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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Watchmen Viral Stuff

10:48 / 10.07.07

Tom just posted about these on Plasticbag:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/plasticbag/~3/132249586/
http://www.theveidtmethod.com/
http://www.rorschachsjournal.com/

As Tom says, usually I wouldn't go for this stuff, but... it's Watchmen.

So if you log in to theveidtmethod.com with adrian/ramesesii you get a weird error page that says:

401 Authorization Required
You are authorized to access this area of TheVeidtMethod.com. Either you supplied the wrong credentials (e.g., bad password), or your browser doesn't understand how to supply the credentials required.
Futher attempts to access this area of the site will result in extreme punishment. Have a nice day.

-7
9.
4
1
6
9
9
6
&
3
4.
3
2
8
1
5
6

Anyone?

11:36 / 10.07.07

I sent an email to 'Adrian@theveidtmethod.com' and got the following autoreply:

From Rorschach [rorschach@rorschachsjournal.com]

Subject: Thank you for your email

Thank you for contacting TheVeidtMethod.com! While we try to answer every comment we receive (and I personally try to correspond with everyone), it is not always possible to answer every question. We WILL however, send you the latest news on all aspects of The Veidt Method. Please be sure to check the website often, and be sure to FINISH any starter courses YOU may have begun in the past.

I thank you ALL for your interest in me, and The Veidt Method.

Best wishes and encouragement - Adrian Veidt.

http://www.theveidtmethod.com/

I also tried going to http://staff.theonering.net/xoanon/ and received a big symbol from http://admin.type40marketing.com/uploaded/gallery/29//s2/media/rr.jpg followed by the text '...no one cares but me...'.

I also went to http://admin.type40marketing.com/uploaded/ which you can browse, but I can't see anything other than the images used in the blogs.

Stranger and stranger..

13:05 / 10.07.07

Perhaps the numbers are coordinates . . .-79.416996 34.328156 or 34.328156 -79.416996. Veidt had a base in Antarctica, right?

Elijah, Freelance Rabbi

15:35 / 10.07.07

I find it odd that veidtmethod.com doesn't actually contain any data, it is just a frame with the info pulled from onering.net. onering is a fan site for the lotr franchise. If it is an arg it is pretty sloppy.

15:40 / 10.07.07

Indeed, I did a bit of googling and severl bloggers have questioned whether this is a viral marketing campaign organised by the film makers or not.

Elijah, Freelance Rabbi

15:55 / 10.07.07

More digging.

The source for http://staff.theonering.net/xoanon/veidt/corporate/, which is where TheVeidtMethod.com is actually hosted, has the name of the page designer in the meta tags.

I can't imagine any movie studio would pay for such shoddy work, so I am considering it 'out of play'. http://www.rorschachsjournal.com/ looked like it was going to be an ARG game page as well, and turned into a movie news blog that sells t-shirts. The original version of the site had morse code hidden (poorly) that translated into one of R's lines from issue five with coordinates for the Gunga Diner (or where it would be if it were real) in NYC.

I would not be surprised if the film makers aren't doing ANY viral marketing for this, and all of this is just fan wank.

16:30 / 10.07.07

This is interesting...

------------------------

There are apparently Morse code messages embedded in the site -- which invites readers to e-mail Rorschach -- and they are evolving. Clever readers of Comics2Film.com have translated several of the Morse code messages from "Rorschach," which so far read:

"Thanks for emails.
Will reply soon.
The Veidt method is a lie
Maybe you've forgotten how we do things...
Kitty Genovese was the start.
SAW GREBERID AND YZJEPCSKU 40.754950-073.988058 AN AFFAIR PERHAPS?"

The last entry likely refers to Watchmen characters Dan Dreiberg and Laurie Juspeczyk, a.k.a. Nite Owl II and Silk Spectre II, respectively.

A scooper for Comics2Film claims, "Those numbers in the Dreiberg/Juspeczyk message (40.754950-073.988058) are latitude and longitude (shades of Close Encounters, here). If you cut and paste them into Google Maps, you'll find it pointing right to the corner of 40th and 7th in New York City, which is exactly where Rorschach saw them coming out of a diner in the fifth issue."

------------------------

From here.

16:33 / 10.07.07

["]SAW GREBERID AND YZJEPCSKU 40.754950-073.988058 AN AFFAIR PERHAPS?"

The last entry likely refers to Watchmen characters Dan Dreiberg and Laurie Juspeczyk

Yes, given it's an anagram of both their surnames, it likely does. Does this need a new thread?

16:57 / 10.07.07

Er, isn't theonering.net a pretty well known LotR fansite? And isn't Xoanon the guy that runs the place?

A beautiful tunnel of ghosts

22:12 / 11.07.07

Seems like it might be a hoax.