Thank you for keeping this wiki clean! ~ The Management[]
Welcome to the "77 Days" Pronunciation Book, Bear Stearns Bravo, Horse_ebooks & This is My Milwaukee Wiki
Newsbreak[]
- VideoRoyale—After a lengthy hiatus, the channel is back up and posting new "carefree" videos every 2 days.
- Morse Code (round two)—The once discredited theory that's made a comeback after fans discover a Morse voicemail message on the Bravospam phone number.
- How to Pronounce Horse_ebooks—The countdown's over, but the game's only begun. Help us find the shining data in Bear Stearns Bravo.
Introduction[]
On July 9th, the youtube account Pronunciation Book, which previously posted videos teaching people how to pronounce things in English, began posting cryptic videos counting down from 77 days to September 24th. Due to the bizarre and mysterious nature of the videos, the channel attracted great interest from Reddit, 4chan /x/, and other forums, with many people formulating theories about the meaning or purpose of the videos, and increased attention also being devoted to the channel's earlier videos - which previously seemed innocuous but now appear to be connected to the mystery of the countdown. This is a wiki dedicated to compiling and organizing all information and research on the phenomenon.
Other resources:
- Google doc for the summary (invite-only edits - currently trying to sync this doc with the wiki)
- Public google doc for infodump
- Phrases spreadsheet
- Theories thus far
- PB FAQ for newbies
Whatever you have, whether it be information or something else, post it here.
What We Know About Pronunciation Book[]
- The channel was created on 4/14/2010. It has ~43,136 subs and has subscribed to 1,275 channels. It is a YouTube Partner channel.
- The channel is ostensibly dedicated to teaching non-native English speakers how to say things in English. The videos on the channel began with single words, then eventually progressed to sentences. All of the videos consist of the word or sentence which is the topic of the video in black text on a plain white background, with a voiceover pronouncing the topic word or sentence.
- On 4/14/2012, the channel uploaded posted a video entitled "How to ask for help in English," stating: "Please help me escape from this place."
- On 7/9/2013 the channel uploaded a video stating "Something is going to happen in 77 days." After this, every single video on the channel until "How to Pronounce Guacamole" (originally uploaded on July 9, 2012) had a link placed in the description that leads to the "Please help me escape from this place" video. This means that the person(s) behind the channel had to go back and edit the descriptions of all of the old videos.
- On 7/10/2013, the speaker in the video states states that he has been trying to tell us something for 1183 days - 1183 being the number of days between then and the day the channel was created - and continuing the countdown until "something" happens in 76 days. Every day since, the channel has uploaded a new countdown video with a cryptic sentence and a statement that something is going to happen on a date which corresponds to September 24.
- Each video is uploaded at 10:00 A.M Eastern Standard Time (USA).
- The videos are sometimes created in batches several days ahead of release as shown by timestamp analysis.
- PronunciationBook has a Twitter. All of the tweets appear to be automated tweets for each new video uploaded to the YouTube channel. This seems to have been turned off during the upload of the countdown video for "61 days", but appeared to be turned back on the next day, meaning the countdown video for "61 days" is the only channel video which does not have a corresponding tweet.
- ASUS is the only video on the channel on which PronunciationBook itself has commented.
- According to previous WHOIS records, the owner of PronunciationBook.com might be 'Thomas Bender' with email address 'franzpoekler@gmail.com'. This was confirmed on September 24, 2013 when the countdown ended, and was revealed that Pronunciation Book and Horse_ebooks were part of an art project created by Synydyne- an art collective founded by Thomas Bender et al.
- Thomas Bender was apparently involved in the creation of the 2008 ARG "This is My Milwaukee."
- Using the Way Back Machine on Synydyne , you can find the e-mails of three people: Jacob Bakkila (bakkila@synydyne.com), Thomas Bender (bender@synydyne.com) and Seena Jon (jon@synydyne.com). Looking Bakkila up on the internet leads to an interview with him and Bender (2010). Apparently they make movies.
- Jacob Bakkila and Franz Poekler (Bender) are credited in the "This is My Milwaukee." video... Franz (Bender) as a Museum Patron, Director/Creator/Writer and Bakkila for Lyrics, Producer/Creator/Writer.
- Attempts have been made to decode whirring sounds found in the non-speaking portions of the videos starting with 77. Spectrographic analysis of the sounds seems to indicate that they form an image which so far appears to be a figure pointing at the viewer, reminiscent of a propaganda or recruiting poster.
- A blog posting daily about the countdown and digging deeper into this can be found here as well as here.
- The tumblr page Let's Talk About Systems, named after a phrase from the end of the 36 speech, has been confirmed to be part of the game; it has been observed posting related images to each video several minutes before the videos are uploaded.
Other possible connections[]
- A strange .onion site was found counting down to the same day and time. There is no confirmed connection, but discussion of it can be found here.
- In the book "The Chemistry of Explosives" by Jacqueline Akhavan, the formula for PETN (plastic explosive formula from the "77" site) can be found, curiously on page 77. It seems the number seventy-seven may be more relevant than previously thought. I will need to research this further but it is clearly of some importance.
- A video on youtube.com/user/renunciationbook (renunciationbook), found here, titled "How to Pronounce McDonald's Glyph", is copyrighted to Pronunciation Book in the video's watermark. It contains strange noises, and a voice saying "Darkness" in the background.
- A video on youtube.com/user/pronunciationguide, found here (Pronunciation Guide), titled "Say Pronunciation", has stats turned off, with that one video on the channel.
- See Wiki user Donnie Wahlberg's blog post and the Pronunciation Guide page for further discussion & updates.
- The number of days from the first video "How to Pronounce ASUS," to the final video on September 24th, 2013 is 1260 days. Possibly a biblical reference, as seen in the Book of Revelation.
Featured Video[]
Editing tips
- If you're confused about how to help out, try the wiki's own Community Portal, and see what needs doing. If you have any questions or need help, feel free to leave a note on either Green Zubat, HitsujiTMO, or PoniesNotBronies' walls and they'll get back to you ASAP.
- PLEASE CROSS LINK THE PAGES IN SOME WAY SO WE DON'T END UP WITH A BILLION OF THE SAME THING.
- On a related note, do not replace internal links (even red ones) with urls. The point of a wiki is to organise information in one central area where everything about a certain subject (in this case, PB/77 days) is explained. Urls explain nothing & lead people away from the site. Urls are only appropriate for providing further information or referencing, and should not be entering the main bulk of articles —Green Zubat (irc/forum: "gz") (owl me!) 15:41, August 18, 2013 (UTC)
- Don't make pages with titles that go on into infinity. Nobody wants to search up "Edward Snowden's case that is supposed to come into light on the twenty fourth of September. It may be significant and should be looked into."
- Keep in mind that everything is subject to change due to how early in this we are. Look at everything with a skeptical eye and don't follow everything so blindly.
- Don't be surprised if I just edit random shit to be more presentable. Bullet point comments and comments preceded by * are likely to be me, unless someone else starts doing that. - Heulerei
- You could, like, you know.. use the "comments" feature of wikia. --dequis (irc: "dx") (talk) 13:19, July 24, 2013 (UTC)
- Any information can be useful since we are so early into this. --BrandiWhat_ (talk) 15:22, July 24, 2013 (UTC)
- Want some technical stuff done on the wiki? Ask JAlbor.
Plot points
- There is talk of a mission in multiple videos.
- The people involved with the mission were referenced as a squad
- Chief is important and is mentioned frequently
- Someone attempted to piece the plot together from snippets of videos in this video.
- One video brings up Ten Mysteries; there are then multiple videos that describe one of these mysteries. The videos mentioning 2, 4, and 9 are private, we have pasted screencaps of their transcriptions.
