WEBVTT - Thinking Sideways: What the heck was hell.com? 0:00:00.200 --> 0:00:02.880 This episode of Thinking Sideways is not brought to you 0:00:02.960 --> 0:00:08.640 by Sobbing the Confusing and Undefined Kind. Instead, it's brought 0:00:08.720 --> 0:00:13.119 you by Universal Pictures new film The Snowman, based on 0:00:13.160 --> 0:00:17.640 the terrifying bestseller by Joe Nezbo. This Universal Pictures new 0:00:17.680 --> 0:00:22.920 film is almost out and The Snowman is gonna be up. 0:00:23.040 --> 0:00:25.360 It's gonna be a scary one. It looks really creepy, 0:00:25.680 --> 0:00:31.280 so see it in theaters on October. This episode is 0:00:31.360 --> 0:00:35.879 also brought you by bubble Bar. Bubble Bar offers premium 0:00:35.920 --> 0:00:39.680 fashion jewelries and accessories. They make it really easy to 0:00:39.800 --> 0:00:42.600 find the things that match your style, things that you 0:00:42.640 --> 0:00:45.159 didn't realize that you were gonna like. 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Hey, guys, 0:01:46.280 --> 0:01:51.360 welcome to another episode of Thinking Sideways the podcast I 0:01:51.480 --> 0:01:56.320 Am Devin, joined this week by Joe and Steve, and 0:01:56.400 --> 0:02:00.320 we haven't had a creepy mystery for you. Halloween Halloween week, 0:02:00.560 --> 0:02:03.200 month month. It's not a week, it's a month. It's 0:02:03.320 --> 0:02:05.520 for us, it's a month. It's actually like two months 0:02:05.520 --> 0:02:07.760 for us, kind of because we like record a month 0:02:07.800 --> 0:02:10.160 ahead and then yeah, it's pretty great. Actually, I've been 0:02:10.160 --> 0:02:12.840 in the Halloween spirit for while. The candies out. Yeah, 0:02:13.160 --> 0:02:16.120 I know, I'm gaining weight crazy. I've already eaten fifty 0:02:16.120 --> 0:02:19.359 pounds of it. We can tell um. So this week 0:02:19.400 --> 0:02:23.119 we're going to talk about a creepy Internet mystery actually, 0:02:23.919 --> 0:02:26.720 and we're calling this one. What the heck is hell 0:02:26.800 --> 0:02:35.760 dot com? Was? Was? Was um? And Bradford suggested this 0:02:35.880 --> 0:02:39.720 mystery a while ago, one of our first Internet mystery 0:02:39.800 --> 0:02:42.120 and was one of our first Internet mysteries to be suggested. 0:02:42.560 --> 0:02:45.760 And I guess we'll just want to hop right into it. Yeah, 0:02:45.880 --> 0:02:50.920 not what the hell? Yeah yeah, that's gonna happen all 0:02:51.000 --> 0:02:55.200 night long, but I'm gonna miss it a lot. Yeah, So, actually, 0:02:55.240 --> 0:02:57.919 I guess that's fair. Hell. The word hell, I guess 0:02:57.919 --> 0:03:00.840 maybe is inappropriate for some people. It was when I 0:03:00.840 --> 0:03:03.440 was growing up, we weren't allowed to say fold, So 0:03:03.919 --> 0:03:05.560 I don't know if that's a thing for you to 0:03:05.600 --> 0:03:14.040 drop heck in frequently. Okay, So hell dot com Okay. 0:03:14.680 --> 0:03:18.960 From to two thousand nine, hell dot com was, I 0:03:19.040 --> 0:03:22.520 just guess. It was described as a quote private parallel web, 0:03:22.680 --> 0:03:27.840 unquote members only, invite only website. From to ninety eight, 0:03:28.200 --> 0:03:31.520 hell dot com averaged a million hits per month despite 0:03:32.040 --> 0:03:36.320 having no content, not being listed on any directory or 0:03:36.560 --> 0:03:40.520 nor having been linked anywhere. And interesting it is. And 0:03:40.600 --> 0:03:43.360 here's what I'll say. I'll remind our listeners who or 0:03:43.480 --> 0:03:46.080 maybe inform them. For those of you who don't know, 0:03:46.480 --> 0:03:49.920 Google wasn't really like a thing back then. You didn't 0:03:49.960 --> 0:03:52.120 like search as much. So the way you found cool 0:03:52.200 --> 0:03:55.400 interesting things is you put you just typed random U 0:03:55.520 --> 0:03:58.880 r L s in. Yes, search engines were not not 0:03:58.960 --> 0:04:01.840 really so people were just going head, let's see if 0:04:01.880 --> 0:04:04.040 say has a website. I mean, yeah, I mean, so 0:04:04.160 --> 0:04:06.600 that was probably a big reason why it got so 0:04:06.680 --> 0:04:09.200 many hits, not because people were saying, oh, have you 0:04:09.200 --> 0:04:11.640 heard about this hell dot com site, even though the 0:04:11.680 --> 0:04:13.960 people who owned it would like you to believe that 0:04:14.000 --> 0:04:16.479 it was because people are so and that's the reason 0:04:16.520 --> 0:04:20.360 that domains were so utterly valuable in the beginning. I 0:04:20.400 --> 0:04:22.320 don't know, I've I've ordered this book. I'm waiting forward 0:04:22.320 --> 0:04:24.279 to arrive. But have you guys heard the whole story 0:04:24.360 --> 0:04:27.520 behind sex dot com Because it, of course, you know, 0:04:27.520 --> 0:04:30.360 if somebody wants porn, like what am I going to 0:04:30.440 --> 0:04:34.680 look up, let's try sex dot com. And it was, 0:04:35.320 --> 0:04:37.200 you know, a portal to a whole bunch of other 0:04:37.279 --> 0:04:40.599 sites that were porn sites. And there's this huge, crazy 0:04:40.720 --> 0:04:43.760 legal battle that went around for I don't know, ten 0:04:43.839 --> 0:04:46.839 or fifteen years something like that around it. And wait 0:04:46.880 --> 0:04:48.640 for the book. I've heard the story. It's interesting. I 0:04:48.640 --> 0:04:50.600 want to get more details on it. But but that's 0:04:50.600 --> 0:04:53.720 why things like this, such simple u r l s 0:04:54.120 --> 0:04:57.520 were so valuable because they're what you couldn't just say 0:04:57.680 --> 0:05:02.440 I want to find fuzzy fuzzy puppies and then go 0:05:02.520 --> 0:05:05.600 to the dog Lover's portal r US. You had to 0:05:05.640 --> 0:05:08.719 tight you to go fuzzy puppy dot com. I mean, 0:05:08.800 --> 0:05:11.600 that's exactly what you would do. Yeah, puppy dot com. Yeah, 0:05:11.640 --> 0:05:14.400 because he was dot com. He was he was a 0:05:14.480 --> 0:05:18.080 bear dot com. Yeah. Even today, certain no man names 0:05:18.120 --> 0:05:20.599 are still kind of valuable. But yeah, sex dot com. 0:05:20.880 --> 0:05:25.719 I bet that was what did itself or eventually. Uh's 0:05:25.800 --> 0:05:28.000 that's a hard thing to answer because the legal battles. 0:05:28.440 --> 0:05:30.320 But when I get done to the book, I'll let 0:05:30.320 --> 0:05:35.920 you borrow it. It's perfect anyway, back to dot dot hell, yeah, 0:05:35.960 --> 0:05:40.279 back to hell. The site is best viewed through the 0:05:40.320 --> 0:05:43.599 way Back Machine, which we love, and if you don't 0:05:43.640 --> 0:05:46.400 know what it is, you can google it the Internet Archives. 0:05:46.520 --> 0:05:49.280 It is the Internet Archives. So basically what this is 0:05:49.760 --> 0:05:53.960 give them money, by the way. Yeah, we donate, you know, 0:05:54.000 --> 0:05:56.720 to the sources that we love. That's something that we 0:05:56.960 --> 0:05:58.919 don't really talk about a whole lot, but we do. 0:05:59.240 --> 0:06:02.039 And this like if anything you know, again, this is 0:06:02.080 --> 0:06:04.800 like totally unsolicited, but if you're going to pay for 0:06:04.839 --> 0:06:07.280 anything on the Internet, you should donate to Wikipedia, and 0:06:07.320 --> 0:06:10.160 you should donate to the Internet Archive. So the Internet 0:06:10.240 --> 0:06:16.080 Archive actually and also but the Internet Archive for those 0:06:16.120 --> 0:06:20.320 of you who don't know basically takes a snapshot and 0:06:20.360 --> 0:06:23.000 it doesn't do this independently. People have to tell it 0:06:23.080 --> 0:06:27.160 to do this. Um it's a crawler, but somebody has 0:06:27.200 --> 0:06:30.320 to say, hey, come crawl this site. But basically on 0:06:30.480 --> 0:06:33.200 the day and time that somebody says come crawl this site, 0:06:33.400 --> 0:06:36.159 they'll come do what's called crawl this site, which basically 0:06:36.560 --> 0:06:38.560 is I'm so sorry for those of you who know 0:06:38.600 --> 0:06:40.120 what this is. I'm trying to explain it in like 0:06:40.240 --> 0:06:43.440 the layman ist terms. It's they basically take like a 0:06:43.480 --> 0:06:46.760 snapshot at that moment of the site, but it remains interacted. 0:06:46.760 --> 0:06:50.280 It's a functional screen capture. Yeah, basically of what it 0:06:50.320 --> 0:06:53.920 looks like on that day as moment as best as can. Yeah, 0:06:53.920 --> 0:06:58.120 because we we talked about this in um no, there 0:06:58.200 --> 0:07:00.160 was one another one that we did recently where had 0:07:00.200 --> 0:07:07.679 all the images? Oh that's the two thousand images were missing. Yeah, 0:07:07.720 --> 0:07:10.200 so it doesn't like see if I if it takes 0:07:10.200 --> 0:07:12.040 a snapshot of a web page and there's a bunch 0:07:12.080 --> 0:07:14.040 of thumbnails and I click on the thumbnails, that's not 0:07:14.040 --> 0:07:16.120 going to open up a bigger version of that picture. Right, 0:07:16.240 --> 0:07:18.920 It might it depends, may depends. Maybe maybe I don't 0:07:19.000 --> 0:07:22.600 understand why it captures some images and others. I think 0:07:22.640 --> 0:07:25.320 it probably it captures them if they're still hosted in 0:07:25.360 --> 0:07:29.000 the same place. Oh, that's a good point. So videos 0:07:29.040 --> 0:07:32.200 as well. No, no, because I know the octroy stuff 0:07:32.280 --> 0:07:35.440 was hosted on it. But this is this doesn't matter, 0:07:35.560 --> 0:07:37.680 But well it a little bit does in the context 0:07:37.680 --> 0:07:40.320 of this and that there's some content that you can 0:07:40.360 --> 0:07:42.960 still see in some content you can't see. And I 0:07:42.960 --> 0:07:44.720 think a lot of it is because it doesn't link 0:07:44.800 --> 0:07:47.480 to certain places anymore. But um, but you're right, that 0:07:47.520 --> 0:07:50.560 doesn't matter too terribly much. But so that's the like 0:07:50.960 --> 0:07:53.720 the dumbest down version I can say of what the 0:07:53.760 --> 0:07:55.960 way back machine does. We called the way back machine. 0:07:56.040 --> 0:08:00.559 It's the Internet archive. They call it the Yeah yeah. 0:08:00.720 --> 0:08:03.480 So if you do or if you you know, I 0:08:03.600 --> 0:08:06.800 want to go look at this site later, you can 0:08:06.920 --> 0:08:08.840 do it right now. You can just go to any 0:08:08.880 --> 0:08:10.760 browser and type in hell dot com and it will 0:08:10.800 --> 0:08:14.280 take you to a website that is like a it's 0:08:14.320 --> 0:08:17.160 just like a weird link to a bunch of different 0:08:17.640 --> 0:08:21.480 religious websites. Well I don't remember which one now that 0:08:21.480 --> 0:08:23.760 we're talking about it, of course I can't remember it. 0:08:23.840 --> 0:08:27.680 But it's an organization that has strong religious ties purchased 0:08:27.720 --> 0:08:30.920 it so that it couldn't be used for but it 0:08:31.000 --> 0:08:34.000 redirects to like a bunch of different if I remember correctly, 0:08:34.000 --> 0:08:35.840 because I don't. Frankly, I don't spend a lot of 0:08:35.920 --> 0:08:37.760 time on this one page because it's not really that 0:08:37.800 --> 0:08:39.720 interesting to me. But I think it had links to 0:08:39.800 --> 0:08:45.520 like Christianity websites and Buddhism websites and spirituality websites. But 0:08:45.559 --> 0:08:48.160 I could be totally mistaken. Yeah, I'm looking at it 0:08:48.240 --> 0:08:51.880 right now. It's funny is that somebody has bought the domain. 0:08:52.480 --> 0:08:54.559 They own it. They bought it for a decent amount 0:08:54.559 --> 0:08:56.200 of money. But I love the banner on the top 0:08:56.240 --> 0:08:58.640 this domain is we're going to talk about that. Yeah, 0:08:58.679 --> 0:09:01.200 but yeah, it is all links to I thought it 0:09:01.280 --> 0:09:10.200 was only one religious Buddhism, Catholic christ Christianity church. Yeah, 0:09:10.240 --> 0:09:13.760 there's religious terms and then the hot linked to other places. 0:09:13.840 --> 0:09:17.160 So you can. But like I said, if you want 0:09:17.240 --> 0:09:20.080 to actually so if you go to that, you'll you 0:09:20.080 --> 0:09:22.840 will find yourself saying well, what is so weird about 0:09:22.920 --> 0:09:26.720 this website? It's not that they sold it. It's gone 0:09:26.760 --> 0:09:30.040 to help. Yeah, So if you do decide to go 0:09:30.480 --> 0:09:32.880 and check it out, through the way back machine. I 0:09:32.960 --> 0:09:37.439 recommend making your first stop at February six, as long 0:09:37.480 --> 0:09:41.240 as flashing things don't bother you if you're an epileptic. 0:09:41.240 --> 0:09:45.000 In other words, yeah it could or just you don't 0:09:45.000 --> 0:09:47.480 even have to be epileptic, but sometimes you just get 0:09:47.559 --> 0:09:52.640 you know, and it's red and black flashing. So site 0:09:52.880 --> 0:09:55.800 sure is, Yeah, we're going to do that thing that 0:09:55.880 --> 0:09:59.040 everybody loves that we do when we talk about Internet mysteries, 0:09:59.040 --> 0:10:00.960 and we're literally just going to sit in a room, 0:10:01.000 --> 0:10:03.360 the three of us, and talk about what things looked 0:10:03.400 --> 0:10:07.960 like at certain times. Well, the next thing is, if 0:10:08.000 --> 0:10:12.319 you research hell dot com, you will find multiple versions 0:10:12.320 --> 0:10:14.360 of this same list because it's I mean, it's really 0:10:14.360 --> 0:10:19.280 it's a pretty straightforward Yeah, yeah, it's the list. It's 0:10:19.320 --> 0:10:21.760 what it looks like. It's not like there's a lot 0:10:21.800 --> 0:10:25.080 of editorial. I think to be done with a few 0:10:25.320 --> 0:10:27.280 things that Steve's gonna throw in because he found some 0:10:27.360 --> 0:10:31.640 interesting stuff. Because I'm obsessive, I can't help it. That's true. 0:10:31.960 --> 0:10:33.760 I think also, you don't actually work. I think you 0:10:33.920 --> 0:10:35.959 just get paid to go sit in a room and 0:10:36.000 --> 0:10:38.319 work on the podcast. He's got a job where I 0:10:38.400 --> 0:10:39.959 think it just you can slack all the time and 0:10:40.080 --> 0:10:42.760 work on podcast issues. I'm like you and me, shut it. 0:10:43.200 --> 0:10:47.240 Do not let my job know that I yeah, I 0:10:47.320 --> 0:10:50.080 have spare time. Your boss listen to this or can 0:10:50.120 --> 0:10:54.000 we get his phone number? Okay? Hell? Yeah, alright, fine, 0:10:54.040 --> 0:10:57.800 it's a very thinly guarded secret. Okay, probably HR listens 0:10:57.840 --> 0:10:59.880 to it, though, So let's go ahead and get in 0:11:00.000 --> 0:11:04.760 to this. That's why they're always sending me new work. Yeah, 0:11:04.840 --> 0:11:10.320 I'm gonna start going through here. In hell dot com 0:11:10.640 --> 0:11:13.600 pretty much just displayed like it was just a warning 0:11:13.880 --> 0:11:17.320 landing page. It just said you're not invited here, go away. Then, 0:11:19.120 --> 0:11:21.439 is that when it redirected you? It did, that's when 0:11:21.440 --> 0:11:24.040 the redirect was put into place, right, one of one 0:11:24.120 --> 0:11:30.520 of the many Okay, hell dot com displayed a black 0:11:30.800 --> 0:11:33.520 page with a single small link in the center. We're 0:11:33.600 --> 0:11:35.480 just gonna call links. We're gonna say that links were 0:11:35.559 --> 0:11:38.400 called a thing, right, and that just means that's what 0:11:38.559 --> 0:11:42.000 the text was for the link. Uh, And so this 0:11:42.160 --> 0:11:47.079 link was called that in the first kind of iteration 0:11:47.160 --> 0:11:50.280 of this. This this page went through a lot of iterations. Yeah, 0:11:50.800 --> 0:11:54.040 it was constantly changing, which is why we can talk 0:11:54.040 --> 0:11:56.480 about it a little bit. But the first one just 0:11:56.679 --> 0:11:59.719 had a like an image on the index page and 0:12:00.040 --> 0:12:03.520 in um there was a logo later that we'll talk 0:12:03.559 --> 0:12:06.240 about when that appeared and what happened there. But if 0:12:06.440 --> 0:12:10.000 you hit the image, it took you to a page 0:12:10.120 --> 0:12:13.959 that had just three links. Link one was called no 0:12:14.200 --> 0:12:17.120 access if so you clicked on that link and it 0:12:17.160 --> 0:12:21.840 would take you to a page. No, it didn't call 0:12:21.880 --> 0:12:27.920 you a loser. Yeah, access just said no access. UM. No, 0:12:28.160 --> 0:12:30.360 Actually that's not what it did. It would take you 0:12:30.559 --> 0:12:35.240 to black background page with with um what we're going 0:12:35.320 --> 0:12:39.400 to call the hell dot com like logo, which is 0:12:39.440 --> 0:12:43.120 probably the image that we're going to use for this thing. 0:12:43.400 --> 0:12:47.200 So you know, it's whatever your episode. A white circle 0:12:47.679 --> 0:12:49.880 with a white arrow that comes from the top of 0:12:49.960 --> 0:12:53.560 the circle, points downwards through the body of the circle, 0:12:53.600 --> 0:12:57.280 but doesn't penetrate the lower radius, so it's just it's 0:12:57.440 --> 0:13:00.600 encapsulated in that circle. It's just the direction sign. Yeah, 0:13:00.840 --> 0:13:02.719 here's where you want to get that straight ahead, the 0:13:02.840 --> 0:13:04.480 thing that you see on road signs all the time. 0:13:04.800 --> 0:13:08.520 Rotate that are put a circle around it. There's your logo. Yeah, 0:13:09.000 --> 0:13:11.800 that's probably actually how they made it. Oh no, I 0:13:11.880 --> 0:13:14.079 know how they made it. It wasn't even so. If 0:13:14.160 --> 0:13:16.959 you clicked on the logo, it took you to a 0:13:17.040 --> 0:13:20.800 disclaimer page and um, there was a little bit of 0:13:21.200 --> 0:13:24.480 writing on that. It was in red text, and it said, 0:13:24.920 --> 0:13:27.679 this is a parallel web. There is no public access. 0:13:27.800 --> 0:13:30.679 The waiting list is approximately eighteen to twenty two months. 0:13:31.360 --> 0:13:34.760 Below that, there were two links. One that was called 0:13:34.840 --> 0:13:38.600 apply and one that was called don't. If you clicked 0:13:38.640 --> 0:13:42.640 the apply one, you put in your email address to 0:13:42.720 --> 0:13:46.120 receive an email, and the emails that you got reportedly 0:13:46.240 --> 0:13:49.559 just asked for payment, and that was pretty It varied 0:13:49.760 --> 0:13:52.280 in the amounts. It sounded like zek did, and we'll 0:13:52.320 --> 0:13:55.280 talk about the amounts. It gets more specific in a 0:13:55.360 --> 0:13:58.079 little bit. I couldn't remember. I knew on the page 0:13:58.080 --> 0:13:59.920 you did. I could remember if the emails themselves. I 0:14:00.000 --> 0:14:02.600 think the emails did as well. Yeah, that would make 0:14:02.679 --> 0:14:05.400 sense that one would rise in parallel with the other. 0:14:06.600 --> 0:14:08.240 If you hit the don't link, it just closed the 0:14:08.280 --> 0:14:11.959 window for you, which was I mean, that's not the 0:14:12.400 --> 0:14:17.760 most publicly available coding in nine. I mean, it's not you, 0:14:18.880 --> 0:14:24.000 it's not crazy. They complicated. They can make a closed command. Yeah, 0:14:24.040 --> 0:14:27.680 but it's not like you know these days, people kind 0:14:27.720 --> 0:14:30.280 of know how to do like a lot of different things. 0:14:30.360 --> 0:14:34.800 It's more widely, uh wide, more widespread knowledge on how 0:14:34.840 --> 0:14:39.280 to do some coding stuff. This is like operate, that's true. 0:14:41.400 --> 0:14:44.640 Who they it was a web browser. I used to 0:14:44.680 --> 0:14:47.080 get my email all of my Internet access through them. 0:14:47.120 --> 0:14:52.760 To remember AOL. I liked net scout where you only 0:14:52.880 --> 0:14:55.080 logged onto the internet when it was going to send 0:14:55.120 --> 0:14:58.400 your emails. Really yeah, I mean you could open up 0:14:58.440 --> 0:15:01.360 a browser, but their email writer it wouldn't even log 0:15:01.440 --> 0:15:03.800 you on. It would log. It would dial up it 0:15:04.000 --> 0:15:06.520 download all your emails and then get off the internet. 0:15:06.800 --> 0:15:08.280 And then you would you know, do all of your 0:15:08.360 --> 0:15:11.040 responding and you'd hit send a bunch of times, and 0:15:11.160 --> 0:15:13.480 you know, it would say okay. They'd say, okay, we're 0:15:13.520 --> 0:15:15.280 sending this. Of course we are. And then when you 0:15:15.480 --> 0:15:17.520 go like log off, it would log. It would dial 0:15:17.600 --> 0:15:19.600 back on and send all of your stuff and then 0:15:19.680 --> 0:15:22.640 shut down. It's a good way to grow up, guys. 0:15:22.840 --> 0:15:25.480 It's a good way internet all right back to hell 0:15:25.600 --> 0:15:28.200 dot com. So you remember there were three links on 0:15:28.320 --> 0:15:31.360 that page with the image. So one of them was 0:15:31.440 --> 0:15:36.160 no access, one of them was redemption. If you hit redemption, 0:15:36.640 --> 0:15:39.480 it took you to a page that had some black 0:15:39.680 --> 0:15:42.240 some it was black background with red text. All of 0:15:42.320 --> 0:15:45.040 this is red text, your favorite kind of website. I 0:15:45.160 --> 0:15:48.600 like the white text even more, but yeah, it's close second, 0:15:49.000 --> 0:15:53.040 and this would give you a red text link that 0:15:53.760 --> 0:15:58.800 was called Soul Redemption Program. This link sent you then 0:15:59.440 --> 0:16:04.520 to questions page, and the questions page was you can 0:16:04.560 --> 0:16:09.000 find videos of this online. It was kind of intense. Basically, 0:16:09.080 --> 0:16:12.000 it was just this little flash animation where it would 0:16:12.040 --> 0:16:13.720 be black and it would look like you were just 0:16:13.920 --> 0:16:15.920 on another black page, but it turned out it was 0:16:15.920 --> 0:16:18.400 actually flash animation and a bunch of questions would just 0:16:19.520 --> 0:16:23.880 do you ever remember like a flying toasters? Yeah, where 0:16:23.920 --> 0:16:25.440 it just kind of fly past you. So it was 0:16:25.480 --> 0:16:28.880 just all these questions, questions like what they'd be like, um, 0:16:29.840 --> 0:16:34.240 do you want answers? Yeah? Or like is your soul prepared? 0:16:34.640 --> 0:16:37.280 Or what the hell is hell dot com? Yeah? I 0:16:37.320 --> 0:16:41.440 mean it was like it was these like intentionally mysteriously 0:16:41.600 --> 0:16:46.040 mystical kind of vague things. So it'd all it'd fly 0:16:46.200 --> 0:16:48.720 you through this field of questions and you could click 0:16:48.800 --> 0:16:50.920 on one of the any of them, so you could 0:16:50.960 --> 0:16:53.520 flick click on the flash animation. Is really what was 0:16:53.560 --> 0:16:56.320 going on but that's neither here nor there. It basically 0:16:56.440 --> 0:17:00.240 like that would provide an answer, So the link would 0:17:00.520 --> 0:17:03.400 give you, um, it would just take you to a 0:17:03.440 --> 0:17:06.440 payment page, no matter what. No yeah, no matter what, 0:17:06.720 --> 0:17:10.159 no matter There was no answer. You just clicked on 0:17:10.200 --> 0:17:14.879 a link. You just click on a link, so we 0:17:15.040 --> 0:17:17.919 take you to a payment page. And this payment pages 0:17:18.160 --> 0:17:20.560 was set up similarly to the way that the email 0:17:21.160 --> 0:17:23.639 situation was. When they asked you for payment, there was 0:17:23.720 --> 0:17:26.960 a warning that said, no, this is real, we will 0:17:27.000 --> 0:17:29.880 take your money. We really really are going to take 0:17:29.880 --> 0:17:32.320 your money, and the user could fill out a form 0:17:33.000 --> 0:17:36.920 to donate any amount from ranging from ten to ten 0:17:37.000 --> 0:17:39.639 thousand dollars. And I believe it was in increments that 0:17:39.720 --> 0:17:42.480 just added a zero every time, is my understanding of it. 0:17:42.560 --> 0:17:45.440 It wasn't like you can do do like dollars. It 0:17:45.560 --> 0:17:48.960 was like ten or a hundred, or a thousand or 0:17:49.040 --> 0:17:54.840 ten thousand. Well later they changed it to you could 0:17:54.920 --> 0:18:00.399 donate twenty two hundred or two thousand, but two hundred 0:18:00.400 --> 0:18:03.119 dollars or two thousands, on and on and on. No, 0:18:03.280 --> 0:18:05.359 I think two thousand was the cap right. Well, but 0:18:05.480 --> 0:18:07.800 you the way you said it sounds like two d 0:18:08.320 --> 0:18:11.400 and it was clarifying it was twenty dollars or two 0:18:11.480 --> 0:18:17.399 hundred dollars or two thousand dollars. Oh yeah, sorry, you 0:18:17.520 --> 0:18:20.480 ran that together quite quickly. But I don't listen to 0:18:20.600 --> 0:18:25.119 myself talk just like everybody. But I would love to 0:18:25.160 --> 0:18:28.479 see what kind of donations they got. Yeah, and then 0:18:28.560 --> 0:18:31.680 that third link, because remember there's three links. Um, the 0:18:31.760 --> 0:18:35.760 third one was search, and search was added a little 0:18:35.800 --> 0:18:38.119 bit later. The actual functionality of that page. It's my 0:18:38.240 --> 0:18:41.080 understanding that at first that link didn't really do very 0:18:41.160 --> 0:18:45.440 much like most of the links. Yeah, so you click 0:18:45.520 --> 0:18:49.159 on the search link was there, but it didn't. What 0:18:49.320 --> 0:18:51.720 was added was the part that actually did something useful. Yeah, 0:18:51.760 --> 0:18:53.359 and that was added in two thousand and six. But 0:18:54.000 --> 0:18:56.520 Steve found something in two thousand five. So let's talk 0:18:56.520 --> 0:18:59.640 about that first and then we can talk about two six. 0:19:00.000 --> 0:19:02.680 Either go canonically, But do you think that it's better 0:19:02.760 --> 0:19:04.080 for me to just talk about what was add in 0:19:04.119 --> 0:19:07.360 two thousand and six. Finish the search and then let's 0:19:07.400 --> 0:19:08.960 talk about it. I think it's going to be confusing 0:19:09.000 --> 0:19:11.080 to break up search. Okay, search is a long one. 0:19:11.800 --> 0:19:14.879 Get ready. On February eight, two thousand and six, is 0:19:15.000 --> 0:19:17.600 when we are able to pinpoint this again through the 0:19:17.640 --> 0:19:21.040 way back when a capture it, it actually has a 0:19:21.320 --> 0:19:26.720 ton of captures kind of really starting in going forward. 0:19:26.960 --> 0:19:29.240 How often do you think every couple of weeks more 0:19:29.280 --> 0:19:32.159 than that, I would say there's a month between them, 0:19:32.160 --> 0:19:34.560 and sometimes there's it's two or three in a day. Yeah, 0:19:34.800 --> 0:19:37.359 it's pretty intense. But so they were able to actually 0:19:37.440 --> 0:19:40.040 kind of pinpoint because this this was in a period 0:19:40.040 --> 0:19:41.880 where it was being taken a couple of times a day. 0:19:42.840 --> 0:19:46.840 So on February eighth, two thousand, sixteen, no two thousand 0:19:46.920 --> 0:19:51.320 and six, not sixteen. This the search link actually linked 0:19:51.359 --> 0:19:55.160 to a search page, which was kind of a new 0:19:56.160 --> 0:19:59.200 thing though. I mean I read some accounts from people 0:19:59.320 --> 0:20:01.680 who were talking about poking around hell dot com and 0:20:01.760 --> 0:20:04.040 they said this was the first time that they had 0:20:04.119 --> 0:20:07.399 seen because it was a Google search box, that they 0:20:07.440 --> 0:20:10.359 had seen a Google search box on a website. It 0:20:10.440 --> 0:20:14.880 seems ubiquitous now there's search function everywhere on every website. 0:20:15.280 --> 0:20:17.800 But that was kind of a new It was actually 0:20:17.800 --> 0:20:20.520 a novel concept at that point, and there was a 0:20:20.560 --> 0:20:22.119 lot of work. You had to add a plug in. 0:20:22.200 --> 0:20:23.680 It was like a ton of work to get this 0:20:23.840 --> 0:20:26.639 and it usually didn't work very well, but it did 0:20:26.800 --> 0:20:29.760 have this Google search box on the search page, or 0:20:29.800 --> 0:20:32.440 at least something that looked like it was literally powered 0:20:32.480 --> 0:20:35.120 by Google. It had the like when you you still 0:20:35.160 --> 0:20:36.639 can do it. You can go and hit search and 0:20:36.720 --> 0:20:39.840 it takes you to a Google site. So it will 0:20:39.920 --> 0:20:42.359 take you to a Google site that just has search. 0:20:42.520 --> 0:20:46.280 It just returns Google results for everything except for these 0:20:47.080 --> 0:20:50.879 certain keywords. And the keywords aren't always I don't think 0:20:50.920 --> 0:20:55.680 that we know all of them, frankly a couple of them. 0:20:56.280 --> 0:20:59.159 One of them, you could type in redemption and it 0:20:59.160 --> 0:21:01.200 would link you back to that questions page that we're 0:21:01.200 --> 0:21:05.600 talking about that had all the questions flying. You could 0:21:05.960 --> 0:21:09.800 search hell and you would be linked to the links page, 0:21:09.880 --> 0:21:12.400 which was just a page that had those three links 0:21:12.440 --> 0:21:18.440 on it. Again, oh that, or you could do answer 0:21:18.840 --> 0:21:22.440 and I wish the full disclosure. I was. I went 0:21:22.520 --> 0:21:25.200 through the way back machine and saw most of these 0:21:25.520 --> 0:21:29.040 pages for myself, but this one was broken for me, 0:21:29.119 --> 0:21:32.520 which was kind of a bummer. I was, yeah, and 0:21:32.560 --> 0:21:34.200 I even like I was going through the source code. 0:21:34.200 --> 0:21:36.639 I was like, God, it's gotta be somewhere it's linked 0:21:36.680 --> 0:21:39.920 to this video. I wanted to see what was happening here. Yeah, 0:21:40.080 --> 0:21:43.480 so when you typed an answer, the link would well, 0:21:44.119 --> 0:21:47.720 you would hit answer and hit search and it would 0:21:48.400 --> 0:21:51.080 lead to a picture of a bald naked woman falling 0:21:51.119 --> 0:21:54.440 through darkness. And then, after I don't know how long, 0:21:54.640 --> 0:21:57.119 just a couple of seconds, I think, but you know, 0:21:57.280 --> 0:22:00.720 definitely not more than thirty seconds, you to be sent 0:22:00.960 --> 0:22:05.800 to this site called signa noir dot com. Hey, I'm 0:22:05.800 --> 0:22:07.400 not the only one who had problems with that word 0:22:07.840 --> 0:22:11.440 it week. I did it way better than you did, though. 0:22:12.280 --> 0:22:17.600 Um and here I will also pause to say, unfortunately, 0:22:18.160 --> 0:22:24.639 signa noir dot com whoever programmed that site did that 0:22:24.840 --> 0:22:27.920 thing that I find really really really heck and annoying, 0:22:28.600 --> 0:22:34.280 and that is they implemented no robots text in their 0:22:34.600 --> 0:22:38.520 page code, which means that the way back machine can't 0:22:38.640 --> 0:22:41.040 crawl it, which means I don't have a way to 0:22:41.119 --> 0:22:43.399 see what that page looked like at that time. This 0:22:43.520 --> 0:22:45.920 is the same thing that some websites do to keep 0:22:45.960 --> 0:22:48.800 their content private so that Google can't crawl them and 0:22:48.960 --> 0:22:51.919