groping in the dark - clues thusfar

Since it was suggested, but so far hasn’t appeared, I guess I’ll do what I can to gather the clues mentioned in the forums thusfar.


Much of the early work was done at Unfiction, before these forums opened.
http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/viewtopic.ph…


It seems the first clue was at ARGnet:
http://www.argn.com/archive/000767i_am_blind.ph…


“We got a weird call late last week that, at first, I couldn’t figure out. After asking the staff to help decipher, they discovered that the breathy, computer-generated voice was telling us us that we were “alone in the darkness” and instructing us to send our mailing address to 1003@iamblind.org”


People discovered this site, and it consisted only of the graphic (top left), making noise as you roll over with the mouse.


People started discovering YouTube accounts with videos that seemed relevant:
http://www.youtube.com/user/camronbrian
http://www.youtube.com/user/jamesslash1
http://www.youtube.com/user/LennyDillane


And a Google map that had three locations:
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps/ms?hl=en&ie=UTF8&...


The videos seemed to be cross-posted to many video sharing sites, but all the same videos at each site (so for brevity, I’ll not try and aggregate all those links here, at least for now).


Someone over at unfiction (hopefully someone now with us here) wrote to one of the YouTube users (LennyDillane), and got a message back: “audrey can see.”


Audrey’s Twitter account was discovered:
http://twitter.com/audreyplainview


One tweet: a link to a Google map
http://tinyurl.com/46yzd7
…the same link sent out in a larger batch of email, with the subject line “help me see you.”


Large versions of the two images seen in the info of the flags on that map can be found at this Flikr account:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/30538668@N05/


Today, some people (including coljnr9) got emails that said this:
“The next shipment will come to you. Help the others who come to the ward in the meantime. They will need answers.”


…I think those are the major clues that have been discussed already, yes? Please, chime in and correct my mistakes (or take credit for your discoveries); by no means am I responsible for any of the above clues, I am merely trying to put everything in one place to help other newbs like myself catch up as quickly as possible.

boomer52: “We are reasonably sure that this is a promotion for the upcoming film Blindness, based on a book of the same name by José Saramago”

In this post I will start to track all of the ARG personalities that I know of, we well as mini bios on them. This is by no means complete, and I will be editing it probably several times a day. Reply with any info that I leave out, and I will fill in any holes.
1003@iamblind.org – While it is unknown who or what is sending/receiving messages at this email address, players communicate with this personality more frequently that most others. At the onset of the game, a voice clip (which can be heard HERE ) told players to “come out of the darkness”, and send their snail mail addresses via email to 1003@iamblind.org. Of those who did, many experienced unexplained bounces, which are most likely attributable to technical difficulties. Many players did receive the return email that jigsawjones quoted in his(or her :P) first post. Most emails sent after that continue to bounce, as do any emails sent to “onethousandthree@iamblind.org”
Audreyplainview – Thus far, the only personality who has created an account on the IMB forums (apart from admin). We know little about her, except that she started the first thread ”< 0 >”, in which she posted “Wear them unless you are bathing or sleeping”. She also has accounts on various video sites such as youtube, metacafe, etc. Her metacafe account shows her age as 30 years old. Players have started referring to her simply as Audrey, but she has made no responses so far. In fact, she has only the one post on the forums.
iamblind.org – not so much a personality as an account used on many sites to upload clues. Most notably, iamblind.org created and shared the google map with markers in the shape of an eye. iamblind accounts are also used on flickr, where it was used to post the statue of liberty stamp photo, as well as the eye picture LINK
henrysmith, cameronbrian, jamesslash, LennyDillane, et all – More accounts used (primarily on youtube) to upload videos. One or more of these may be hoax accounts, but henry, lenny, and cameron at least are you several sites each. While using the unfiction forums, one player, evanly, was contacted by by Lenny through the youtube messaging system with the statement: “audrey can see.” LINK (at the top of page 3). This was sent hours before the discovery of the iamblind.org forum site.
I have to go to work, more to follow. Feel free to email me anytime at: Coljnr9@gmail.com
-Cole

lol, jigsawjones. Nice observations anyhow. How did admin contact you? or did he just use your account and then sign the post?
A quick google of xxxxxx turns up:
XXXXXXX is an experienced team of Los Angeles-based digital pioneers with a unique vision: to create, produce, syndicate and market online entertainment.
Just the creators, I don’t think we need to get too involved with them…

While watching some trailers for blindness, I saw one LINK If you look at 0:51, you see a statue that is the same as the background of this site (blindfolded virgin mary?). Also has some text around it that says immaculate conception.
At the very end, a link to the movie site… might be worth poking around. Site Link

The second trailer, the one on the movie site, also has a really brief shot of the same statue. From context, it looks like the statue may be in the Ward where the quarantined victims are being kept.
Good eye, coljnr9

just had an idea. i typed in “the ward” into google maps and it came up the location of it is in carolina…the same place the pupil of the eye is at….could this be where audrey is watching us from since its at the center or could it be the quarantine area??? just a thought

hmm, yeah… Locating the quarantine may be a large part of this ARG… not sure though…. I must say, having more dialog with audrey would be oh so nice!

With all the fine work(many THX)I’m almost embarrassed to repost(props riquardo) Audrey’s Bolt Accn’t. Yet she might return with addn’l content and it’s the only place I’ve seen her age(30) noted.
Would it now be a good idea to use this thread as a general QandA?

thebruce found flickr accounts for i am blind, “user”:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/30538668@N05/ and the group />http://www.flickr.com/groups/iamblind/

did you guys already saw that?
http://www.metacafe.com/channels/audreyplainview/

I don’t know how to explain this properly but i’m going to give it a shot.
The youtube videos, at the end of the “work is blind” you see the word “work” get replaced by several other words and they speed up.
With me so far?
well some of those words that appear on there are the titles of other videos by the other two users as well.
Hopefully you get what i mean T_T, i don’t know if they are clues or not, but previous ARG experience has told me to be curious about everything.

In the video “Chance is blind” the bus’ destination changes. I can’t determine the initial state, but the second one reads “dash” which on google maps turns up only one hit. It’s in north dakota, and very close to the canadian border. Don’t know if this helps, because it seems to me that each video is from a different location. But perhaps it bears some significance.
Second, on the postcard with the blind statue of liberty there’s three interesting things.
a) The number 42 crossed through. Not extremely interesting, but it seems (according to my google maps) that there is no interstate 42, though there is a 41, 43 and 44. This is probably just a ‘wishful’ pattern that bears no significance at all. The first thing the number 42 means to me is the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy books and a number that when divided continually by 2 delivers a result that is funny.
42 / 2 = 22.
22 / 2 = 11.
11 / 2 = 5.5.
5.5/2 = 2.75.
From there on the number 75 repeats in every recalculation as the resulting last 2 decimals. Funny, but I don’t really think it’s worth anything.
b) A strange pattern that, when connected four ways results in what appears as either a blueprint for a piece of electronics or a top-side view of a building. It could be anything else.
c) A number of disputable encoding, namely 1010007500. However, when you turn 7500 into binary and then replace it in the original string, the decimal result is 80.
That’s my two cents. Lot of things that prolly won’t matter but more data is always good eh? :)
./KtN

Oh, and on the mainpage of this website there’s a commented piece of markup in what appears to be a footer. It doesn’t lead anywhere:
<!-

Legal

So i don’t know if anyone else has been on ARGNet yet, but there seems to be a sound clip on there labelled “Weird call”
Just thought i’d inform you all just in case

There’s also a DASH bus system in LA, and clairnor confirmed the video location by checking google maps. I’m not sure if 42 has significance here beyond being US first-class postage, but I’m impressed with your thoughtful research.

just had an idea. what if the moderator is one of the elders audrey referred to? or could the elders be the people who posted all the videos on youtube and all the other websites?

i was messing around with the search thing up top and it appears when u get the error screen. but when you look at the html code all the way at the bottom theres a tag that says ”<!- This file lives in public/500.html ->” what could that mean?

hmm, I don’t know a ton about web coding, but 500 errors mean internal/server side problems.

on UF forums we’ve discussed the postage. indeed the 42 is to void the counterfeiting possibilities for users who are looking for previews of custom stamps. there’s a site where one can get any image on custom postage, it looks like this blindfolded figure’s image was likely obtained through a preview of such a service. since the e-mail about a shipment… I find it very likely that something will be headed to us in the next few days, and considering the picture is a preview of custom postage, i’d not be surprised to see a package with such postage on it. I’m lucky enough to have receive one of these e-mails, I know a few others did as well. the code on the side of the stamp is also just a generic representation of custom postage’s look.

that includes the number under the “42” 1010007500?

yep, if you go through the process at stamps.com you’ll get the same preview image (with your own custom image of course) along with the 1010007500 under it. this has been discussed at the unifiction forums, to any new player or curious or confused, going through that thread might help. as others have said, this is new to all of us… it’s only been the last 2 or 3 days.

So I was thinking about the picture that audreyplainview has on her bolt.com account. I think it is a conglamerate of a few paintings. I am going to try and piece those together tonight, and see if it is anything relevant.
Maybe that will be something?!?

Good thinking evanly. I didn’t even notice that…

so just out of curiousity i was filtering around myspace, i found this when i click on the link it says invalid friend ID
Also i don’t think it might be anything but here it is:
http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b217/WerePaws…

New videos here:
http://www.metacafe.com/channels/blindguywithgl…
Different naming convention for these, so I’m not certain that they’re actual clues, but you never know.

More videos of the sudden onset of blindness…think there’s anything more important about the Blind Law one, seeing as it’s one of the few to include more than just ambient sound? The screaming is kinda weird – not what I’d expect to hear at a building like that. And I can’t quite make out the speech clip, but I guess it’s about freedom. Maybe it’s nothing at all, but it did make me stop to think.

The graveyard one is interesting too. I’ve been trying to read the name on the gravestone, but to no avail so far. It may be nothing, but the presence of information very seldom means nothing at all…

The headstone appears to say WEYGANDT.

Actually laughingwolf, it makes sense if you think about it. After all, you’re not the only one going blind, right? ;)
The clip is George W. saying “Freedom itself is a testimony…faceless coward.” Definitely the creepiest video so far o_o