#yayvideogames

[but--y--tho-blog]

Ubisoft goes steamworks bye-bye always on DRM.

[detachable-tits]

I listen to like a lot of hour long-ish videos on YouTube about Reddit mysteries, rabbit holes, etc. and they’re all very interesting, I’m listening to the “yayvideogames” mystery and I just realised, why will Reddit hyper-fixate on the most random stuff and have it be solved like 7 years later? I swear they’re like “why did this man take a shit at approximately 7:20AM on the border of America?” And then there’s like a fucking update from the Redditor like 10 years later and he’s like “update, I’ve taken another shit since then.

Idk I just find it very funny lmao

[twinhood-2dot0]

u/YAYVIDEOGAMES

Alex isn't here to entertain us with their posts, but I'm really, very, extremely bored and I need something to do. Yes, it's 2 days late, but who's counting anyways? Passage of time is even harder percieve at this point so :P.

You know that I love(/hate) reading about creepy, horrifying, gory, disturbing, <any number of adjectives> stories I can get my hands upon. One of my favourite channels is Nexpo (Nightmare Expo, formerly). They cover lots of, well, just what I described earlier. Oh huh, their latest video is about thalassophobia! That's a hell of a coincidence. (Other readers: Alex is thalassophobic, which is really unfortunate because I'm a thalassophile. I think the posts I made during our first run make that obvious.)

These are the kind of videos they make. Walten Files and Gemini Home Entertainment are Analog Horror series, huh, that's a topic for another day. Okay, let's move on before I delete this post to write about analog horror.

One of their videos is

on what I'm talking about today. You can watch that, he goes into much more detail than I will today. It's nothing too extremely disturbing, but very intriguing, which is why I decided to cover it today. Their video however, was made somehow, exactly a month before the case was closed, so I will be appending that too, so, you can just watch the video and skip to the ending section if you wanna.

u/YAYVIDEOGAMES is a Reddit user that perplexed users that happened to stumble upon his many spammed comments all over Reddit. He seemingly started spamming comments on Reddit after a conversation about Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Come with me, as we find out, who is u/YAYVIDEOGAMES, and what was his purpose of doing this, and what became of him (Yeah, the cheesy documentary intro was on purpose).

The Beginning

The story begins on September 8, 2010, on a post titled "Just got Oblivion for PC. What are your favorite mods?" in r/gaming(Oblivion is the 4th game in the Elder Scrolls video game series). Seems harmless, right? YAYVIDEOGAMES (Referred to as YVG from here on) comments about the game being terrible to uninstall because it leaves behind junk files. He receives a reply saying "Wat?" which seems to be what jumpstarted all this. He replies back.

"The uninstall button…The game is great, Ubisoft goes Steamworks bye bye, always on DRM. But you oft go work, always on work DR. Check out the junk it leaves behind in you."

Ubisoft - Video game publisher

Steamworks - Software designed by Steam to allow developers to add additional features, one being DRM, or Digital Rights Management, which is what stops you from doing whatever you want with software from online stores.

The comment looks pretty tame, albeit with some incoherent parts. The other person responds saying "that makes even less sense" and that the uninstallation works perfectly fine.

This is where stuff gets uhhh concerning. The comment is met with 60 or so comments, all with some variation of the text I bolded in the previous comment.

Let's turn back the clock to August 13, 2010. This is when a post titled "Ubisoft goes Steamworks bye bye always on DRM.", linking to an article about Ubisoft dropping it's terrible DRM. is posted to r/gaming. It's filled with comments with the same content, but they're very few, comparitively, at least, it's still an ungodly amount, and exactly the same, unlike the others. I would like to paint a clearer picture of the timeline, but internet connectivity is limited at the moment, so let's work considering the September date as the beginning.

This is also another comment thread from August 13. The content will be relevant later. Sorry about the light theme, new reddit UI is awful and I'm on dad's laptop so no forced dark mode.

At first glance, it may seem like a bot, but the thing is, so many of them are differently formatted, and with random links, that it's unlikely it was a bot that was made to do all that. A very dedicated troll then, you might say, but it's 4,000 comments + countless many on other threads. As we will see later on, the truth is much darker.

Comment history if you wanna look through it yourself.

There's also a comment in the sea of all the ubisoft goes steamworks, replying to someone asking if they're the only fan of a retro game called "Illusion of Gaia", saying "Apparently you are" linking to a Bing search of "i am a fan of illusion of gaia", which I have no idea what it was supposed to mean, the meaning might just be lost because it's been 13 years. He is greeted by "hahaha everybody, this guy uses Bing! LOL" which triggers another comment thread of a 100 variatons of "LOL!Bing". There's also this one comment that is repeated quite a few times on a post on r/WTF titled something that I wish I never read saying "We are smarter than them" or a spin on it, but seemingly a bit more coherent. This goes on for a long time, until September 23, where it abruptly stops. There are a few normal comments, albeit none are much to comment on. One thing to note, however, is that a few of the targeted posts contain the word "hipster" and some of his normal comments contain it too.

Here's a reddit comment compiling the images that he linked to.

They're all pretty cryptic and random however, don't think anything could be discovered from that. There is also a handwritten version of that, prepended with "https://www.reddit.com/spoiler".

His last message on reddit with the user u/YAYVIDEOGAMES was a post titled "Magic" content: "I need some for help. I would not use it evilly." on the subreddit r/Cleanliness.

Someone knew I was coming.

r/Cleanliness

At first glance, it is a seemingly normal, albeit empty subreddit about sanitation, and there's a moderator named u/NoSubstanceHere.

u/NoSubstanceHere has a post on the subreddit with the title "Zelda" and content "Zelda the princess." Weird for a sub named Cleanliness, you'd think, until scroll down the comments. There you encounter u/NotSureHowBigYouAre with weird cryptic messages, a "conversation" with u/NoSubstanceHere, and one word repeated a ton. "Upvoted." There's also a seemingly random comment by u/VinylRecord saying "Zelda" with a link to an image of a man with Joker-looking-but-sad lipstick smeared on his lips. That name sound familiar?

u/NoSubstanceHere

NSH here has seemingly normal threads on r/gaming, but they seem to contain the same content: "the interrogation room underwent some changes while you were away". There's also a comment on a post titled "Hipster Frodo" saying "I had the one ring when it was on vinyl." They also have a comment with "Oh my god" repeated a ton in response to a comment by NSHBYA (huh, weird, this one's initials resembles the other's). Another post to note is one asking "Who is the best game girl?". It has a few repeated one word comments by them, and one saying "Look" with the aforementioned weird lipstick picture. Another is this thread.

the link is to the starting of the LOL!Bing thread, which is interesting.

They also mod r/BananaFreaks, which contains just 2 posts. One of a uhh weird..? image of a creepified anthropomorphic banana and a disgusted man, and one with just Cheetos. Both of them have comments by NSHBYA and no one else, so they seem to be related somehow.

u/NotSureHowBigYouAre

This account was pretty active, and there's a ton of normal posts. I would have liked to read all the posts, however they are huge and too many, unlike YVG, so from what I could read from the latest few messages, they all seem to be about big pharma, drugs and chronic fatigue syndrome, which they say they suffer from. They also made a post, looking for roommates, where he mentions his chronic pain, over-medicated irritability, and being an ex-Jehovah's Witness. I had no idea what this was, being an Indian atheist with only a little interest in religion, so if you're like me, here. I may just be dumb, but the language is kinda esoteric, but basically, radical, so-conservative-they-want-Christianity-to-go-back-to-1st-Century. I'm too lazy to read through all that, so forgive my misconceptions, but from what I've read, it sounds hellish and cultish. There are also posts that tell us that they were pretty much bedridden from the chronic pain and suicidal, and suffered from hallucinations and nightmares of demons, which their mother told them was all real. I think the mother is the actual demon here, for god's sake.

Let's divert our attention for now to the subreddits that they moderate, namely r/HumorlessClassical and r/HipsterJokes. The former contains one post by the account with the sub link with the comment "LOL Right?", and a bunch of movie piracy threads, but nothing else out of the ordinary. The latter however, is filled with posts by this one account which make seemingly no sense. A lot of them contain words or phrases like "pretty underground", "you've probably never heard about it", "I liked it before it was mainstream/popular", vinyls, casettes and records and some have images linked with just one word, "Before". The sub is pretty empty, except for... u/VinylRecord. Remember them, the "Zelda" guy? Yeah, they seem to be connected to NSHBYA. They are the only other commenter on posts on r/HipsterJokes. Scrolling through their post history, we see more spam. A ton of posts that just say "I'm on vinyl" or "Those jokes get me every time, upvoted". After that though, they get pretty normal. There's a standout, however. There's a comment saying "I have this chart on Vinyl" in response to a link to a website with title "Hipster Fashion Cycle. You go down into the replies aaaaannnnddddd *drumroll* Ubisoft goes Steamworks bye bye, always on DRM. We have come full circle.

What Happened to u/YAYVIDEOGAMES?

Okay, this part is all new, if you already watched Nexpo's video. NSHBYA's last post was on January of 2015. What happened to him after that date was unknown... until Nexpo's video gave it so much coverage. More alts are found, key being u/Nebslox, which appears to be his main account. The username led investigators to his other accounts, one being his last.fm, using which they were able to find Luke McLeish, who seemed to be friends with YVG. He was a member of the band "Jack The Stripper", who YVG also mentioned in a few posts. They also found a 2016 interview where Luke states that his best friend from high school took his own life early in January of 2015. With YVG calling the band his best friend's and from what we know about his CFS and chronic pain and how he found it hard to live, it was unfortunately pretty clear what happened. Luke holds an AMA in the subreddit, where he reveals that his name was Lyndon Wachtel, and he did indeed take his own life in early 2015.

The story of u/YAYVIDEOGAMES aka Lyndon Wachtel is a fascinating and haunting one. What began as seemingly random and incoherent comments on Reddit soon revealed a much darker and complex narrative. The enigmatic user, whose comments flooded various threads, caught the attention of investigators and internet sleuths, leading to a deep dive into their online presence and real-life identity.

Rest In Peace, Lyndon Wachtel, we're glad you finally found peace, and you will be remembered.

This story has enchanted me for a long time, so I hope you enjoyed it too. I love storytelling videos and such, so I was hoping to emulate it kinda in text form.

[thewilliamambervein]

[blinkpanicrun]

Dissecting yayvideogames

In my first official post on this blog, barring the intro I posted previously, I figured I would talk about and analyze one of my all-time favorite Internet mysteries: yayvideogames aka “Ubisoft goes Steamworks bye bye always on DRM”

Background

Before I tackle unsettling mess that yayvideogames surrounded themselves in, let me give some basic info for people that are not aware of this mystery. Basically, yayvideogames was a Reddit user who created their account some time in early-to-mid 2010. Their account is banned at present, but there are a plentiful number of screenshots to some of what they had previously posted, as well as the good ol’ waybackmachine to give us an idea on who this person was before shit hit the fan.

Early on, yayvideogames was completely coherent and seemingly ordinary, primarily contributing to threads regarding--yep, you guessed it--video games. To give an idea at how normal their posts were, here is a screenshot of a couple of them.

Anyone reading these would see them as very typical responses to a Reddit thread. This person is just an average gamer who has an average Reddit account.

Yeah, obviously that’s not true but from this perspective yayvideogames is posting nothing out of the norm. In fact, they prove to be rather intelligent and even helpful to fellow Reddit users!

They continue posting as normal for the majority of 2010, but come September things suddenly shift from normal to... off.

The Incident

On September 13, 2010, a Reddit user posted that they had purchased Oblivion for PC and wanted some recommendations for mods. At some point, yayvideogames chimed in with the following:

This is when things start to appear a little strange. On the surface this response doesn’t seem too out there, maybe a little word salad but nothing too weird. But to someone who is familiar with PC games and mods, it’s even more jumbled.

Another user (who has since deleted) is confused by this and simply asks: “Wat?”

That’s when the madness truly begins:

The first thoughts that pop into one’s mind usually tries to rationalize this jumbled mess of words. Maybe this person was super tired, or very drunk, or wasn’t paying attention to what they were typing before proofreading and posting.

Well don’t worry, it get’s worse.

The Shining was probably the first thing to pop in my head reading this, where Jack Nicholson’s character snaps and begins to write ‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy’ over and over on a typewriter. Had yayvideogames snapped? Were they trolling? Did a bot hijack their account?

Well, there is no clear answer. And guess what? It get’s even stranger.

yayvideogames proceeds to spam the original post with some variation of ‘Ubisoft goes Steamworks bye bye, always on DRM” a bunch of times before moving on to create their own post titled the same madness mantra they had been spamming.

Most at first glance could easily assume this may be a bot gone haywire. Or a troll. Or both. After all, yayvideogames went on to repeat some variation of this phrase over 4,000 times in their own post.

But then, they started linking pictures in their comments. Most of which are not all that scary, but some of them, uh...

...there are many more freaky ones as well. But these ones stood out the most to me.

The idea of this being some sort of rogue bot seems slim at this point, but there could be a slight possibility that this is all some weird glitch/error and we’re just seeing it as scarier than it actually is.

Then, the idea of this being a bot/troll and not the ramblings of someone clinging to the edges of sanity almost completely evaporates when yayvideogames posts this extremely unsettling image. It speaks for itself.

And it get’s even stranger and more confusing from there. Because in the midst of spam posting with a mad passion, yayvideogames posts something completely normal. Even more normal in context of the threads they were replying to.

So what the hell happened here?

Theories

There are several ideas circulating behind the motive of these ramblings, or if there was any at all. Was this simply a case of a very calculated troll? Was yayvideogames trying to create something purposefully disturbing? Did yayvideogames completely blue screen and have a severe mental breakdown,  subjecting an unsuspecting forum site to their descent into madness? Could it be mixture of all of the above? Is it something else entirely?

There is no concrete answer here and I cannot really provide one. Since their terrifying spamming session, yayvideogames was banned from Reddit. All I can do is tell you what this situation is not and what it could be.

It’s not a rogue bot.

Some still suggest that yayvideogames was taken over by a bot, explaining the garbled text that they spammed at such a rapid rate would be extremely difficult for a normal user to pull off. This also explains why, in the middle of their spamming tirade, they replied completely normally to a couple of posts.

Immediately, I’m discrediting this theory right off. The counter to it is way too immense to see this as work of a bot. What is the counter? Well, the picture yayvideogames took showing them scrawling out the same phrase they were endlessly typing. Bots cannot write on a piece of paper, take the picture, and submit it to Reddit. Plus, what would the bots motive be? The images linked were not trying to spread a virus or link to something bots would typically advertise.

So no; this cannot be just a bot.

It could be a troll.

Again, with the above image illustrating that yayvideogames was posting as normal whilst also posting over 4,000 replies to their own thread makes it plausible that somebody got a hold of their account, was using it simultaneously, and decided to freak a bunch of people out. This troll could have used a scripting code to post so rapidly. That would explain the linked picture of them writing out their post, as it strictly being a bot was discredited above. Someone just wanted to rile up Reddit and get attention. I could see it, honestly.

But I am not completely sold on this theory. I can see a troll dedicated to spamming maybe 100, even 400 times, but thousands? It’s really something I couldn’t see anyone dedicating that much time to. Then with the embedded pictures linked in themselves, it makes it all more puzzling and brings into question if this could have been scripting to begin with.

It could be a case of a mental breakdown/psychotic episode.

This is definitely a possibility. After all, it all looks like the ramblings of someone who has gone off the rails. However, this doesn’t explain why they had perfectly normal replies literal minutes after they bombarded Reddit with their insanity. Maybe they’re schizophrenic? Multiple personalities? It’s tough to conclusively say where their head was that day.

But I can assure you no sane person was behind this. That much I know for sure.

Conclusion

The yayvideogames mystery is, as I mentioned in the beginning, one of my favorite on the Internet. There is so much conflicting information and so many unanswered questions that likely will never have clear resolutions. This only makes me want to know more. Why did yayvideogames go all The Shining on an unsuspecting gaming subreddit? What was going through their head? If it was a troll, what was their motive? Just to get a reaction? Get attention? Or was this troll having an episode themselves?

This is such a fascinating mystery and I would love to hear your thoughts. Thank you for reading and stay spooky. <3

Sources: 1 2 3

[50shadesofvoices]

woo first post

I don't know what to do for the first post of this blog so I guess I'll just describe myself. I'm the kind of person who would be described as a smart ass with a dirty mind. I like videogames and anime, and I would have to say it weirds me out that people have a different way of imagining people like how they're described in a book. Like if i were to say a person had blue hair and gold eyes, would you think of it as an anime character? an actual person? now im getting deep in thought so I'll end this post here