Reply All - #56 Zardulu

Episode Date: February 25, 2016

The rats are not what they seem. Also a new Yes Yes No. Zardulu's Twitter and Facebook accounts. Eric Yearwood's website. Matt Little's website. The Half Press tweet discussed on this week's Yes Yes No. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, BJ. Hey, Alex. Are you ready for this week's episode? Do you think? Do I need to be ready in like a different way than normal? I'm just trying to prepare you, man. This one's a weird one. Okay, I like a weird one.

Okay, so this is a story that I've been reporting for like the last month. And it's honestly kind of taken over my life. But it starts small. It starts very small with this guy named Eric Earwood. About two and a half years ago, Eric embarked on this quintessential New York life change where he quit his job as a teacher in Florida and moved to the city to become an actor.

But it didn't go so well. I haven't made the kind of career I wanted for myself, I guess, and I'm kind of falling back on some plan Bs. That's a tough racket. Really tough. And especially when I moved here and I had a fiancé and because I wasn't making a lot of money

and didn't seem like I was headed towards a stable lifestyle, we split up. So I was pretty down and out mid-year 2015. To make ends meet, Eric got jobs doing stuff like building stages for fancy schmancy events and some graphic design work, but Eric was not living his best life. I think when I was in college,

I wanted to be like a renaissance man, you know? I wanted to experience all of life. And, you know, but then you get a little older and you realize, hey, I've just got this little pocket of stuff I can do and got to be content with that. We're getting real heavy real quick here. Sorry to be Debbie Downer here.

I didn't know what to say, but I'm just answering questions, I guess so. Eric was in the city following his dreams, and he was going nowhere. And then Magic entered his life in the form of an email. It was basically something like, you know, hello, I'm a performance artist I go by the name of Zardu. I have something that you might fit, you know, on this role, and I was wondering if you might be willing, you know, for several hundred dollars to participate.

Zardulu. Eric still has no idea how or why this person found him. In fact, Eric barely knows anything about them beyond the fact that this person calls themselves Zardulu. But Zardulu took Eric and made him part of something that became bigger than he could have ever imagined. What do you mean calls themselves Zardulu? that's their name.

That's what they go by. It's like a mononym, pseudonym, monosudonym. It just sounds like, I mean, maybe it's a common name somewhere. It sounds like something from, what was the movie where it's David Bowie and they're an amaze and it's scary? It is very funny that you mentioned that. That movie is called Labyrinth. And after exchanging a few emails, Eric agreed to go to Zar d'alu's studio, and this

is what he said about meeting her. She was wearing robes when we met. So that was very odd. She looked like she was like maybe a villager from the labyrinth. Was she wearing like a cloak? It wasn't a cloak. It was more like a red like dashiki or something with some sort of embroidered symbols or something down the front of it. She was a little bit kind of, I don't know, mystical is a weird word,

but that's the way she seemed somehow. Eric said that she was friendly but kind of inscrutable. You know what I mean? And then she starts explaining what she wants from him. She just said, I want to create something viral. So this was fall of last year. After Pizza Rat, the video of a rat carrying a slice of pizza down a flight of subway stairs went viral. And suddenly the internet couldn't get enough of videos of rats carrying things.

And Zardulu apparently wanted to manufacture one of these videos. So she says to Eric, here's the plan. plan. It's going to be a video starring you and a rat, but not just any subway rat, a rat that I trained. You'll sit on the subway, the rat will crawl onto you, step on your phone, take a picture of itself, and then you will leap up in feigned surprise and run away, and I will be recording it. But then the rat would need to be able to unlock his phone. Yes. So there is a level of... artifice involved in this, right?

He has to unlock his phone, pretend to be asleep, let the rat crawl on him, take the picture, and then jump up, frightened, and run away. But even if you're faking it a little bit, that's still like an extremely well-trained rat.

PJ, you have no idea. Was the rat there? Yeah, the rat was there, and there were other rats, too. And so they would run this maze, they would leap over these little obstacles. They would go through. there was like a little pool that they would swim across to retrieve certain things.

And she had them trained in a way that was pretty amazing. That is amazing. It is amazing. When I saw what she was doing with the rats, it went from being like, okay, this is just like I'm helping somebody make a web series or something to, wow, this person is doing something big. This isn't just some Mickey Mouse operation, no pun intended. And a couple days later, they meet at about four in the morning in the subway.

Zardulu shows up dressed as a civilian with no robes so as not to draw any attention to herself. And she brings another person to film the whole thing so that she is free to do the rat wrangling. And initially we were going to actually take the video on a subway car. But when we went down into the subway, we couldn't find an empty car that was empty long enough. So at some point, she kind of called an auto. and said, let's do it just on the platform. Okay. So we found a platform that was empty enough,

and we had peanut butter smeared on the phone, and they put the rat on top of me, and then took it from there. Where was the peanut butter on the phone? It was at the spot where you pressed the button. Sorry, I need to move. No. It appears that Kim Kardashian isn't the only one that loves selfies.

Rats apparently liked them too. Zardulu took the video and sent it to a Connecticut TV station posing as someone called Don Richards. And that's how selfie rat was born. And it was everywhere. For a couple days, it became the weird news story on the 11 o'clock news all over the country. It was blurry and you couldn't tell that it was Eric, but the video was seen millions of times. In the process, he dropped a series. cell phone which somehow snapped a photo of the imposing critter.

Richards caught the whole thing on video and now the sleeping man has a forever memento of selfie rat. Christina Bear picks 11 news. What does the mouse look like in the photo? I can show you a picture of it. He looks like some, it's like pretty blurry but it makes him look like a rat from like the Muppets. Like it makes them look really cute because it's just like you see like the pink of his nose and like I don't know. I like it. Yeah, I mean, it's adorable. So at this point,

I'm asking myself, what kind of person puts this Herculane effort into this relatively inconsequential rat hoax? And Eric says to me that Zardulu told him that selfie rat. Selfie rat is just the beginning. She has a big vision and she was describing the project as a piece, a puzzle piece in this grand tapestry of illusions that she wants to create in New York City. Wow. Yeah. She would say, you know, like the world isn't prepared for what I have in store. You know, just things that are just like, okay, they're kind of enigmatic head scratchers. But after seeing Zardulhu Studio, Eric was ready to believe her. A lot of the things I was looking at I didn't really understand. Like she had, there were these like geometric shapes that she had cobbled together from

iron and wood. And she had like a, I remember there was like a big suit made of hair. It looked like human hair. It didn't look like fur. So that was bizarre. That is bizarre. And then she had a lot of, there were a lot of like drills and industrial stuff that she uses to make bigger objects, I guess. Eric told me that all the stuff in Zardulu Studio, the suit made of human hair, the shapes made of iron and wood, all of those things that he couldn't quite understand, they're part of her master plan

to unleash something huge on New York City. Wow, she sounds like an art villain. But is she an art villain? Yeah. How was she villainous in this situation? Well, she's saying she's going to unleash a series of illusions. When was the last time you heard a hero

who was talking about, A, unleashing anything, but particularly illusions. Again, I am paraphrasing. But magicians should work with consent. Magicians do illusions all the time. Magicians are like on the villainous gradient. Anyway. So part of doing this project was that Eric wasn't supposed to say anything about it to anyone.

And he wouldn't have, were it not for the fact that some person anonymously contacted the website Gothamist and said, listen, this selfie right video is a fake. And to this day, we have no idea who it was that contacted Gothamist, but who, whoever it was, they said, you know, this video's fake. I know the guy who is in it. His name's Eric. Wow. And the author of the article contacted Eric and was like, hey, the jig is up.

I know this was you. And so he was like, yeah, all right, I'll talk to you about it. So Gophamis puts up the article, but the big headline wasn't even about selfie rat. Instead, it was about pizza rat. The headline was, is Pizza Rat a hoax? I talked to Matt Little, the guy who filmed Pizza Rat. And unlike Eric, he says it wasn't staged. He insists that Pizza Rat is not a hoax.

It was myself and my friend Pat Bear. We were heading home from work late one night, and we looked down and there's a rat dragging a slice of pizza twice his size, his or her size, down the stairs. And it was one of those moments where I was like, I have to take my phone out and videotape this because my friends will never believe this if I just tell them I saw it. For Matt, Pizza Rat's success was this story.

strange and hilarious moment in his life. He did a ton of interviews. He made a pizzerat t-shirt. It was just a serendipitous, right place, right time kind of thing. And then he got an email from a reporter at Gothamist, the same reporter who had talked to Eric. And I said, okay, I just need more context of what you want to know, right? And I checked my email about an hour later again, and he's emailed me twice. He said he's pretty sure it was faked.

and two that he needs to hear from me by 3.30 if I want to quote in the article. And also congratulations on pulling off such a hoax, which like, it's very flattering that he thought I was smart enough to fool the entire world this way. And I called him and I realized that he was serious. And the first thing I did was laugh. I was like, one, like, why do you think this was staged? Like, who has the time? Who is the time to do something like that? So in answer to your question, who would do this?

Apparently this person. When you hear the names Ardulu, what do you think? Well, when I first thought, I thought, terrible startup. Okay. When I hear the names Ardulu, I think of the opening act for a Houdini escape exhibit at, like, a vaudeville theater in the 30s. So Matt Little says that he does not know Zardulu. He says that he's never met Eric.

Matt says that he was not collaborating with some robe-wearing lavender dweller. He was just hanging out on the subway late at night, and he saw a rat carrying a ridiculously huge piece of pizza. But if you're a conspiracy theorist, there's one thing that ties these two guys together, which is that they both take classes at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater.

And that's a detail that Gophimus treats like a smoking gun. Okay, I feel like I can actually maybe dispatch with that specific conspiracy theory. I don't think that the fact that Matt and Eric both are affiliated with Upright Citizen Brigade Theater means that they're collaborating, just because, like, UCB is like a comedy theater in New York that I really, really, really love. I go to the shows all the time. I know a nerdy amount about, like, which performers do what and whatever.

And anyway, all this to say, that theater is huge. There's like thousands of people who've been associated with it. Two people, both being, quote-unquote UCB people, is like two people having gone to the same, like mid to large-sized university. Right. And like I said, they say that they don't know each other. But when I was talking to Eric, the guy who conspired with Zardulhu on selfie rat, I asked him if he thought that Zardulu could also be responsible for Pizza Rat.

Well, she's got an armada of highly trained rats to deploy, to create viral content. So it doesn't take a mental leap to. think that she could be, but is she, or do I know that she is? I don't have any knowledge of such a thing. I even asked Eric to go back and look at the pizza rat video for clues. So does that rat

look plausibly like one of the rats you might have seen? Well, I have to say, the main rat that Zardulu uses is named Whiskers, and that did look somewhat like, whiskers. Zardulah is capable of doing things that you can't even imagine. And so the possibility that some people took a video that they didn't know was created by Zardulhu.

I mean, it's not beyond the realm of the imagination. Oh, my God. I went from being like 80% sure that he was involved in an isolated performance art piece and this other thing was completely separate to like starting to wonder what's real. Yeah. Well, I think that a selfie rat is inferior to a pizza rat as like a video.

It's a more complicated thing to stage. And so, you know, if this person is doing like a series of illusions It's designed to, like, terrify in betwixt New York City or whatever it was. Like, you'd start with pizza rat. You'd go to selfie rat. Then maybe it's, like, rat riding a motorcycle. Then maybe it's, like, rat president.

Like, there is a progression of, like, complexity that makes sense. Because the other thing now that I think about it is, like, why would a rat carry a whole slice of pizza? And the pizza was, like, perfect. Like, it wasn't, like, a crumpled up thing that had been on the floor. Like, the way I remember, it looked like a slice that had been purchased by the rat. So, you see, it's like making you question. What is real? Yeah.

Now I do feel like a little bit of a rat truther. Right. I mean, my first impulse when I found out the pizza rat might be a hoax, was just to be mad because I felt like this one incredible moment where the universe distilled everything New York City into this encounter with a rat on the subway was a lie. But then I started thinking, like, who is the liar in this situation? And it seems like it's this person who is looking down over the city

and basically leading us through mazes to get a reward, just delivering a little joy to our rat-like lives. Right, a world where a rat carries a slice of pizza is more interesting than one where it doesn't, but a world where a lady trains a rat to carry a slice of pizza is more interesting than either of those worlds. Yes, it is such an attractive idea. So attractive, in fact, that I proposed it to Matt Little,

the guy from the pizza rat video, and even he was willing to entertain it. how do you know that you weren't an unwitting pawn in some kind of massive Zardululhu illusion, or microsardulu illusion? Well, that's an interesting question. I think that one could never know... You can really go down like a pretty serious rabbit hole with this discussion.

Are you Zardulu? If yours's Ardulu, you have to tell me. It's the law. Oh, it's like if I'm a cop. Yeah, yeah. and you're trying to sell me cigarettes. Yeah. I would love to be Zardulu because I would love to have like a vision like this.

Right. I'm not. Yeah. So after this Gophanes article comes out, everyone in New York City is talking about viral rat videos again, including a woman named Laura Dooch. It was in my head, I think, like, just because that morning I had read something online

about how Pizza Rat was a hoax. And it was such a big bummer. This rat is, you know, just wants his freaking slice a pizza. and it's going to do anything to get it, it was just kind of like embodied the New York spirit. So Laura's coming home from dinner, thinking about pizza rat, and she goes into the 34th Street Herald Square subway stop.

I was walking down the stairs, and I noticed something moving by my feet. When she gets to the bottom of the stairs, she pulls at her phone, and this time, instead of a rat pulling a piece of pizza down the stairs, it's two rats, valiantly pulling a piece of pita bread up the stairs.

I'm not looking to, have a viral video I never was, but I just thought that I could not not film that. It's hard to deny that the timing of this video is pretty weird, because the got the missed article about Pizza Rat and selfie Rat came out just the week before. But I talked to Laura for about an hour, and she was certain that Zardulu had nothing to do with what she'd seen, that there was no conspiracy that rats just like to eat pita. Pita rats are not, these are just real rats. I mean, I know I have no proof that I'm not lying, but I never thought that I would have to back up my story ever.

Oh, I don't think that you're lying. I guess what I'm asking is, considering how well-coordinated those two rats were, pulling that pita up the stairs, could you entertain the possibility even for a second that there might have been some rat trainer hiding somewhere in the subway? I mean, I guess I could admit that there's, you know, a brigade of trained rats have been released upon New York City now that you've told me all of this background information. How do I know any rat is not one of Zardulu's rats? I mean, I guess they could have been planted there. At one point during my interview with Laura, my producer Tim stepped in and asked a couple questions. How far is Harold Square from UCB? Very close.

Really? Yeah. close. It's 34th and 6th, and UCB is 26th and 8th. But that doesn't mean anything. That's just coincidence. Well, I mean, there's a lot of coincidences. I'm just trying to figure out if, like, Zardulu, if there was somebody unusual,

I'm wondering if there's somebody unusual at the top of the stairs, but you didn't, you would have mentioned if you saw something odd like that over. Yeah, if you saw someone with a cage. Yeah, I'd imagine. There was a guy at the top of the stairs. I assumed he was a homeless person. He was kind of shouting nonsensical things, yelling about being hungry and are you hungry?

And it does look like he's tossing some kind of item at the rat. I don't know if it's a crumb of something or a piece of something. And then it's, I don't film anymore after that. but it is, I do have a couple seconds of that. I don't know if he's involved. I just, I don't even, I really didn't think that I didn't give him much thought as someone who could have been like working in the background to facilitate this. Laura says that there was also a woman standing near her at the bottom of the stairs who was asking people not to get too close so Laura could film. Since the Gothamist article came out,

Zardulhu has declined numerous interviews, including a request from me. But once her name was public, she did two things. First, she started a Twitter account and a Facebook account. And second, she issued a statement, which is totally amazing. She said, quote, I think there are better stories to tell. Why wake the world from a beautiful dream

when the waking world is also drab? Why wake the world from a beautiful dream when the waking world is all so drab? What was her avatar like? Oh, I would be delighted to show you. Yes. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Ah. Yeah, that's Ardulu. Okay, I'll try to describe it. Her. It seems like a woman.

She's wearing a purple robe as a sorcerer would. She's got some kind of like, it's not like a turban. It's like a turban and like a magician's hat like jammed together. But her face is covered in this like what looks like a death mask for like a man or billy goat. And then she has pink hair behind that. And it's just a very like, it's a creepy, like otherworldy like kind of menacing goofiness. And then she's holding a golden staff of a rat eating its own tail like a rubrous. Right.

Alex. Very enjoyable, this whole creepy thing. So, Zardu's social media presence, if I could borrow a phrase from Eric Earwood, is just basically a bunch of enigmatic head scratchers. Okay. Her tweets are written in the voice of someone who is, like, all-powerful and all-knowing.

What is that type of person tweet like? Here are a couple of her tweets. Follow me out of the sunlight of reason. and in the darkness will play. Okay. I have no memories of my actual life. I can only recall what was captured and replayed in digital images. Same.

What did she mean? I think what she means, I think her whole sort of worldview is that the media create myths. Like you and I, we make a radio show or we have narratives. Our narratives are tightly controlled by us in our editing process, so we are myth makers. according to her. And so she exists just to manipulate us and make her own myths.

So she's really into Sasquatch and the Lackness Monster because those were the effort of a lot of people to try and fool a lot of other people into believing something that was kind of magical or supernatural. Right, and also those were myths

that weren't created by, you know, the CIA or NBC. Like they were created by people. Right. who like will never know. And in fact, her Twitter handle is, I am the myth maker. Feels like if you're going to be the myth maker,

maybe you shouldn't tell everybody you're the myth maker. So since she has a social media presence, I tried getting in touch with her. And normally when I ask for interviews, I say like, hi, my name's Alex Goldman. I work on this podcast called Reply All, and we have ex-l listeners, and I think your story would be good on our show for X reasons.

But with Zardulu, I just went totally off script. I mean, here's something that I actually wrote in an email to her. This is not, I'm quoting right now. It says, you've successfully cracked my brain wide open. So congratulations to you on that. Your very existence has basically made me open to believing that anything is real and simultaneously that anything is an illusion.

I mean, I was offering to do an interview where she sat behind a screen so that I couldn't see her and I would just hold the microphone, just be on the screen. I was writing these messages that said knowing that she exists didn't make the Waking World more drab. It actually made it more amazing because it made it more unpredictable.

And I was telling her that learning of her existence totally changed the way that I saw the world. And she eventually declined to do an interview by not really responding to me anymore, but she did say at one point, be assured that the breadth and magnitude of my work would astound you.

Was it true what you said it was making you see the world differently, see the city differently? Yes. I have put my phone down and I watch people now. And I am suspect of everyone. I'm, I like that this has happened to you. I'm moderately skeptical. Like, you think everybody could be part of us Ardulu hoax?

Have you noticed at the Carroll Street Stop, there is a woman who is very well dressed in like a cloak who's constantly asking for spare change? No. She exists. She's tall and thin and very, very impeccably dressed and stands at the entrance of the subway asking for spare change every day. In an impeccable cloak? Yes.

Huh. It's like there are tiny things that I've been noticing. Give me another one. I was on the subway the other day and there was a couple dancing with one another. No music, just dancing. Like, slow dancing? Fast dancing? Slow dancing.

It felt like a slow dance at the prom. Old couple, young couple? Middle-aged. Wow. Probably in their 40s or 50s. Huh. It's like all of the sudden, everything could be Zardulu.

That's so funny. And Eric, who, if you'll remember, is the only person who admitted to me that he's met Zardulu, he makes it sound like there's almost nothing she can't do. It's a good thing that Zardulu is using her powers for good, because if she were to use her powers for evil,

that would not be good. Can you give me a doomsday scenario? Imagine her using her powers for evil. What would she be doing? Well, a doomsday scenario would be that Zardulhu is using her abilities to create myths to completely disorient our federal government, all of our the utilities in the city, all of our metropolitan infrastructure,

mass hysteria, people's lives being upended, just panic in the streets. I think that Zardulhu could cause just complete Armageddon. Justify that position. Because I can

convince people to blog about something that seems fantastic to I can convince world leaders to do things is like, in my mind, actually, a pretty large jump. He thinks that he saw things that were much larger in scope than rat tricks. Like what? Like a robot of President Obama that was completely lifelike?

I don't know, man. Maybe that body suit of human hair. Who knows what's going to be that's going to be used for? Maybe she's going to be a Sasquatch next. Okay, but so even then, you're like, Justin Trudeau, you're walking down the street in Montreal thinking about like, what Canada's monetary policy should be. And like a really lifelike Sasquatch

jumps out of an alleyway and it's like raise interest rates and disappears. I don't think you're going to listen to that advice. Okay. Here's what I'll say. If I were Justin Trudeau, retaining all of my Alex Goldman E. Traits.

Yeah. You'd be a very handsome Alex Goldman who could speak French. but if I were to retain sort of like my terrible personality, my weak shriveled posture, all of the things that make me essentially Alex Goldman. Uh-huh. And a Sasquatch ran up to me and told me to raise interest rates. You better believe that not only would I be raising interest rates, I would be putting all of my national defense money into Sasquatch elimination.

Why do you assume a Sasquatch? watches out to get you. Because the way that you described him was like a growling, terrifying monster. Yeah, you know what, that's true. That's fair. I mean, I know that Zardulu probably can't actually cause Armageddon, but her very existence has definitely made my life way more unpredictable. And I'm just kind of waiting for the moment that she strikes again. So Zardulhu, if you're out there listening to this,

I want you to know that I take the F-Train between 34th Street and Carroll Street every morning between 9 and 10, and most nights between 5 and 6. I'll be looking for you. After the break, a new yes, yes, no with our boss, Alex Bloomberg. Welcome to yes, yes, no, the segment on the show where Alex Bloomberg gets a babysitter so he can come hang out with us and learn about what goes on on the internet. Alex comes to us with tweets that he doesn't understand, and hopefully we can decipher them for him.

And I am really, I'm really excited. This is like one super mystifying tweet. Like, I'm baffled. Like 0% comprehension? Zero percent comprehension. Okay. All right, are you guys ready? Yes.

I'm excited. I'm really hoping you can help me out. All right. It actually comes from a listener, Alex Pritzlov, who tweeted at me and said, ideal yes, yes, no material. And Alex, I have to agree. I believe this is ideal, yes, yes, no material. He included a link to this tweet in his tweet.

All right, so the tweet in question is from, a Twitter user named Kate Cata Latte Birdie and it's a Photoshopposter of like some sort of town hall and it says Bernie or Hillary be informed compare them on issues that matter and it's got their two pictures

and then it says issue and then here's where the photoshopping begins wherever whatever the issue that was there before it's been boxed out and now there's a new thing written in which is issue 0.5x

A presses and then under Bernie's picture where it had a quote that sort of like represented how he felt about that issue now it says quote first off

I need to talk about parallel universes and then under Hillary's picture where the new quote has been photoshopped in it says quote an A press is an A press you can't say it's only half.

So that's totally fucking confusing. Yeah. I have no idea what that is. I don't know what point five XA presses means. I don't know what they're talking about. But here's the weird thing. In this tweet, it got 1,209 retweets,

and I got 1,602 likes. That's insane. And then Kate Latte-Burdy said, I ran out of the shower to make this because I was so proud of it. All right, so that's, I am beyond confused about this one. Yeah. PJVo, do you understand this tweet?

I found like 50% comprehension. Alex Goldman, do you understand this tweet? I understand the joke format. Yeah, exactly. The content that is contained therein. Alex Bloomberg, do you understand this tweet? No. I think we can get you to like, I don't think we can get you all the way on this one.

We can get you to like, hmm, huh. Okay. Okay. We're going to really have to detective this now, aren't we? Yeah. Shit. Okay. Okay.

So the, the, the, like, joke format thing that Alex I both understand is, like, there's this me,

I don't actually know where the meme, like, I don't know what the, basically there's this poster, as you can see, where it's comparing Bernie and Hillary

on, like, any specific campaign issue. And there's, like, a quote box from him and a quote box from her. Right. And the joke that kind of keeps cropping up

over and over and over again, um, which, like, there's a lot of talk around whether the joke is okay. or not. But the joke is that whatever the issue is,

Bernie's answer will always be very long, kind of like, wonkish, like, perhaps, like, more detail than it's necessary. And then Hillary's answer will always be, like, kind of vapid and straightforward and, like, wrong, but enthusiastic. Got it. Okay. And so, like, people like the joke because it's versatile

and you can apply to, like, any weird specific subculture issue. Like, imagine if the candidate's had it opinion about whatever this is. Okay. But some people don't like the joke because they're like, it's just straightforwardly sexist because Hillary Clinton isn't somebody who like has super facile opinions about stuff. But I don't know. It's both sexist and ageist.

I think it's Texas and ages, honestly. Got you. All right. So wait. So can you give me some examples of the joke the way in a form that we would understand it? Okay. So from this slight article about like why this was maybe problematic. Here's like the best example I've ever seen actually.

So issue Harry Potter. Bernie side huge fan read all the books know all the trivia I bet Hillary doesn't even know what a muggle is and then Hillary says

I'm a hoffle pump when really the house would be Hufflepuffle Puff Huffle Puff what is it Huffle Puff. Huffle Puff. It's messed up that you knew to go to me

with that is even more messed up than I knew the answer I haven't read those books but I still read the IMDB trivia section for every movie I've ever seen so I just know all the trivia. You all are good enough in the movie, eh?

Yeah, possibly. I'm a hoffle... Hufflepump. Hufflepuff. It should be Hufflepub, and it's a hawful pump. Alex, you really like the sexist ageist joke. Read me more. Read me more. Okay, here's one that I also think is really good.

Okay. Oh, actually, this one isn't going to make sense because it has, like, another embedded, yes, yes, yes, no problem in it, I think, which is fine. So, issue white vans. Does that mean anything to you? Yeah, I know the white vans thing. You sound like you just saw a war crime happen. I hate that dumb joke.

Really? Yeah. Oh, you're broken. Okay, so the issue white vans, Hillary, don't get in strangers' cars kids, Bernie, damn Daniel. What? How do you hate that joke?

It's just stupid. You're so broken. Explain that one to me. Okay, so... Oh, this is a tufer. This is a two-fer. Somebody posted this video. I just kind of have to show you the video.

It's like, it's so wonderful. but in ways that are actually kind of hard to put into words, or at least until you've seen it. Okay. So, oh my God, it makes me so happy to show you this. There's, like, so few things that are any good, and this is so good. Okay, so all it is is a Twitter video that one high school kid shot. It's like a montage of a bunch of different shots of his friend.

And just, like, in case you are just hearing this and can't see the video, it's basically a bunch of, like, tight jump cuts of this one kid who is wearing a bunch of different really great outfits. And you can't see the person filming him, but you hear him reacting to all of them. Damn, Daniel. Back at it again with the white van. Damn, Daniel. Damn, Daniel.

Damn, Daniel. Damn, Daniel. Damn, Daniel. Damn, Daniel. Back at it again with the white vans. Dasty, man. Damn. Daniel.

What? So, so then, so then this, the, Bernie or Hillary, issue white vans, Bernie, damn Daniel. Like, he gets it. And then Hillary, don't get into strangers, cars, kids. Like, she thinks it's just like a white fan. Got it. Yeah. Got it.

Okay. This is not so much a great joke as two internet jokes hitting each other and people being excited about it. Right. Okay. So there's a bunch of these Bernie or Hillary Photoshop posters. Yeah. Okay. Got it.

So then back to the issue at hand. Back to the issue at hand, which, what was it again? 0.5A presses? 0.5xA presses. First off, I need to talk about parallel universes. All right, I've been looking it up while we've been talking. An A press is an A press. You can't say it's only half.

You look like you're processing information. This is so confusing. It has something to do with Super Mario 64. Really? Yes. What? What? This guy made a long and complicated video.

about completing this stage in Super Mario 64 using only 0.5A presses. That's impossible. Yes. So the A button makes you jump. You can't press a half a button. Once you press the button, it's pressed. Was it like a speed run? No, it's a long and complicated video about completing a stage using only 0.5A presses.

It's ridiculous and amazing, but at one point he responds to a comment by T.J. Henry Yoshi, who claimed that 0.5.5. A presses aren't real. Because you can't half press a button. The poster of the video then took some time to explain how 0.5A presses are real and exactly how they work. The overall of ridiculous of the video has caused it to become an internet meme, and Henry is, of course, a part of it.

Wow. You can spend your life any way you want. And this is what we've chosen. No, this is what they've chosen. We make sense. Okay. So this is a person who found a way to beat Super Mario 64, a video game from a video game from No,

1996 maybe? A level in Super Mario 64, a video game from, yeah, maybe 1996. So a person who beat a very old video game and they did it by putting an artificial encumbrance on themselves was that they would only press the jump button

half a time. Which again makes no sense. So how do you half press a button? Well, let's hear. But in a full game run, you'd round it down to two. So, in conclusion, since that first A press counts in some contexts,

but adds no additional A presses in other contexts, we refer to it as a half A press. So, going back to the video, you can... This guy's totally right. He should not be made fun of it. He's totally right. You're out of your fucking mind. Do you get it?

No. It's not that crazy. People are deliberately misunderstanding. I get it. Yeah. I've never played... I don't know what Super Mario is. I've never played it before,

but it just sounds like he's saying, like, when you're on one level, you press the button down, And then you don't release the button until the level's over. Until the next level's over. Until the next level is over where you're like got and then you move it to half. And then you press move it. Oh, so you spread it. You spread your A button press across multiple levels.

Yeah. It's like, you don't ever let it up. This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Like, the guy sounds like a putt. That's rude. I'm sorry. The people that you have problems with on the internet.

You're like mad at the guy for doing a speed run. You'd be one of the people who would, like, had you known about this, you would have been like, there's no such thing as a half-pressed, douchebag. I believe, I agree with Hillary on this one. There's no such thing as a half-bress. But, like, it just makes me want to picture you in high school because it's like you're yelling at the nerds,

you're mean to the kids who are just, like, goofy fashion kids. Like, you don't like anything. I was very lonely in high school. Hmm. I didn't mean to take us to such a dark place, Goldman. I think we're not celebrating our Victoria. arrival at yes, yes, yes, yes, properly. Are we at, yes, yes.

Like, do you feel like... I think we are at yes, yes, yes. All right, you ready? Yes. All right. So, Kate Latte-Birdie sent out the following tweet. It's a picture of a Bernie or Hillary sign where it's like, be informed, compare them on the issues that matter, and then there is issue, colon, and then it's clearly something

has been superimposed over the original issue that was on the original poster, and the superimposed issue is 0.5 times A presses. And then under Bernie, his real answer has been sort of shrewed out. And the fake answer is, first off, I need to talk about parallel universes. And under Hillary, it says, an A press is an A press. You can't say it's only half. I now know everything about this. This thing that was utterly mystifying is now completely clear to me.

All right. And there's a lot of memes. This is the most complicated one I think we've done so far. There's so much going on here. So, all right. So there's two memes that are sort of intersecting here. The first meme is one that I was not aware of, which was the Photoshopped Bernie or Hillary sign.

So that's like something that's happening on the internet a lot. People are taking this original Bernie or Hillary sign, which some well-meaning group put up to inform people on the issues of how different the two candidates were. And it has just simply just been sort of like ridiculed on the internet by people putting up fake issues and fake answers to Bernie and Hillary. All right. So that's been out there.

And then this particular iteration of that meme references another meme which gets deep into nostalgia video game affinity groups right? Sure, yeah. There's lots and lots of people

who play an old video game called Super Mario 64. Correct? Yes. And they talk on the internet about how to beat different levels of Super Mario 64 and this one guy

talked about beating this one level by doing a half press of the A key. I would call it a book. We'll call it about Yeah. But that's close. A half press of the A button, which erupted in controversy.

And that is the thing that is referenced in this tweet from Kate Latte-Burdy. It is as if Hillary and Bernie were weighing in on the issue of whether there is such a thing as a half A press in the Super Mario 64 video game. I feel like we're pretty much a yes, yes, yes. What's your asterisk? Bernie's saying first we have to talk about parallel. Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay, we're basically yes, yes, yes. I don't know what that's about.

I don't know what that's about either, but I just, yeah. We can let that one go. In the interest of full disclosure, we did not watch the entire half-hour video, so who knows, it might be a mention of Verily universes in that half-hour. Yeah, Super Mario 64 video. Yeah, exactly. But we can retreat from this and call it the yes, yes, yes, right? Yes.

Yes. Reply all is PJ Vote and me, Alex Goldman. We were produced this week by Tim Howard, Shruti Pinminani, and Fia Bennon. Our editor is Peter Clowney. Production assistance from Mervin de Gagnos. We were mixed by Rick Kwan. Special thanks this week to Lydia DeRoche of sit-stay dog training. She trains rats for the Broadway play,

the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime, and she was very gracious with her time. Our theme music is by the mysterious breakmaster cylinder, and our ad music is by build buildings. Matt Lieber is Zardulu. He could be. You can find more episodes at iTunes, iTunes.com slash reply all. Our website is replyall.org. Shortly before I finish this episode,

after many attempts to get her to come on the show, Zardulu reached out to me to reveal some of her secrets, but she asked that I not share them. All that I can say is that I believe big things are coming. We're taking next week off to work on some stories, but we'll see in a couple weeks. Thank you for listening. Can I tell you guys a weird story? Uh-huh. One time I was in the grocery store, I was checking out, and the guy in front of me had tattooed on his arm. He was very muscular. Had tattooed on his arm. The Great Gazoo, who is like an alien from the Jetsons.

And the Flintstones. Oh, no, excuse me. Thank you. Who's an alien from the Flintstones. And he was flirting with the woman who was checking him out, and he was like, what do you know about the Great Gazoo? This is true. I swear to God. She was like, what?

And he was like, who's this? He pointed at his bicep. And she said, Marvin the Martian. And he was like, you don't know anything about the great gazoo. And that man is now one of the lead bloggers in the man is over. That man is also like, sort of similar to you. Whereas like, I've decided this piece of culture is really important. You've never heard of it.

never cared about how you hadn't heard of it, and I'm going to berate you for the fact that you haven't heard of it, and then I'm going to leave. You don't know anything about the bone zone. I would never, ever get anything tattooed on my body and then yell at people for not knowing what it is. That's true. You wouldn't get a tattoo. You'd wear it on a hoodie. Yeah, that's right.