One man’s exploration of a deserted online world turned from mildly interesting to full-on creepy when he encountered an unexpected stranger.
YouTube user vinesauce was exploring a massive multiplayer online game (MMO) called Active Worlds and live-streaming it to YouTube. The game is from 1995 would probably be deserted, vinesauce thought. The virtual explorer regularly checks out weird games, reports Kotaku.com, so it isn’t that surprising that he was hanging out in a relatively ancient digital world completely devoid of players.
Then something strange happened. A figure called ‘Hitomi Fujiko’ began talking to him.
At first vinesauce, thinks that Fujiko is a non-player character (NPC) that has been preprogrammed to respond to typed cues with scripted statements. In the beginning of their exchange, the dialogue between the two seems to support this assumption but, after a while, Fujiko begins saying things that makes vinesauce suspect that the figure is a real person.
Things get weirder still when Fujiko begins questioning his own existence.
Fujiko: “There can’t be more than one wanderer of these empty lands.”
Vinny: “I AM the only wanderer here. You aren’t real.”
Fujiko: “I am real.”
Fujiko: “I am real, aren’t I?”
Vinny: “I don’t know. I don’t KNOW.”
Fujiko: “Please tell me I exist.”
Yes, we know it’s just an old ’90s online game, but we challenge you to watch the video and not get weirdly creeped out.
So who is this Fujiko character and how did he end up meeting vinesauce in an otherwise deserted world?
One gamer went to the trouble of tracking down some old Active Worlds players, who said that Fujiko was a ‘known troublemaker.’ The theory is that Fujiko was watching vinesauce’s livestream and saw that he had wandered into a part of Active World that Fujiko had helped construct. Then he logged in and did everything possible to scare the explorer.
Other sleuths on Reddit unearthed his website and discovered all kinds of hidden messages and cryptic clues hidden in the code, among them, ‘just you wait human’ and ‘I CANNOT FEEL.’ He also included references to the date April 4, 2016, so maybe he’s got something bigger and even stranger planned.
We kind of hope so.