Blog . Jiboneus

This is a viral marketing scheme and it is a hell of a good one. Let me first set this story up. Nine Inch Nails is the name a band. Year Zero is their soon to be release album, April 17.

For me the story start out while I was surfing on Digg. There is a story up on Digg front page about one of Nine Inch Nails’ track on their new unreleased album Year Zero was leaked. The track entitle “My Violent Heart”. Apparently someone found a USB drive which in it contains the mp3 file of the song inside a men’s bathroom in Portugal while NIN was on tour.

That story was funny enough that it caught my eye. Then things get interesting. At the end of the track, there is a strange piecing static noise. The noise is actually a pattern. Some resourceful folks put the track in a spectral analysis program and they find an image of a hand. Below is an image taken from a Flickr account of someone who did the analysis. I got the link while reading through the Digg comments.

If you then check the information tag on the MP3 file itself someone wrote: -

found in men’s bathroom, stall 4, coliseum, lisbon, portugal

another version of the truth .com

dig

24.3.2

Another Version of the Truth .com

It is actually a URL address of a website. This is the first for a trails of website with weird distorted lo-fi web design. It is as if the site was made to look like it is broken. For a second there I though my browser is broken. Jacob Nelson will have a field day talking to the web designers behind those site about usability.

The website looks normal at a first glance, ‘A new beginning. Zero Tolerance. Zero Fear’. Another version of the truth is revealed, literally! if you click and drag on the site. Once the text is revealed, a link will take you to what looks like a message board of some sort.

Members on the message board seems to be discussing many things about society, some are scary and depressing. With topics like; End of the world?, Acts of Resistance, Cops Murder Muslim Kid, Violent Resistance, Opal/Cocaine, In Memoriam, Missing in Action.

There are mp3 files within the message board if you dig deeper. One is discussing Opal, which is some sort of a new drug. Another mp3 file talks about a police raid on a muslim home. One other mp3 looks to be from an ‘angry sniper’.

I am trying to believe .com

This is the first site discovered by NIN fans. The story actually starts with the T-shirts sold on NIN’s current European tour. On the back of the T-shirts are listed the dates and cities of the tour with certain letters highlighted. When those letters are put together, they spelled out the phrase “I am trying to believe”. Google the phrase you find the unsettling site. This sound like it’s from a page in Dan Brown’s (Da Vinci Code) novel.

The site is dedicated to spreading the information regarding “Parepin”. A drug, based on the website author, is added to the water supply by the U.S government in order to protect citizens from bio-terror attacks.

On the site there is also mentions about “The Presence” shown in a series of blurry photograph. It appears to be a giant hand descending from the skies. More photos of “The Presence” was found on Another Version of the Truth forum. Then there is the track “My Violent Heart” with the strange looking hand viewed under a spectrograph.

Things get all very Lost-esque. Dig deeper you’ll find more similar sites: -

• Be The Hammer .org
• 105th Airborne Crusaders .com
• Church of Plano .com
• Consolidated Mail System .com

There are more behind this sites waiting to be uncovered. I feel like a detective uncovering this mystery, and I am not alone. All over the world NIN fans and non-NIN fans are working together in trying to find the whole story, in chat rooms and web forums.

The story so far

Here is what I’ve gathered so far. This is a setting set 15 years in the future. Year Zero, or year 0000 is the post Iran war era or may just be during the war era itself. The American engaged in a Holy war with Muslim nations, involving Iran, Yemen, Turkey and Syria. The 105th Airborne Crusaders are responsible for the campaigns in Iran.

America on that time had become a police state more like a church state, zero tolerance, zero fear. The government starts to drug the water supply. Secret police raiding homes of Muslim-Americans. Sightings of what is known as “The Presence”. Mind-control. A whole lot of crazy stuff going on.

Are these some conspiracy theory? A plot for the next blockbuster movie? A prediction of the future? Guess we will just have to wait until the album is out.

It is clear that there is a public message with anti-government tendency within these stories.

Why is this here?

I’m fascinated at how Nine Inch Nails or whoever behind these net shenanigans. They manage to get people to Google phrases to get to the right websites. The story was on Digg.com. Things spread like wild forest fire. If you wanted to spread something the Internet is the best medium.

The objective for viral marketing is to get people talking, and this get people talking. By making a conspiracy story, dropping some clues, their fans are actually doing all the work. I think this is a very creative way in marketing the album. They had done a lot of planning in order to pull something like this.

The best place to catch up on this would be on the Echoing the Sound forum. There is a current summary thread up.

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