Screenshot of ♐ DELOCK, one of Unfavorable Semicircle's most famous videos

Unfavorable Semicircle is a defunct 2015 YouTube channel that garnered attention due to the high volume and unusual nature of the published videos, usually featuring distorted audio and graphics. The channel was suspended in February 2016 shortly after the BBC reported on the channel.

Over the years, many theories have been formed about the nature of the project. Some of the most popular ones were that the channel was a number station, an alternate reality game or a test channel looking for exploits.[1][2] In June 2022, after several years of inactivity, the anonymous creator broke their silence and revealed that the channel was an outsider art project.[3]

A Sagittarius symbol, present in unicode in most video titles

Origins

In March 2015, a YouTube account with the title Unfavorable Semicircle was created; the channel began uploading large numbers of videos on April 5.[2] The channel continued to post large numbers of videos all titled with the Sagittarius symbol or a random six digit number, or both, but most lacking a description. The videos often display abstract, pixelated images. In some cases, they show just a single dot in a field of solid brown. Some videos omit sound while some feature distorted sounds.[2] Some videos are only seconds in length, while others are much longer ⁠— ⁠one completely silent video was 11 hours in length.[2]

Attention and disappearance

Due to the volume of uploads and the odd nature of the videos, observers started to take notice. Eventually, a small community on Reddit formed to investigate the channel.[4] According to computer security specialist Alan Woodward at University of Surrey, it is probably "too complex" to be a numbers station, and is also unlikely to be a recruitment puzzle as those are usually announced in some way. The BBC has referred to Unfavorable Semicircle as "YouTube's strangest mystery".[1] Unfavorable Semicircle has also been referred to as "one of the Top 10 Weirdest YouTube Channels".[5] In February 2016, several hours after the BBC made an article on the channel, it was banned permanently for reasons that are still unknown as of 2023.[1]

Observations and mystery

Since the channel's creation, there have been hundreds of attempts to solve what is Unfavorable Semicircle. Around March 2017, several observers found a Google Plus page named "Unfavorable Semicircl" linked to the channel. This Google Plus page then led to a Twitter user named "Unfavorable Semicirc" which then led to a backup channel named "Unfavorable Semi cir" which held the original videos and continued to upload new videos, for about 3 weeks until a final video was uploaded, titled ♐ RESET STRANGE YD which was up for 30 minutes until the deletion and overall termination of most accounts related to Unfavorable Semicircle.

Frame by frame composite image of ♐ LOCK

Upon looking further into the videos themselves, people found even stranger artifacts. Observers quickly found out that if they overlap the video frames, they would make dark, grainy images relating to space satellites, astrology, and even an image of the Wikipedia page about art.

The audio in many videos would also be unnerving, featuring a man saying random letters and numbers, and there would be sharp, shrill sounds with static and randomly generated noise. The videos also seemed to be testing the limits of memory and compression, as it would crash Android phones and Nintendo Switches, and it would also lag on other devices. The cause of this is yet to be discovered, but it's very likely related to memory issues and compression artifacts.

For years, the ♐ LOCK and ♐ DELOCK videos have been seen by many people as the keys to solve the channel's mystery, due to their name and eerie nature.[1][4] This hypothesis was furthered in 2016 when a Reddit user found that by combining each frame of ♐ LOCK side by side, a recognizable image open to human interpretation appears, instead of random noise. In June 2022, the project author implied that the image represented the Voyager Golden Record.[6]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Baraniuk, Chris (25 February 2016). "The Quest to Solve Youtube's Strangest Mystery". bbc.com.
  2. 1 2 3 4 STARR, MICHELLE (24 February 2016). "This freaky YouTube channel invites conspiracy theories". cnet.com. Retrieved 23 April 2019.
  3. ↑ "♐ANSWERS".
  4. 1 2 SHILLING, ERIK (22 February 2016). "The Unsettling Mystery of the Creepiest Channel on YouTube". atlasobscura.com. Retrieved 23 April 2019.
  5. ↑ Dawson, Steve (15 April 2017). "Top 10 Weirdest YouTube Channels – The Strangest Videos". gazettereview.com. Retrieved 23 April 2019.
  6. ↑ "Unfavorable Semicircle on Twitter". X (formerly Twitter). Retrieved 2023-12-10.
  • Unfavorable Semicircle Wiki, a website documenting the subject.
  • , a subreddit figuring out the mysteries of Unfavorable Semicircle.
  • , the subject makes up a large chunk of this article.
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