Thelostspecial.com
| Website | |
|---|---|
| Name: | thelostspecial.com |
| Owner/Maintainer: | unknown |
| Dates: | 2017 |
| Type: | |
| Fandom: | Sherlock (BBC) |
| URL: | |
| thelostspecial.com, now defunct | |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
thelostspecial.com was a troll Sherlock website aiming to mess with TJLC fans by posting fake clues fans attempted to connect to their fan theories.
Conclusion
Whoever made the website came clean on 13th February, 2017.
I was going to draw this out longer but the truth is, I’m bored.
There is no Lost Special. There never was, and there never will be.
Once again, in their need to keep this midnight train going, TJLC fans created something out of nothing.
Seeing this obsession with “The Lost Special,” even though series 4 was clearly over, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to run a sociological experiment with a vicious fandom in denial.
My poorly assembled website took not more than twenty minutes to cobble together (as some people rightly pointed out) and very little effort to maintain.
“By the pricking of my thumbs (something wicked this way comes)”- I edited an ominous message into the code and title, referencing the Macbeth quote used in The Six Thatchers. It was strange to see how many people didn’t recognise the “pricking” quote and even criticised the website because it allegedly didn’t call back to Sherlock in any way- except that I was directly quoting a series 4 episode.
Watching fans defend how shoddy the website is, in their need for thelostspecial to be real was especially funny. It was also funny to see the people who guessed the website was fake and said as much, but didn’t even care because they desperately needed something to hold onto, with Sherlock over.
Then there’s the people who clocked that thelostspecial.com wasn’t “real”… and yet never question their own dedication to TJLC and/or the existence of a fourth episode of series 4, concepts entirely created by Tumblr.
Anyhow. Next, I threw a random bunch of numbers and photos out there to see how people would scramble and react, and you didn’t let me down. Mostly I chose the first photo I found of a character that I liked the look of, in Google; there wasn’t real logic. I re-used some images out of laziness. I used an online generator to make the Dancing Men/Henry V code post.
40, 27, kra, the various “hints” you think you found on the website and found countless possible meanings of, they were chosen at random. Even the elephant photo was chosen at random. It wasn’t until after I edited it into the main website photo that I discovered the poor thing was named Mary and had been shot and executed for killing a man (on 9.13.16. Everyone overthought that one too much.) So I used that info because it was serendipitous. “The universe is rarely so lazy?” Friends, the universe is often lazy.
When I added a black image with five pixels of colour to the website, you did not let me down. People played with the image until they became convinced it was QR code spelling something out. It was just five meaningless pixels of nothing, created in MS Paint.
The static gif was taken from a YouTube video of TV static from some movie, with an old Moriarty close-up thrown in.
The photo of John and Sherlock sitting in the watery 221B, I got it from Farfarawaysite.com, and scaled it down a little because the photo was large. That’s it. I didn’t change the proportions in any way, or alter the colours, or add anything to the photo. Anything you saw in it, you imagined. I left the big black header on the website as a hint to keep your eye on those, since the thing I changed on 2/11 was in the similar Twitter header.
I changed the plain black header of the Twitter to a black one with a word embedded in it. The profile photo was changed to a plain black photo with XX hidden in it. No one bothered checking it, though clearly the account was active again, so I changed the profile photo to show the Xs, as a hint to look deeper. Finally people found the “clue” today, not that it matters. The word spelled out there is another blind alley that leads nowhere.
MMTE: The source code message was a hint toward Murderous Mary the Elephant, which some of you guessed but no one looked for it.
murderousmarytheelephant.tumblr.com
(Don’t bother trying to access it, there’s nothing in there.)
There was no set schedule for changes to thelostspecial. I used intermittent reinforcement to keep people frustrated but coming back for more. That’s why I added and removed things at unexpected times. There is no pattern.
For people wondering, wow, why would anyone take so much time to do this? Well, I didn’t. Creating the plain black squares with a few letters, throwing a message into the source coding, and uploading the new website photo of John and Sherlock took maybe 5 minutes. Creating a side blog with no posts and keeping it private takes one minute.
Overall, it takes less than twenty minutes a week to do this, once it was set up, because really? You do all the work for me. You all did what TJLCers do best- you took a bunch of random data, inflated it into something much more complicated than it really was, and created your own narrative out of it. Even knowing it might be nothing, and was probably just a fan-made site, you’ve still allowed yourselves to get worked up over it and allowed yourselves to hope. You’re reading into nonsense and finding clues where there are none, and naturally most of those “clues” pointed exactly where you wanted them to point to. Confirmation bias at its finest.
Learn from this.
Stop falling into conspiracies. Trust yourself when you can see that something isn’t real or likely. Alternately, find something that doesn’t make you feel sad or heartbroken.
A few final notes:
I was somewhat entertained by the several dozen times people attempted to reset the password for the website and access the control panel. If I was petty, I would’ve logged your IPs and reported you to your ISP. (Don’t worry, I didn’t. I don’t care that much.)
I didn’t send the “mole” anons or any other messages on Tumblr. I think other fans decided to join the game. I imagine they’ll continue until they get bored, too.
The only twitter account connected to thelostspecial.com is twitter.com/thelostspecial. I have no idea who runs the “contact” twitters but I’m positive they’re fan accounts. (If you think BBC-sanctioned accounts would post like that, I have a bridge to sell you.) As for my twitter, I set up the thelostspecial twitter account, followed some BBC-related accounts and left it alone for a week while TJLC fans went wild trying to suss out who I was following. That’s all I did with it.
I didn’t start thelostspecial Instagram account. Someone else did that, I don’t know who.
And if you enjoyed hunting, try a legitimate online riddle game, such as Amnesya.com for a challenge! All the fun, none of the TJLC and fandom “fucky” business.
Sherlock Series 4 is over. This is the end.
Thanks for playing TheLostSpecial! Goodbye and God bless.
/museum/"