While a lot of people have been comparing Conformitygate to TJLC, I think these comparisons focus too much on the drama of it all. What is more important to look at is the culture around these shows.
Both Moftis and the Duffers encouraged a climate of fandom theorizing and speculation by insisting that small details have meaning, there would be payoff for these details, and that the show would be “smart” (I can’t think of a better way to put this).
This attitude from showrunners encourages fandom theorizing and speculation. TJLC and the various Byler gates are born from this shared culture. And what we saw with BBC Sherlock in the 2010s and Stranger Things in the 2020s is what happens when fandom expectations are not met.
For anyone keeping up with the Stranger Things "secret good finale" conspiracy (yes, it is just the Sherlock "secret good episode" thing with a new show.) the current theory is that tomorrow, in place of SNL, the actual finale of Stranger Things will air. They are presenting this as something plausible, and not something that Lorne Michaels would have beaten the Duffer Brothers to death over if they even suggested it.
The subreddit also has a 60 page masterdoc of all their evidence, if anyone wants to archive that for the inevitable youtube video that's going to be made.
I really want to believe in conformitygate, and I do to an extent… but it is actually becoming ridiculous, the reaches people are going to.
I do believe that the characters lost to Vecna in the end. I do believe that they’re trapped in some sort of facsimile of reality meant to keep them complacent. I do not believe Byler has anything to do with any of it, and it annoys the fuck out of me how every theory revolves around that. Maybe I’m the weird one for not foaming at the mouth over a relationship between two teenagers 🤷♀️ But in any case, I don’t think that is, nor was it ever going to happen.
I’m starting to become resentful of everyone in that community. I have been let down too many times.
Former & current LoveWinsGate+ConformityGate truthers, do you still have any hope of more or are you done ?
I'm still sure there's more coming 100%
I'm Kinda sure there's more coming, evidence points that way but I still doubt
I dontthink mores coming but theres like 1-5% of me hoping still
There's nothing more coming [barring cash grabs like Tales].
I am 100% sure there isn't more AND 100% sure there is - Either way I win
Other ???
Voting ended onMay 26
For people who still believe there's more coming, what's your deadline for fully giving up ? Like if there's not more episodes/an official announcement by X you're done & are on team it's not happening ? I'm option 1-5% of delusional optimistic hope left & I'm fully giving up hope in November 16th [& the hope I do have is mostly shock from how bad the latter half of S5 was & grief THIS is what we got. I do think the evidence people has is very compelling but ://]
I posted this on Twitter before, but here is my Stranger Things conspiracy wall from December! Someday I'll work through it again, because I haven't added anything since the day before Vol 2.
My TikTok has a lot of my theories that feature this wall, if you wanna go check them out over there!
Stop normalizing psychotic breaks. You have never seen nor experienced a psychotic break and it shows in the way you take normal fandom behavior and call it psychotic because people are thinking outside of a box you decided to put them in. Bylers had crazy theories for YEARS and nobody in that area of the fandom had a problem with it until it was about subject matter they dont personally believe in. I pray you never have a psychotic break, people's lives are ruined because of shit like that. A fan theory on tumblr that has a timer on it isnt mass psychosis. Its shit fandom has been doing for decades. Its not even an original concept. Idgaf if you dont believe it, just change the language youre using. Undermining a real mental issue isnt cute and it isnt funny.
Hi Anonymous!
It's very interesting for you to assume that, because I've dealt with a LOT of mental health struggles in my life, and you don't know me. I never coined the term Mass Byler Psychosis, and was implicated in it due to the people who coined it (and then changed it to Mass Byler Canon). I never found a problem with it because 1) It was from Milevens making fun of it and it was reclaiming, and 2) I actually HAVE dealt with psychosis and knew how close my stress levels since Christmas matched those previous mental health episodes.
As a person who has been through psychosis and mental health issues, I DO actually think that a fair amount of people genuinely entered psychosis from this whole situation. Just 2 days of missed sleep can lead to psychosis, and it's a lot more prevalent than people think. I did go and change the tag that jokingly apologized for my involvement causing mass hysteria, so I am sorry for that comment making it seem dismissive.
However.
I think you should reexamine how you've chosen to interact with me here. I had to do trauma work following Vol 2 related to my experience of CSA and being triggered by the show, while I was dealing with people telling me I should be "helped" for my theories.
I legit was dealing with paranoid stress delusions due to this, and had to get on a SWAT warning list just in case somebody found my address (including some dedicated haters I'd gotten from my involvement on the Twitter side of Conformitygate). So yes, I did go through some mental health struggles due to all of it.
This is not a normal fan theory. I fully believe the ending of the show purposefully orchestrated to test the mental fortitude of an audience, and our ability to understand messages in media and reject propaganda. Everybody else treats us like we're insane for our ideas, which I greatly disagree with. However, to deny that this seriously affected people's mental health and actually put them into mental anguish is not doing what you think it is.
I still believe, and I don't think it makes myself or anyone crazy for still believing. And if it does? Then fuck it, we're all crazy together. I don't know where you got the idea I don't believe.
I hope you've found the love and support you need to get where you need to be during this rough time. Because it's genuinely been SO rough. I hope it hasn't hurt your mental health, but it seriously negatively effected mine.
Ok so I am sorry for assuming. I'm afraid I and many others have been on edge about the normalization of medical terms for weeks (and longer) now. Like yes, I am sure people who were triggered into psychosis would probably like the theory and take it to the moon with their delusions but people have been referring to the theory itself as mass psychosis and started using psychosis as another word for crazy or obsessed and its gotten extremely grating for the people who understand how serious psychosis is. Especially because a lot of the people who are calling us crazy were the same people fighting the "delusional byler" title just 3 months ago and suddenly decided theorizing is a mental issue. Im sorry I was so harsh, and im sorry I opened the floodgates with those antis under that post.
Hey, it's okay. I will admit I was not specific in how I spoke of my experience. It's my first time back actually engaging with a fandom space on Tumblr since the December 2018, so I'm not used to the vibes yet. I also just came from Twitter where I was on calls and involved with some of the worst of the fandom/CG over there. I'm rather jaded, so I apologize for any way I came off in return.
It's absolutely understandable to be on edge about it. I've gotten so many people telling me to commit myself somewhere or that they hope I get the help I "need", even when I explicitly say I am currently getting said help? Actually unrealistic and impossible these people wanna seem so smart and aloof that they literally forget to read the very words people have said.
I've gotten dogged on SO hard for how I've discussed my more outlandish theories, but I popularized We (The Audience) Got Vecna'd on Twitter on Dec 26th, so I don't think these people can hurt me ATP. Lol. 67gate literally threw me under the bus and blamed the "more content" aspect of Conformitygate onto me and called me delusional. They need to rethink their concept of empathy from the ground up, and that's what I focus on now.
On the internet it can be hard to discern what people mean sometimes, and I just hope that one lesson we can take from this entire experience is to take things in better faith. Both one another, as well as ourselves.
I think that this show has a lot to say about mental health, and we all gotta fortify ourselves for the themes of the content to come. It might get extremely dark, and I don't know how I'll be able to take it (if many fan theories are accurate). The show is very much already about PTSD and lying to yourself already, so I'm excited to see if they can pull off the complex stuff they have to do with certain characters traumas! And we all need to be ready for it.
this is a weird thing to say, but I'm very grateful for this blog despite not really being "in" stranger things fandom. like there's something genuinely comforting about scrolling through the evolving drama and being able to spend an hour or two distracting myself from mental health issues or The State Of The World with this stuff. thank you for that.
I have seen multiple people credit ConformityGate to tumblr, but it (and cutgate) actually originated on Twitter. I have been monitoring both, and I believe both originate from the same group of fans who run a discord server (Mass Byler Canon)
I want to add an addendum to this post for the historical record, that the creation of these fans towards Conformitygate has been called into question.
Hiii, as much as the timeline thing definitely makes sense, the extra episode/CONFORMITYGATE wasn’t a plant by the media. They definitely hinted/ spurred it on but I had thought of the concept of still being in a trance/ an extra episode ten minutes after the finale, and then made a post about it. Afterwards I joined a live Twitter space called “Mass Byler Canon” where the user @67gate was starting a theory called ConformityGate (it was the same as mine minus the extra episode aspect). Because the theory was practically the same except for the extra episode part, I posted multiple videos about it on TikTok, and made it viral. It was not a plant. I even have the screenshots of being the first person to post it on TikTok, and the one with the orange overlay is the one that went viral and spread all over the internet.
I was just clarifying that it’s not a plant that started it, even though it was hinted towards. I love the rest of your timeline idea sm though
(There’s the screenshot of it being brought to TikTok below, with all three videos being mine not from a plant )
Congrats on being the first to bring the idea to TikTok, that's so cool! 🎊 (Also, wow reaching out to me of all people, thanks? I'm glad you like my timeline prediction!) I didn't want to discredit anyone that came up with it themselves organically, thanks for clarifying!
I am pretty sure if nobody had come up with it, that they would have planted it though. It seems to have been a very coordinated social experiment from the start, so they definitely helped it spread.
I wonder what name they would have given the theory, conformitygate is very byler-coded.
Also, there is a conformitygate discord server with the best theorists from Tumblr, if you (or anyone) wants to join send a DM! We're creating a master document with all evidence right now.
Ok so I am sorry for assuming. I'm afraid I and many others have been on edge about the normalization of medical terms for weeks (and longer) now. Like yes, I am sure people who were triggered into psychosis would probably like the theory and take it to the moon with their delusions but people have been referring to the theory itself as mass psychosis and started using psychosis as another word for crazy or obsessed and its gotten extremely grating for the people who understand how serious psychosis is. Especially because a lot of the people who are calling us crazy were the same people fighting the "delusional byler" title just 3 months ago and suddenly decided theorizing is a mental issue. Im sorry I was so harsh, and im sorry I opened the floodgates with those antis under that post.
Hey, it's okay. I will admit I was not specific in how I spoke of my experience. It's my first time back actually engaging with a fandom space on Tumblr since the December 2018, so I'm not used to the vibes yet. I also just came from Twitter where I was on calls and involved with some of the worst of the fandom/CG over there. I'm rather jaded, so I apologize for any way I came off in return.
It's absolutely understandable to be on edge about it. I've gotten so many people telling me to commit myself somewhere or that they hope I get the help I "need", even when I explicitly say I am currently getting said help? Actually unrealistic and impossible these people wanna seem so smart and aloof that they literally forget to read the very words people have said.
I've gotten dogged on SO hard for how I've discussed my more outlandish theories, but I popularized We (The Audience) Got Vecna'd on Twitter on Dec 26th, so I don't think these people can hurt me ATP. Lol. 67gate literally threw me under the bus and blamed the "more content" aspect of Conformitygate onto me and called me delusional. They need to rethink their concept of empathy from the ground up, and that's what I focus on now.
On the internet it can be hard to discern what people mean sometimes, and I just hope that one lesson we can take from this entire experience is to take things in better faith. Both one another, as well as ourselves.
I think that this show has a lot to say about mental health, and we all gotta fortify ourselves for the themes of the content to come. It might get extremely dark, and I don't know how I'll be able to take it (if many fan theories are accurate). The show is very much already about PTSD and lying to yourself already, so I'm excited to see if they can pull off the complex stuff they have to do with certain characters traumas! And we all need to be ready for it.
Stranger Things ARG on steroids: Commentary on Fandom Culture
What did we learn from Feb 20 (2026) about the Stranger Things viral marketing strategy?
Or: The Duffer Brothers made a prototype ARG back in 2016 called _9MOTHER9HORSE9EYES9
(I should have made two separate posts, but in my head these two subjects are connected and I have no time to fix it)
Hello everyone! Remember when I posted my ultimate promotional timeline for the Stranger Things ARG and then said, pretty confidently:
Something is going to happen on Feb 20!!!
And then... Nothing happened? Well, not quite nothing. I said we would get answers and, oh boy, answers we got. Let's talk about it! :)
A lot of my thoughts and reflections are inspired by my conversations with @fixthehyper, @nuffit, @thebestofmyrmidons, @luminescentlama, @randomstblog, @autoasta, @disastertourwaterdeepedition, @arubikhandy0707 and @picsbydarienjay
I still stand behind my promo analysis master post so far, read that one first:
💬 17 🔁 28 ❤️ 114 · Stranger Things conformitygate: an ARG on steroids · The ultimate conformitygate promotional timeline analysis
Disclai
I have amended it a bit, check out my edits if you haven't seen them yet!
So what exactly happened on Feb 20?
We had FIVE distinct posts:
1. An Architectural Digest article on Matt Duffer's and his family's home:
Duffer, his fiancée Sarah Hindsgaul, and designer Kyle O’Donnell transformed a long-neglected 1929 apartment into a playful escape for famil
His apartment is a bit CG themed, the orange and green everywhere. The article also features two videos on S5 set design. Maybe something is in those? Nice grandfather clock you got there, Matt Duffer.
2. An announcement revealing the second cast of The First Shadow Broadway Production:
Casting is complete for year two of the Tony-winning Broadway production Stranger Things: The First Shadow. Joining previously announced pri
3. A report about a Private Stranger Things Tour for super fans:
See all the coolest local Stranger Things filming locations right here in Atlanta, led by the one and only Tours by Locals!
4. More Nikki Baxter Bullshit from a "commentary account" on Twitter, @UDScoopMedia:
5. The insanely long over 48 hours YouTube live stream by q, who is also known as @HawkinsHappenin (HawkH) on Twitter.
Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.
Going forward, I assume that the reader fully understands that @HawkinsHappenin aka q is a plant. Still unsure? Let's quickly address this common criticism:
Regardless if you think this is the original "teenager" who leaked some Stranger Things BTS content or someone else, who took on this identity for lore and mystery, this account has a purpose. It retweets Twitter ragebait and misinfo, it plays into people's beliefs of CG and it behaves exactly like the other Twitter plant accounts. It creates hype by making posts of cryptic nature, sprinklings half-truths throughout. You don't get BTS content from official sources by begging on Twitter. @HawkinsHappenin is connected to the Stranger Things social media presence, if you like it or not. Check out my posts on plants on my blog for more of my thoughts.
Looking at the five points above, it's quite a substantial list of promo, but it's also not mind-blowing, content-wise. What fascinated me the most though, was not the livestream itself, but the existence and purpose of it.
About 50-120 people tuned in to q's live stream on Feb 20 (2026) and the days before and after, they kept watching, listening and waiting for something to happen during it. It was mostly the same clips on a loop over and over again, with distorted music, some morse code on Nikki Baxter, some timers/countdowns, some coordinates that lead to a location close to Hawkins Headquarters. It was building and building and building up to... a whole lotta nothing, in my opinion.
I argued in my ultimate promo timeline post, that the Stranger Things social media team has been cycling between positive and negative promo every 5/6 days and that on Feb 20 we would have to get out of the super weird, confusing, negative promo slump we have observed since Feb 8 (or Feb 10). In the past, I made the logical error of viewing the Stranger Things ARG as a puzzle for us, the players, to solve. That's why Feb 20 felt like a clue, but I was wrong.
Ask yourself this: Can this livestream even be considered... promo? It only targeted about a hundred people. How is that effective? Unless... promo was never the goal, but only the byproduct of all this.
Reframing everything we have noticed so far not as an attempt at promoting new content, but as a social experiment, everything starts to fall into place. The promo is a cover for what is really happening, a targeted provocation of the entirety of the Stranger Things fandom.
The fandom reaction has been central in the Stranger Things viral marketing campaign. The General Audience (GA), disgruntled bylers, and yes, also CG theorists have been collectively played. Maybe we all react differently, due to our various perspectives, but emotionally, we all have been strongly affected! Just reflect on these past two months, how everyone, no matter their thoughts on Stranger Things, has had some gripes with the ending. Nobody is truly satisfied. They're fucking with us to prove a point. I know people on Tumblr have a bit of a cynical view of the GA, but most of them got hyped for the possibility of a secret episode on Jan 7, even if during the finale they didn't notice anything or have completely moved on by now.
The point the Stranger Things ARG is making is that by playing it safe and selling out, artists create mediocre and conform art and fans should be angry about this!
What I have been calling ragebait, Nikki Baxter, has been tailored to be exactly that for ALL groups:
- GA: Ew, what's this pink-haired butch lesbian looking character infiltrating my 80s themed show for?! (sorry I have seen many comments like this ._.)
- Sad bylers (nudged in this direction by the mainstream media narrative): Why do we have a spin-off with more Mileven content and why is another girl in the way of our gay boys?! Introducing a new character creates continuity errors... The writers ARE STUPID and SELL-OUTS?!
- CG theorists: Why does none of the information add up about her, most sources are dubious or unverified? What's her purpose in the ARG?? Is she the manifestation of the Mind Flayer, is she messing with the timeline??? Is the cartoon even real?!?! Argh, we want to know!!!
I already connected the emotions of the fandom to the promotional timeline previously, because they are hard to ignore. Like clockwork (lol), around every major promo drop, the fandom, in particular CG theorists, would behave in a similar way: hope, hype, crash-out, repeat!
In this context, q's livestream actually makes perfect sense. It specifically targets the most hardcore of the fan base, of course it's not for GA or regular bylers, they don't even know it exists. It's there to create hype, but also it's to call CG theorists out. We are so desperate, we will cling to any clues and will follow the plants whims for a nothingburger. Give or take a hundred people stopped messaging in the live chat of the stream simultaneously, because a supposed plant said so. Some genuinely thought for a moment it would do something. Even the most critical and media literate of us, in extreme circumstances, will behave like a hivemind. Or, perhaps more like Joyce in Season 1. While she was right about Will being alive, she did put too much trust in that goddamn phone:
CG theorists losing sleep and hoping HawkH will give them actually some interesting new information (colorized). Pic from @thebestofmyrmidons #phonegate post.
We know that Netflix takes super fans into account in their profit model, very pragmatically. Super fans are the main source of free promotion for them, they have admitted it themselves ("FQ3 2025 Earnings Call Transcripts" Oct 21, 2025):
My full analysis of the Netflix business strategy is linked inside the promotional timeline master post at the beginning of this post.
Well, isn't this something? I feel we are not just players in the Stranger Things ARG, we are also predictable data points for a giant corporation. We're like puppets on a string doing their choreographed song and dance.
What Vecna is to the characters, Netflix is to us.
It gets worse, kind of.
In my humble opinion, the social experiment part of this marketing campaign is ethically dubious at best, kind of exploitative at worst, mainly because of Netflix's involvement and their corporate greed. Of course, I acknowledge this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to study fandom behavior and see how propaganda and misinformation influences the masses. It's definitely valuable data for all kinds of research. I am just not particularly fond of being a data point, that's all.
I think the Stranger Things ARG overall is a passion project orchestrated by the Duffer Brothers though, it is performance art at its core, and I appreciate that. What if I told you the online component has been in the works since 2016? I suspected that due to the gigantic scale of this project, it had to have taken years of planning. We have indications that most major social media platforms are involved: Reddit, Twitter, Insta+FB, TikTok, Tumblr, ao3, etc. Some of us have even found CG clues in more obscure places like Pinterest, DeviantArt and web forums such as fanon wikis.
Perhaps a prototype would be hidden somewhere? Lo and behold, @picsbydarienjay shared this bombshell with me. Thank you dude! :D
_9MOTHER9HORSE9EYES9
My jaw dropped the first time I read about this. I genuinely was shocked. Between February 2016 and July 17 (2016), the end date being 2 days after Season 1 of Stranger Things was released, a creepypasta was posted in Reddit comments across multiple subreddits that formed one semi-cohesive narrative with themes of the show. A summary:
Note the "30-something American male". Who were 30-something, American and male in 2016? A Reddit user suggested 10 years ago this could be related to Stranger Things, but got heavily dismissed in the comments at the time:
This person was NOT wrong in hindsight, when having the context of the Stranger Things ARG in 2026. I can't believe how people overlooked this:
An intimidating story emerging on Reddit plays on the horror of the unknown lurking in plain sight among the tools we use for everyday dialo
This creepypasta has many connections to Stranger Things, I encourage anyone to dig through the lore.
I will mention a "simple" parallel that @picsbydarienjay told me about:
Posted in r/9M9H9E9 by u/_9MOTHER9HORSE9EYES9 • 89 points and 44 comments
The mysterious account linked to "Fairy Queen - Tami Stronach", the singer Tami (Tammy!!!) is the actress of Childlike Empress in The NeverEnding Story (1984).
HA HA HA HA HA
Okay, I am done. If this post does not prove that the Stranger Things ARG has been planned from the very beginning of the show and that this entire promotional campaign has been one big troll and social experiment I don't know what will.
But Goat, when will the content come out??? I am anxiously waiting 🥺👉👈
Soon, most likely before the end of April. The Black Mirror: Bandersnatch mini ARG and viral marketing campaign took about 2-2.5 months in total. The promo for Stranger Things has reduced to triggering the super fans mostly, the active plants are confused themselves on what to do, maybe there is a production delay for the interactive content, who knows?
The Duffer Brothers are leaving for Paramount after April (2026). Since Tales from '85 airs on April 23, allegedly lmfao, and most cons with cast appearances will commence at the end of March (2026), I have a feeling they literally can't make us wait that much longer. They really want to though, they do. The Stranger Things social media team also wants us to keep guessing specific dates for their little stunt by leaving misleading clues, but I won't entertain them anymore, and neither should you.
You’ve been waiting for it… The Stranger Fan Meet is back, and once again: we’re going on tour! For its
Stop normalizing psychotic breaks. You have never seen nor experienced a psychotic break and it shows in the way you take normal fandom behavior and call it psychotic because people are thinking outside of a box you decided to put them in. Bylers had crazy theories for YEARS and nobody in that area of the fandom had a problem with it until it was about subject matter they dont personally believe in. I pray you never have a psychotic break, people's lives are ruined because of shit like that. A fan theory on tumblr that has a timer on it isnt mass psychosis. Its shit fandom has been doing for decades. Its not even an original concept. Idgaf if you dont believe it, just change the language youre using. Undermining a real mental issue isnt cute and it isnt funny.
Hi Anonymous!
It's very interesting for you to assume that, because I've dealt with a LOT of mental health struggles in my life, and you don't know me. I never coined the term Mass Byler Psychosis, and was implicated in it due to the people who coined it (and then changed it to Mass Byler Canon). I never found a problem with it because 1) It was from Milevens making fun of it and it was reclaiming, and 2) I actually HAVE dealt with psychosis and knew how close my stress levels since Christmas matched those previous mental health episodes.
As a person who has been through psychosis and mental health issues, I DO actually think that a fair amount of people genuinely entered psychosis from this whole situation. Just 2 days of missed sleep can lead to psychosis, and it's a lot more prevalent than people think. I did go and change the tag that jokingly apologized for my involvement causing mass hysteria, so I am sorry for that comment making it seem dismissive.
However.
I think you should reexamine how you've chosen to interact with me here. I had to do trauma work following Vol 2 related to my experience of CSA and being triggered by the show, while I was dealing with people telling me I should be "helped" for my theories.
I legit was dealing with paranoid stress delusions due to this, and had to get on a SWAT warning list just in case somebody found my address (including some dedicated haters I'd gotten from my involvement on the Twitter side of Conformitygate). So yes, I did go through some mental health struggles due to all of it.
This is not a normal fan theory. I fully believe the ending of the show purposefully orchestrated to test the mental fortitude of an audience, and our ability to understand messages in media and reject propaganda. Everybody else treats us like we're insane for our ideas, which I greatly disagree with. However, to deny that this seriously affected people's mental health and actually put them into mental anguish is not doing what you think it is.
I still believe, and I don't think it makes myself or anyone crazy for still believing. And if it does? Then fuck it, we're all crazy together. I don't know where you got the idea I don't believe.
I hope you've found the love and support you need to get where you need to be during this rough time. Because it's genuinely been SO rough. I hope it hasn't hurt your mental health, but it seriously negatively effected mine.
