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Letter from the old MCR website written by Gerard Way, announcing that the band had signed to Reprise, August 2003 🩸 #Revenge20

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Gerard's testicular virility story (link to full interview)

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The Mystery of DD

Since a lot of newer fans weren’t around to experience the mystery of the DD era as it was unfolding, I wanted to try to describe it so people can understand what it was like to be an MCR fan in 2010.

A Bizarre Mystery

It all began on September 4th, 2010, when MCR’s website suddenly disappeared and was replaced with a mysterious transmitter. No one had any idea this was coming, and no explanation was offered. You could click the dials to see different screens (test patterns, a nuclear fallout symbol, etc.), and hear distorted sounds. At one point, fans believed that they could hear an unreleased MCR song on one of the stations, buried under static and distortion. Later on, the transmitter started playing mysterious videos that hinted at a post-apocalyptic universe.

Not long after the transmitter appeared, the DrDeathDefying Twitter account was discovered after he tweeted a fan. NewsAGoGo and AgentCherriCola were discovered soon after, with the rest of the accounts coming later. The accounts posted a bizarre mixture of strange pictures, futuristic slang, references to apocalyptic events, fan interactions, and eerie ramblings. You could determine a loose background and storyline from the Twitter accounts, but they were so vague that no one was quite sure what was going on. All we knew was that the characters seemed to be part of a nightmarish, post-apocalyptic universe that took place in the near future. But we had no idea how this related to MCR, or why they’d gone in this direction for their next album.

The Return of MCR.com

The website did return on September 8th, with a new photo and blog post from Frank. But the blog post offered no explanation, and the speculation was far from over. The transmitter was still accessible on a separate page on MCR’s website. As the Twitter accounts continued to post their bizarre ramblings, people made connections to everything from movies to past MCR eras to the supposed “2012 Mayan Apocalypse.” At that point, their next album could have been about anything.

Looking back at Danger Days now, it’s pretty clear what was going on. But at the time, we had no idea where this era was heading. Keep in mind that our only sources of information were the Twitter accounts and the transmitter–no comics, no music videos, no interviews. The era could have been about anything. For this reason, fans scrutinized every scrap of information–pictures, tweets, transmissions–down to the smallest detail.

A World of Theories

The blog girlautomatic is a great place to read the old theories. Here’s an example from one of her posts:

Here’s my new theory:

Dr. Death Defying is part of a group called the Philly Jackals, likely a gang that either travels around on motorcycles or cars or both. Whether the group actually comes out of Philadelphia, assuming Philadelphia (or even the other states) still even exists as we know them to exist, is debatable.

The name Dr. Death Defying is an alias s/he either adopted or was given upon joining up with the Philly Jackals.

Slaughtermatic Sounds is both their logo and their motto.

The car in the picture Frank posted and the raygun Dr. Death Defying tweeted a picture of belong to him/her.

Which could possibly mean that the Lady referred to in this tweet is said car. It also probably means that last night’s tweet about being low on batteries is also about his car, but that might be a bit of a stretch. Also? I’m not sure I’d want to get on the Doctor’s bad side, if this is all correct. Motor gangs are serious business. It at least casts this tweet in a different light, though, and really makes me wonder if this tweet about nitro is referring to the dangers of drag racing, and if this tweet is about traveling on the open road.

This might look strange to fans today, but at the time, no scrap of information was insignificant. Whole blog posts were written about one or two tweets. People studied the blank transmitter screen, trying to see vague shadows or reflections in the image. They traced pictures posted on Twitter to their original sources, then studied the sources. To fans, it was basically a giant puzzle–but we had no idea where it was heading, or if there were even a solution to find.

People also tried to figure out who ran these Twitter accounts. We know now that Shaun Simon ran most of them, with Gerard Way and Jon Rivera handling DrDeathDefying. But at the time, several fans (including me) just kind of assumed that the members of MCR ran the accounts. A popular theory was that Gerard ran DrDeathDefying and Frank ran NewsAGoGo (a few tweets shared Frank’s typing style.) However, some people did suspect that Shaun Simon was involved, as the characters tended to tweet about things that he mentioned on his personal Twitter.

The End of an Era

Eventually the “Art Is The Weapon“ video was released, and the interviews and music videos that followed cleared up a lot of the mystery. But the characters continued to tweet, some of them posting well into 2013. We’re now familiar with the Danger Days universe, but the hint of mystery and intrigue still lingers. Many questions were never answered, while some concepts and ideas were scrapped altogether. Even if we get more content in the future, parts of DD will always remain a mystery to us–and I think that’s one reason that it continues to capture people’s imaginations.

An interesting note–thinking back on the transmitter and the Twitter accounts, it felt like we’d analyzed these pieces of information for months. But while I was researching this blog post, I realized that MCR’s website returned after only four days, and "Art Is The Weapon” was released only a few weeks later. I guess the analysis and scrutiny was so in-depth that it seemed to last much longer!