all about that mula, baby. Hashtag Spahn.

The story becomes even more exciting. explicit with his final upload, why 1313 Paradox Street is an instant classic. Here, Mark's reviewing a short film that was produced by, who knew? HMF Entertainment. Happy Meat Farm is added again. In this video, we see the cynical critic trying to escape the muse, only for the muse to say this. He was being a bad friend. He serves a better purpose now. He belongs to mother now, and so will you. A tentacle launches out from the darkness and

We cut to a smiling cynical critic ending his video, black liquid dripping from his nose. And, well, I could tell you what you're seeing here, I might as well just show it to you. If you stop the video at seven minutes and nine seconds, you find the answer. Hidden text that reads, phase three complete, host assimilated, begin digestion, awaiting reconnection. And you see, this is Project Nightmare. Hosts being targeted and manipulated by these muses, who then go on to manipulate other hosts. Mark, the cynical critic, is broken down by the pressure to earn money while his mother struggles with medical bills. He kills his partner in a disagreement. The guilt and pressure that he's feeling ultimately push him into willingly giving up to the monster.

And in the end, he's left there on camera as a smiling, posing corpse, responsible for churning out new content. It's the exact same thing that we saw happen with Ramona Bynes, original founder of HMF. They're consumed, digested, assimilated, and cloned, made into a smiling, talking head for the camera. A smiling head that then turns the attack onto someone else. That's why Mark's reviews openly attack and antagonize Alex Bale. It's psychological warfare. The muse is trying to break down Alex, get him to succumb. It's Project nightmare.

And despite resisting for a long time, even Alex succumbs. In his ninth SpongeBob conspiracy theory, the final shot is of him being consumed, literally eaten by a replica of himself. Except what we know of Alex is gone. Only the SpongeBob guy remains. Now, these sorts of messages and mini-mystries are hidden throughout both Alex and cynical critics' videos, of course, but also on other channels too. Conspiracy Carl, Paradox 1313, Sonic the Blue Rat, the list goes on and on.

Some of them require ciphers, others require you to match the words in the script with the numbers that appear on screen, but all of them refer to these phases, making the hosts compliant, planting spores, eventual digestion, just like we read about on the Happy Meat Farm's website. And speaking of that website, if you still weren't convinced that these two ARGs were connected, I decided to check the website banner for Happy Meat Farms just like I did for Alex Bales channel. And guess what I found? Behind where the text box usually is, there was a mutant cow and the word muse written across it. Clear as day.

Boom! Case closed theorists. These YouTubers are 100% being digested by mothers' children, the Muses. So, knowing what we know now, I ask again, what is being digested exactly? I'm supposing its passion, creativity, maybe some level of ethics. These creators, for various reasons, sought fame and fortune, but wound up turning to creatively unfulfilling clickbait content. They got their success, but the grind of audiences only being interested in one specific type of content

has caused them to become lost. Replaced with a soulless clone who's successful, but really is just a shadow of their former self, making lifeless videos not because they want to, but because it's all anyone else seems to care about. All of it in service of a greater, powerful monster, the YouTube algorithm, I mean, mother. With one final upload coming in 2023 to end the muse saga, I suspect it's going to be a bittersweet conclusion. Sure, Alex is going to manage to get past his muse and take control back of the channel for himself. But that doesn't mean it's going to be a happy ending. YouTube and the algorithm are still going to remain.

Happy Meat Farm and Mother are still going to be there, finding new hosts. New creators that are going to make the content that they want to push on the platform. stuff that they can put higher-paying ads on in order to feed their insatiable appetite. Will the viewers still stick around for the content that he wants to make? Defying the algorithm? That's the question he's gonna ask, and that's the answer we'll have to see. So theorists, if you take anything away from this episode, it's that we all have our own part to play in this.

Sure, we can point fingers at YouTube and the algorithm blaming them for empty lifeless content, but those systems feed off of us, the viewers. We tell those programs what we watch. Unless we're talking about shorts, in which case that was forced on to us. Anyway, if one of your favorite creators tries to make something new, give it a go, watch it, support them. The first time is gonna be a little rough, but by supporting them, we allow them to keep going, to hone that idea into something incredible. You want proofs right here in these two ARGs.

I mean, they've been a wild ride, the puzzles, the story, the message, all of it absolutely fantastic, but it is very different from what people expect of Alex's usual content. As time's gone on, though, when he's received support for it, you can literally see the quality, the puzzles, the story, all getting better. So do your part and at least try to support the creators that you love, whatever they decide to do. Because you never know what awesome story you might get out of it. And Alex, go and win this one for humanity, buddy. I'm looking forward to the big conclusion to all of this.

I'm sure there's going to be plenty of meat on the bone for me to chew on. Or, you know, if you get bored, you could always do more SpongeBob theories over here. But hey, that's just a theory. A game theory. Thanks for watching.