The Desire for Impossible Secrets

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:05]As the category 4 hurricane Frances began to make landfall in Florida, a man pulled into the parking lot of a Tampa Bay Burger King.

[00:00:15]The storm was only minutes away, but Zach Dill, a 24-year-old tech support specialist, wasn't going to leave yet.

[00:00:23]He was waiting for a payphone to ring.

[00:00:27]As the rain started to fall in wave after unrelenting wave of stinging cold needles, Zach had to press his head up against the receiver to even hear it ring.

[00:00:38]When the call finally came, he picked up and provided answers to a series of riddles, listened to the pre-recorded message he'd been waiting for, and scrambled back toward his car.

[00:00:50]Earlier, he might have questioned whether all this was worth the risk, but he was well past that point now. [music] On November 8th, 1969, the Zodiac mailed his infamous 340 cipher to the San Francisco Chronicle.

[00:01:10]It would take 51 years and 27 days before a team of three amateur code breakers finally solved it in [music] 2020.

[00:01:20]Perhaps more amazing than the fact it took that long to decode is that it even had a solution at all.

[00:01:27]It seems [music] equally, if not more plausible, that the Zodiac could have, intentionally or unintentionally, [music] made a puzzle that was simply unsolvable, and that all the countless hours people poured into cracking the code would have ultimately amounted [music] to nothing.

[00:01:50]Something feels off about this graduation [music] scene.

[00:01:54]The way the character's hands are folded mimics the signature pose of the series villain. Extras wearing sunglasses seem to stare vacantly at the camera. Someone in the crowd is holding up a sign with nothing written on it. This guy stays seated while everyone else stands to applaud.

[00:02:14]Whether any of these clues add up in the end is beside the point.

[00:02:21]>> [music] >> We can divide the people who followed the Stranger Things Conformity Gate affair into three [music] camps. First, the true believers who felt there was no way that episode 8 was actually [music] the end of the show. They believed that given the cleverly hidden, yet unmistakable trail of breadcrumbs, it was a virtual certainty that on January 7th, 2026, or possibly some date after that, Netflix was about to pull off one of the craziest twist endings in the history of television. Next, we [music] have the Conformity Gate curious. Those who, despite varying degrees of skepticism about the theory, still felt like there was at least some chance it might happen.

[00:03:29]And finally, there's everyone else who believed there was absolutely no reality in which Netflix spends millions of dollars promoting the grand finale of a show, including showing it in theaters on New Year's Eve, only to then drop the real ending at an arbitrary later date with nothing but a handful of very abstract clues hinting that might be coming. I'd like to say that these non-believers represent the vast majority of people who watched Stranger Things, but the internet makes it kind of hard to tell what the actual breakdown between these groups [music] was. In part because there was seemingly a whole faction of people who most likely did not believe in ConformityGate themselves, but fanned the flames of the theory by posting doctored screenshots of Netflix and other made-up clues to farm engagement and troll the true believers.

[00:04:15]It's obvious, especially in hindsight, that ConformityGate was never about the clues themselves, which can all easily be explained away by continuity errors, meaningless coincidence, or in some cases sloppy writing. ConformityGate was about disappointment and the desperate desire for something more. Something you almost never get in real life.

[00:04:39]This video is not about calling the true believers of ConformityGate or other similar theories stupid or naive.

[00:04:47]Because, while they may face a harsh letdown in the end, for those days where the dream is alive, when it feels like you are part of a collective effort to uncover the pieces of an incredible mystery, there's no feeling like it.

[00:05:06]An alternate reality game, or ARG, is a narrative that takes place across multiple types of media with clues often appearing both online and in the real world.

[00:05:19]The game that is widely considered to have launched the genre is called The Beast, an ARG created to promote the movie Artificial Intelligence. It kicked off with a strange credit in the movie's trailer, >> [music] >> Sentient Machine Therapist Janine Salla.

[00:05:36]Googling this name led to a network of dozens of websites for fictional corporations and news outlets, all set in the future world of Artificial Intelligence.

[00:05:45]The story of The Beast centered around fictional Janine Sala investigating the murder of her friend and clues were scattered across websites, emails, pre-recorded voicemails, even live promotional events for the movie. Many puzzles required the use of a range of skills and specialized knowledge. An important feature of ARGs is that they are usually complex enough that it would be nearly impossible for a single person to solve them. So, once an ARG is discovered, a community quickly emerges to collectively unravel the mystery.

[00:06:18]As The Beast began to unfold, a Yahoo group sprung up called The Cloudmakers who were on the forefront of solving the puzzles. Because the game was being developed as it was being played, the actions of the Cloudmakers directly influenced the plot, similar to how a Dungeon Master in D&D responds to the moves of players, but at a much larger scale.

[00:06:42]Building on the unexpected success of The Beast, for the 2004 release of Halo 2, Microsoft commissioned I Love Bees.

[00:06:52]I Love Bees was my introduction to ARGs and I remember surfing message boards as clues started to surface, but quickly found that 15-year-old me didn't really have the patience or knowledge required to meaningfully contribute to solving any of the puzzles. While I didn't have the attention span to continue following this game's progress to its conclusion, I still fondly remember just how exciting it felt as the early stages began to [music] unfold.

[00:07:18]One of the most unique features of I Love Bees was the way it forced players to venture away from their computers and into the real world.

[00:07:29]After ilovebees.com flashed at the end of a Halo 2 trailer, visitors to the website found a list of 220 GPS coordinates along with time signatures.

[00:07:38][music] People speculated that maybe demo discs for the game might be handed out at those locations during the specified time. But as it turns out, those were all locations of public payphones. And on August 24th, 2004, they started ringing.

[00:07:59]It was this game mechanic that led Zack Dill to risk getting swept away by hurricane force winds in order to take one of the calls.

[00:08:10]But Zack's phone was just one of many that was needed to progress the game.

[00:08:14]When enough players picked up the calls and provided the correct answers to a series of riddles, >> [music] >> the game's producers would post a new installment of an audio drama that eventually totaled [music] 10 hours.

[00:08:27]While most of the calls were pre-recorded messages, a few lucky players eventually got the privilege of having a live conversation with Melissa, the AI that the story centered around, improvised by a veteran voice actor.

[00:08:41]Some of the game's challenges required impressive real-life feats. At one point, a player was tasked with getting a picture of 250 different people standing near one of the phones while saluting. Realizing he wouldn't get close to that just by relying on those within the game's [music] community, he turned to asking strangers at the mall and eventually succeeded.

[00:09:02]Needless to say, the players, who called themselves Beekeepers, were made to feel that they were truly a part of the game and perhaps that there was something truly important at stake.

[00:09:13]You might feel that by putting himself in the path of a category 4 hurricane, Zack Dill pushed things a little too far. In fact, while The New York Times reported that he successfully completed the riddles and listened to the pre-recorded message after answering the phone, conflicting accounts claim that the operator he talked to temporarily broke character telling him, "Dude, it's a hurricane. Put the phone down.

[00:09:38]However it actually happened, it's not hard to understand why [music] Zach did it.

[00:09:44]AR Gs give you a chance to feel like you're part of something far more exciting than the monotony of real life.

[00:09:51]Zach was given the opportunity to play the hero. And sure, it probably didn't ultimately matter whether or not that specific phone was answered, but Zach saw his shot and [music] he took it. And fortunately was able to escape soaking wet, but without injury.

[00:10:08]Nothing is more captivating than a good mystery. And what AR Gs like The Beast or I Love Bees provide is the assurance that the mystery will have a conclusion.

[00:10:19]And that hopefully that conclusion will be a satisfying one.

[00:10:26]At the end of I Love Bees, after the full story was revealed, players of the game were invited to visit cinemas where they got a chance to play Halo 2 and collect a commemorative DVD.

[00:10:38]While it was always nothing more than a highly elaborate marketing campaign, that's not how it felt to the players who were immersed in it. In the end, it was far more real than the video game it was promoting ever could be.

[00:10:57]On January 4th, 2012, an image was posted on 4chan [music] with text stating that we are looking for highly intelligent individuals. And there is a message hidden in this image.

[00:11:12]This was the beginning of what would become known as Cicada 3301, a series of puzzles that blurred the line between an AR G and a true mystery.

[00:11:24]Cicada 3301's puzzles unfolded across many different forms of media, starting with the original image which itself contained multiple clues. From there, the challenge continued to unfold across telephone calls, references to classic literature, original pieces of music, and much more. All requiring extensive skills in cryptography and related disciplines.

[00:11:49]From the beginning, people were eager to try and figure out who was behind Cicada. Each of the Cicada posts was signed using an encryption protocol that ensured authenticity, allowing players to easily tell official clues from any pretenders. [music] But beyond that, there is very little to go on.

[00:12:09]During the first puzzle, a series of posters containing QR codes appeared in cities across the world, [music] which prompted many people to assume it must be the work of a larger organization.

[00:12:20]The NSA, the CIA, Britain's MI6, and Israel's Mossad were all proposed as potential authors. But realistically, it would not be hard to anonymously hire people to put posters in cities around the world, and a closer examination also revealed that each of the posters were placed no more than an hour or so from major airports, which suggests it could technically have been the work of a single individual who flew to different cities, or easily a small group of collaborators.

[00:12:50]The creators of Cicada 3301 remain unknown.

[00:12:55]After the first and second puzzles were solved, several winners, those who reached the last stages of the puzzles, were told not to share or reveal anything to the wider community of solvers, but info has leaked out all the same. We're invited to join Cicada 3301.

[00:13:10]The winners were first asked questions about their support of freedom of information, online privacy, and rejection of censorship, and were then allowed to join a private online forum where they could collaborate on various projects.

[00:13:24]From what has been revealed, however, nothing ultimately came of this and the website the winners were supposedly invited to was eventually quietly taken offline.

[00:13:35]The last official communication by Cicada 3301 was in 2017 and it simply read, "Beware false paths."

[00:13:48]However, the third, and at least for now, final puzzle of Cicada 3301 is still unsolved. The Liber Primus, a book written by Cicada, is widely considered one of the most difficult puzzles of the digital age. It is written in a runic language and out of 75 total pages, only 19 have been successfully decoded.

[00:14:11]Within the solved pages, there are vague passages containing pieces of advice, spiritual parables, grids of numbers, and an address that supposedly points to somewhere in the deep web, which makes it clear that even if the full is decoded, there will be many more layers of mystery to still uncover.

[00:14:30]When Cicada 3301 first emerged, many speculated that it was indeed an ARG and it was only a matter of time before someone claimed ownership of it. But, after all these years, that no longer seems at all plausible.

[00:14:46]The full Liber Primus has already gone unsolved for over a decade, but according to the community of Cicada enthusiasts, there are cryptographically sound indications that it is indeed solvable.

[00:15:01]It may take another decade or four before the Primus is cracked, or it may never be decoded, but even if Cicada's last puzzle is finally unraveled, we may be no closer to knowing who was ultimately behind it or what any of it actually meant.

[00:15:22]With the of the 340, two of the Zodiac's four ciphers have now been solved.

[00:15:30]The remaining two are the Z32 cipher, which contains a coded message as well as a map and the suggestion of some way to determine a set of coordinates, >> [music] >> and the Z13 cipher, which teases that the solution is indeed the killer's name.

[00:15:47]The Z32 and Z13 ciphers are widely considered to be unsolvable due to the fact that at 32 and 13 characters, respectively, there are far too many potential solutions to verify any one of them as the correct answer. [music] However, after the Z340 was decoded in 2020, [music] Faisal Zerroui, a French engineer, took a logical idea and ran with it. What if the remaining two ciphers used the same encryption key as the 340? Using the now publicly available encryption key, along with several other code-breaking techniques, Zerroui arrived at solutions for both of the unsolved ciphers.

[00:16:28]According to his work, the answer to the Z32 revealed a set of coordinates that matched up with a school in South Lake Tahoe, a city the Zodiac was believed to have referenced in a postcard.

[00:16:41]Using similar methods on the Z13 cipher, he came up with a solution that seemed to point to Lawrence K, a well-known Zodiac suspect, who also happens to have lived in South Lake Tahoe.

[00:16:53]Convince he'd cracked the decades-old case, Zerroui began posting his solutions to various online Zodiac forums, and even sent a letter to the FBI explaining his findings.

[00:17:07]The wider Zodiac community was unconvinced and unimpressed.

[00:17:13]The leader of the team who decoded the Z340 said that he was skeptical of Zeroes solution reiterating that hundreds of proposals for Z13 and Z32 solutions already exist and that it is practically impossible to determine if any of them are correct.

[00:17:30]This sentiment was echoed by many others within the community, although at least two respected cryptographers have claimed that Zeroes code-cracking methods were sound and should be considered by police investigators.

[00:17:43]The FBI has not publicly commented on Zeroes findings, but according to the San Francisco Chronicle anonymous law enforcement sources do not believe that Zeroes theory is correct. [music] In my view, just a cursory look at the logic Zero we employed to reach his conclusions finds them to be shaky at [music] best.

[00:18:02]For example, the coordinates he derived from the Z32 only work if you interpret them as more obscure magnetic field coordinates as opposed to standard geographic ones. The letters he derived from the Z13 are k a y r, which [music] collapses a 13 character cipher into just four letters and requires correcting a typo to arrive at k.

[00:18:25]But regardless of how plausible or implausible you think Zeroes solutions to the ciphers are, Lawrence Kay, the man Zero we identified, died [music] in 2010 and had already been investigated as a potential suspect. Unless new evidence emerges, it's highly unlikely that Zeroes theory will ever be vindicated.

[00:18:46]It would have been genuinely exciting, thrilling even, if the eventual victory over the 340 cipher was the missing piece that unlocked the mystery of the Zodiac and revealed his true identity once and for all.

[00:19:00]But despite the efforts of Zero we and other amateur sleuths, this does not seem to be the case. The text of the decoded message was grim, manic, [music] and ultimately useless.

[00:19:12]While it is tempting to view the Zodiac as an arch mastermind and cryptographic genius who created an intricate puzzle that still stumps top detectives today, it's more likely that he himself had no real sense of how difficult his ciphers actually were.

[00:19:28]His first puzzle, the Z408 cipher, was [music] solved in just a few days, which may have been why the 340 cipher, which came later, was so much more difficult.

[00:19:39]Whether or not the Zodiac was intentionally trying to up the ante, the 340 was, for all intents and purposes, unsolvable until computer technology advanced sufficiently to push beyond human limits. The software that was used by the team who solved the 340 ran 650,000 possible solutions for the cipher until the program came up with the best possible encryption key. As impressive as this was, none of our new technology has been able to solve the fundamental problem of identifying the killer.

[00:20:11]According to an SFGate article, the reason why the Zodiac was never caught comes down to four key factors.

[00:20:17]>> [music] >> First was a lack of clear-cut DNA evidence. This was due in part to the way Zodiac committed his murders, as well as the fact that the technology to use what small fragments of DNA might have been recovered simply did not exist at the time.

[00:20:32]The famous sketch of the killer is essentially useless. In the best of circumstances, sketches recreated from memory are unreliable, and in the case of the Zodiac, what we ended up with is a generic middle-aged man that could match hundreds of faces.

[00:20:48]The letters provided both too much and too little information. As we discussed, what one might view as a grand puzzle and set of carefully hidden clues could just as easily be a hodgepodge of ramblings and vaguely connected quotes [music] from the mind of someone who was quite disturbed.

[00:21:05]And finally, the Zodiac knew [music] when to stop. The Zodiac's last murder, that of cab driver Paul Stine, was also his closest call. He was seen by three people and was mere moments from being caught by [music] the police. Needless to say, this near miss might have frightened him enough to decide to call it quits.

[00:21:24]Unlike other killers, the Zodiac often seemed more obsessed with fame than with the act of killing, and at that point he had already succeeded in becoming the most infamous person in the United States. While some speculate he did continue to commit crimes after the close call, it seems very plausible that he took it as a sign to slip quietly back into society and cement his mystery.

[00:21:45]Of course, none of this will convince people to stop searching for the answer.

[00:21:50]Perhaps the most infuriating part of this puzzle is that it does have, or at least it had, a solution.

[00:21:57]The Zodiac killer was a real person, and while it may be too late now, it's hard to shake the feeling that if he had just been a bit more careless, or if some small set of circumstances had aligned just a little differently, he would have been caught, and we would have had the answer that has driven so many people down endless rabbit holes leading to endless dead ends.

[00:22:23]Yorgos Lanthimos's 2025 film, Bugonia, tells the story of a man whose life has been consumed by an elaborate conspiracy theory. If you would prefer not to have the plot of this movie spoiled, you can just skip to the next section of the video.

[00:22:39]In Bugonia, Teddy, played by Jesse Plemons, is convinced that Michelle, the CEO of the company he works for, played by Emma Stone, is a member of an evil alien species called Andromedans.

[00:22:52]To prove his theory and attempt to stop the aliens' assault on the human race, Teddy abducts his boss, shaves her head, and covers her in antihistamine cream, supposedly to stop her from sending signal to other Andromedons.

[00:23:05]At first, Teddy's life seems to be a clear picture of why someone would turn to delusional beliefs as a coping method. Teddy's mother participated in a clinical trial for a drug made by Michelle's company that led to her being rendered comatose.

[00:23:19]When Teddy's former babysitter turned cop shows up at the house, a character who at first seems to provide some comic relief, it is then revealed he abused Teddy while watching him as a child and now feels bad about it.

[00:23:33]A crucial turning point in the film comes when Michelle convinces Teddy that the antifreeze in her car is actually a special Andromedan antidote that can cure his mother.

[00:23:43]Teddy then rushes to the hospital and injects the antifreeze into his mom's IV bag, which kills her.

[00:23:50]Yet another way in which Teddy's desperate search for some truth that could undo all the terrible cards he's been dealt only leads to more darkness.

[00:24:00]In the end, Teddy escorts Michelle back to her office and demands that she teleport both of them back to her mothership. But just as she is finishing typing a code into a calculator, apparently to initiate the transport sequence, the homemade explosive vest Teddy wore as insurance against the aliens betraying him detonates spontaneously and Teddy's tale ends definitively in tragedy.

[00:24:27]But the twist is that Teddy was right about everything. After escaping from an ambulance, Michelle returns to her office and beams herself up to her mothership. As Teddy had previously claimed to deduce from a series of tests, Michelle was indeed the leader of the Andromedans and shaving her head had successfully prevented her from contacting her fellow aliens.

[00:24:52]Teddy even correctly predicted the shape of the Andromedans' ship.

[00:25:00]But, it doesn't feel like Teddy was vindicated. In the course of the movie, his wild [music] machinations led to the death of his autistic brother, the death of his mother, and finally himself.

[00:25:13]And when Michelle returns to the rest of her kind, she tells them that the whole experience has convinced her that the human project has failed.

[00:25:22]She then pops a bubble, which ends the human race.

[00:25:26]Of the many parallels you can draw between Begonia and the real conspiracy theories that people pour hours upon hours into obsessing over, one that stands out is the simple desire to give order to an otherwise chaotic and often cruel world.

[00:25:43]It is in many ways much more comforting to believe that all evil emanates from a single source, as opposed to confronting the messiness of intersecting desires and power struggles that more often make up reality.

[00:25:55]If you can simply foil the mastermind's plot and save humanity, maybe you can avoid facing the much more mundane problems that constitute your day-to-day life.

[00:26:05]If you never stop searching for a secret, you never have to face the fact that it doesn't exist.

[00:26:15]>> [music] >> For nearly a decade, dedicated fans of the 2005 video game Shadow of the Colossus searched for its last great secret.

[00:26:29]If you're interested in just how deep this search went, I recommend watching Jacob Geller's video on the subject, but here are some highlights.

[00:26:38]The vast, beautiful, yet empty world of Shadow of the Colossus absolutely feels like it must contain secrets.

[00:26:46]And it does. Most notably, there is a secret garden you you only reach after playing through the game multiple times and upgrading your stamina to allow you to climb up to it.

[00:26:58]But, this garden was not enough to satisfy the players. To them, it only proved that there must be something more, a yet deeper secret, perhaps a secret Colossus, a final final boss to fight.

[00:27:13]The beginnings of this search revolved around a forum user's suggestion that four glyphs, which correspond to four areas on the map, produce an intersection of points, which is referenced in the opening of the game.

[00:27:25]Needless to say, many, many different ways of interacting with this intersection of points were tried by players, with someone eventually suggesting that maybe they should try all the things they tried before, but specifically on their 16th playthrough of the game, because 16 was the number of Colossuses you fight in the game.

[00:27:45]Jacob Geller calls attention to an especially poignant moment when a forum user expresses some doubt about whether all this effort is actually leading anywhere, and another player responds in a way that is surprisingly self-aware.

[00:27:57]If you want to believe it, don't come to the freight. It's the same thing with the church. If you don't believe in God, don't come.

[00:28:04]No one wants you here if you're just going to say, "Proof, proof, I want proof."

[00:28:08]Just leave the ones who want to search for the secret search. Whether or not it exists, it does not matter. They have something to believe in, and that is all they need. If you think the secret seekers are wasting their time, then that is nice for you. Goodbye.

[00:28:28]The eventual conclusion to the years of searching comes when a player uses an emulator to fly through walls and finally, definitively explore every last corner of the game.

[00:28:40]There was no last great secret.

[00:28:45]As a consolation prize, emulating across the map did lead to the discovery of some unfinished areas that were inaccessible during normal play, including this surprisingly detailed dam which was left far outside the bounds of the main map.

[00:28:59]But, no hidden 17th [music] Colossus to fight. No true revelation. No real mystery other than the one the players crafted in their own imaginations.

[00:29:10]The search was not without precedent, though. Game developers have a history of hiding Easter eggs that are incredibly hard to find and that, given enough time, are almost always found in the end. Halo 3's last Easter egg was finally uncovered 7 years after the game's initial release.

[00:29:29]Still, much in the same way participating in an official ARG comes with the promise of a [music] solid conclusion, Easter eggs are added to games by developers with the hope they will eventually all be found. And one imagines if a juicy Easter egg escaped discovery long enough, the devs might be tempted to drop a few hints to help players along. Or maybe not. Either way, there is often at least some back and forth between the authors of the mysteries and the detectives on the case.

[00:29:59]The twist ending for the faithful fans of Shadow of the Colossus is that in the 2018 PS4 remake of the game, inspired by the players who searched so diligently, 79 gold coins were scattered all across the map and collecting all of them really did lead to one last secret, a sword and an altar. As Jacob Geller puts it, It's not that much.

[00:30:24]But also, it's everything.

[00:30:30]>> [music] >> There is a difference between finding a secret that was intended to be discovered and one that was meant to stay buried. The problem is that the former is much more common than the latter.

[00:30:47]People will often defend their belief or openness to various conspiracy theories by pointing out that, you know, some conspiracy theories are true. A commonly cited example is the MK-Ultra program, which the CIA attempted to destroy all evidence of in 1973. [music] It was only discovered because 20,000 documents were misfiled and revealed incidentally by a Freedom of Information Request aimed at CIA activities more [music] broadly. This was a revelation that lived up to all the fantasies one might have about a secret CIA program.

[00:31:20]The goal was to develop mind control techniques that could be used against the Soviets, and the experiments [music] included LSD, hypnosis, torture, and sensory deprivation.

[00:31:31]For the conspiracy skeptical, the counter-argument is that for every real MK-Ultra, there are thousands of theories that will almost certainly never [music] be vindicated.

[00:31:41]There's a website called conspiracychart.com that organizes popular conspiracies in the shape of a triangle. At the very bottom are things that actually happened, which includes MK-Ultra, Watergate, and Big Tobacco's lies about cancer. The next category shows real events that include some valid [music] uncertainty about certain details. The JFK assassination, Epstein, Area 51, then the author describes theories that are false, but mostly just fun and harmless, including the final answer to the Zodiac question. [music] It was Ted Cruz all along.

[00:32:21]The final two categories introduce the political valence many conspiracies have taken on in the highly polarized age we live [music] in.

[00:32:31]Untangling the worldview that drives many of these theories is not the point of this video.

[00:32:37]But it's worth saying that conspiracies centered around the premise that all of the bad things that happen in the world are caused by a shadowy group of elite, often Jewish, villains are not secrets to be searched for. They are an example of how this type of thinking can lead to dark places and in some cases cause real-world harm.

[00:32:58]That doesn't mean that there aren't powerful people doing evil things in the world, but you only need to take a cursory glance at the ideas of QAnon to see how convoluted the web can become when you try to connect the dots in a way that suggests all these people are part of the same satanic cabal.

[00:33:18]Many claim that the release of the Epstein files shows there is actually some real truth to these conspiracies, but believing that still requires a considerable stretch of the imagination.

[00:33:29]The files show that Epstein was absolutely a vile criminal and that he was connected to a lot of powerful people, but they do not in any way prove that our government is ruled by adrenochrome-drinking pedophiles.

[00:33:49]When I first started hearing [music] about ConformityGate, there was no question which camp I was going to fall into. I believed there was absolutely no reality in which Netflix spends millions of dollars promoting the grand finale of a show only to then drop the real ending at an arbitrary later date with nothing but a handful of very abstract clues hinting that might be coming.

[00:34:11]And that reflects my attitude about conspiracy theories more broadly.

[00:34:16]My default setting is skepticism. If we look back at this chart, the only theories on here I'd say I believe wholeheartedly is that first triangle, things that actually happened.

[00:34:27]>> [music] >> Even in the category of things with real uncertainty surrounding them, I'm often inclined to believe the most boring and straightforward explanation. Lee Harvey Oswald probably did shoot JFK, and he probably acted alone. Jeffrey Epstein probably [music] did kill himself. To some, that makes me boring at best and hopelessly brainwashed by the mainstream media at worst. [music] And maybe they're right. Well, partially right.

[00:34:57]There's a question worth asking. Out of those three camps of [music] ConformityGate participants, the true believers, the curious, and the non-believers, which group had the most fun? The true believers may have had the most intense experience, but the come down and anger when it all turned out to be for nothing probably canceled out a lot of the thrill of believing you were uncovering something [music] incredible.

[00:35:22]It was sort of fun being a full skeptic in that you get to just sort of laugh at the whole thing, but I think the best group to be a part of was actually the ConformityGate curious.

[00:35:33]>> [music] >> People who thought, "Sure, this all seems unlikely, but what if?

[00:35:38]Stranger things have happened." Those people still get the excitement of a mystery while being able to more easily shrug it off when reality sets in.

[00:35:46]That kind of thinking reminds me of the way I saw the world as a child. You could believe in things without fully believing in them, and sometimes I miss that. Of course, it's not like we completely stop doing this as adults.

[00:36:00]The yearning for secret truths is driven by more than one emotion. The simple refusal to accept a given outcome can lead people to invent new endings for their favorite TV show, or declare that the only way their candidate could have lost was if the election was rigged. I imagine you could map much of this trajectory onto the five stages of grief, with denial being central, but mixed in with a healthy dose of anger and bargaining.

[00:36:28]The question then becomes how long you spend chasing an alternate reality before finally moving on to the inevitable depression that precedes acceptance.

[00:36:38]And again, there are the rare times where the impulse towards denial is actually correct and you learn everything was not as clear-cut as it seemed at first.

[00:36:47]But those are the exceptions that prove the rule. Real harm has been done to people whose lives become consumed by impossible conspiracies and there are many mysteries that are better left abandoned.

[00:36:59]>> [music] >> If you are still convinced that with a few more hours or weeks or months or years you can be the one to finally reveal the Zodiac's identity, I would suggest it's time to give up the chase.

[00:37:11]But as much as negative emotions can drive us into unhealthy obsessions, the simple joy of curiosity is a fundamental part of being human.

[00:37:21]There's nothing wrong with scouring every last inch of your favorite video game just to be absolutely certain you're not missing anything if that's how you enjoy spending your time. ARGs may not be truly real, but they feel more exciting than real life most of the time. There are so many mysteries out there worth exploring that the run time of this video could have gone on for hours barely scratching the surface.

[00:37:45]Many of them may have never had answers in the first place and were always destined to leave us confused. [music] Others have solutions that will be lost forever in the sands of time >> [music] >> and some will finally and triumphantly be solved.

[00:38:02]It's always worth [music] finding something to search for. At the moment, I'm just looking for the right words to end this story.

[00:38:29]>> Mhm.