SCP Foundation

The video begins with Flagg, wearing a lab coat and standing in front of a blackboard covered in notes. The words 'Backyard Memeticist' in rainbow text transition on screen, accompanied by an emoji of a cartoon face wearing sunglasses, before disappearing.

Flagg: Hello… and welcome to the first episode of Backyard Memeticist! My name's Sam, and today's episode is brought to you by this random image I found scrolling Imgur. Heads up to look away now if you don't wanna get a splitting headache.

Flagg picks up a copy of SCP-5340-1 and holds it up to the camera, staring at the ceiling.

Flagg: This beauty here, according to the post I read, is a cognitohazard, which is scientific for an image that fucks with your head. This one gives you a migraine if you look at it, which bloody hurts as I've found out many a time.

Flagg: Now the interesting thing about this bugger is that-

Flagg glances down.

Flagg: Aw fuck!

The video cuts to Flagg now sitting down, massaging his temple. It is visibly night.

Flagg: As I uh… I was saying. The interesting thing about this bugger is that if you mess with it, it does other stuff than give you a brain blast. Most of the time it stops doing anything at all, but if you do it juuust right, it does all kinds of wild stuff. Take this one for example. Look away or it'll knock you out.

Flagg holds up SCP-5340-2, a variation of SCP-5340-1 capable of inducing unconsciousness in a viewer.

Flagg: Still with us? Cool. You can't've seen it, but it's basically like the other one, but I threw some new blues in a few places.

Flagg: I dunno what's really going on, but there's a couple bits that if I change, do nothing, and some that make all the difference. Colours seem to have a bit to do with it too. Oranges and blacks seem to make everything worse. Damn near scrambled my brain messing around with black in one I'm not even going to show you guys.. Believed to be SCP-5340-3, capable of causing symptoms of severe concussion.

Flagg: I'm calling the bits that matter 'Active Zones' and I'm gonna keep trying to find them by messing with the picture on MS paint.

The camera zooms in on Flagg's face.

Flagg: Cause we're professionals here.

The video continues for another 7 minutes detailing SCP-5340-4 through -7, all with effects related to SCP-5340-1, followed by an attempted scientific explanation of the cognitohazards and the 'Active Zones' theory. This is found to be almost entirely disconnected from modern memetic theory. SCP-5340-6 was found to be a digital disruptive memetic agent capable of shutting down Foundation web trawlers, which made Foundation discovery efforts significantly more challenging.

The video begins with sped-up footage of Flagg drawing and pinning notes on a felt board behind them. The words 'Backyard Memeticist' in large text on fire transitions on screen, accompanied by an emoji depicting a face with sunglasses, before moving off the left of the video.

Flagg: Hello and welcome back to another episode of Backyard Memeticist! If you caught the last livestream, you'd know that we've made a breakthrough! But for those who haven't, today we'll be talking about active, not so active and really inactive zones. Now this isn't hard:

Flagg: Sometimes when you mess with things it does stuff. Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes if you mess with some things but not others, you can mess with other things but not some to do stuff. Those are the not so active zones, and they only do stuff if you've already changed the active bits. Nice and easy, right?

Flagg laughs nervously as the video cuts to him sitting at a computer. An unidentified SCP-5340 instance can be seen open on the screen in Microsoft Paint.

Flagg: The original thing just gave you a migraine and a half, but these memetics have so much more to them than that!

Flagg: If you mess with a whole lotta active and semi-active zones at once, sometimes the picture does something completely new. This one I whipped up just now on paint makes you feel like you've got a third arm, which is absolutely wild - this one's definitely worth looking at, but usual warning to look away if you don't want to get freaked.

The video cuts back to the first location, with SCP-5340-9. Causes a mild sensation of burning in a phantom limb on the right side of the screen.

SCP-5340-9. Memetic vectors have been edited out for personnel safety.

✖

Flagg: If you only change a little bit, the rules-not-rules say the effects only change a little bit. Except when that isn't true. Because of course we aren't allowed something as simple as that.

Flagg: So, this one does nothing like the original we changed the top left, with the blue dot, and that makes a whole bunch of new active zones we've messed with again. I also cut out a bunch of the yellow and black for obvious reasons.

Flagg: Really sounds like I know what I'm doing, right?

Flagg pauses.

Flagg: Sike, this is just trial and error with the laws of reality. But that's science, baby.

Flagg: Speaking of trial and error though, the rest of this video's going to be going through some of the memetics we made in the live stream last week. Make sure to tune into the next one even if you missed the last one, I was talking over my theories in way more detail and taking viewer requests on stuff to try and make. We've got some crazy stuff coming up and way more incoming, so make sure to stay tuned.

Flagg continues to show SCP-5340-10 through SCP-5340-27, with varying memetic effects largely unrelated to the original incapacitation agent. While the lack of sophistication rules out active outside assistance, Flagg's research shares several similarities with Foundation understanding of memetics.

The video begins with 'Backyard Memeticist' displayed in large blue, oscillating letters on the screen, before travelling out of frame. The first eight minutes are spent describing SCP-5340-43 through SCP-5340-56, a majority capable of implanting false memories to some degree, and an attempted scientific explanation for them.

Flagg: But the reason I'm making this video is because of something bigger than all that stuff I've shown you before. Take it back a week and I suddenly realized that I couldn't account for an entire Tuesday afternoon.

Flagg: And no, it wasn't drinking. Not this time.

Flagg: I checked the footage and sure enough I was working on memetics the entire afternoon. Had to watch the footage back 4-5 times but I happened across this. You need to really focus on it though. It's about to appear on the right side of the screen, so just know in your head that it's there and try not to forget about it.

SCP-5340-57, a weak antimeme, is displayed on the screen as Flagg points to it for a few seconds. SCP-5340-58 through SCP-5340-61, all information autosuppressants, are visible in the background, but Flagg does not acknowledge them.

Flagg: Now this bugger caused me quite a bit of trouble to pin down cause I kept forgetting about it. Lost the better part of the week working on this guy, and the university isn't too happy about me falling behind like that. Reaaally not too happy now I think about it.

Flagg laughs nervously.

Flag: But this is a fascinating start! Forget introducing new memories, we've got something that can pull them out! I've only got the one so far, but do you have any idea how much we could do with this?

Flagg: Anyway, that's all we have time for this episode. Feel free to mess around with this memory eater and leave a comment below if you find anything interesting and I'll be sure to showcase it next episode. Remember to like and subscribe too.

Flagg: This has been the Backyard Memeticist - I'll see you guys soon.

The video begins with Flagg standing in front of a camera, visibly tired. 'Backyard Memeticist' appears on screen in large white letters, before disappearing shortly after.

Flagg: Hey everyone, welcome back to Backyard Memeticist. Today we'll be talking about Memory Eaters again because it's basically all I've been doing. Like I said last episode, it just jumps out at me so much more than giving myself phantom pains and migraines.

Flagg laughs quietly.

Flagg: Although this shit's giving me plenty of migraines anyway. That's the cost of being on the cutting edge of science though, and it's one I'm more than happy to pay for my adoring fans. All 70 of you.

Flagg sighs.

Flagg: It turns out that having to re-learn everything you research daily does have it's upsides though. You uhh- get really good at making notes. Got a good system in place too you'll be happy to hear: I throw the notes on the active bits so I know what does what before it does it. Until I started forgetting what the active zones are.

Flagg: But good news! For you guys at least. Circumstances… out of my control mean that I won't need to spend so long on my PhD anymore, so I've got way more time to dedicate to these videos. Means I'm almost as productive as I was even without the memory gaps. Big wins all around, right?

Flagg pauses for 5 seconds before the video cuts to a room full of SCP-5340 instances, believed to be SCP-5340-87 through SCP-5340-102, all with varying antimemetic properties.

Flagg: Anyway, enough about the process. I've got 8 brand spanking new memory eaters here..All 15 instances in the room had not been seen in previous episodes. They all don't really follow the rules like the memetics used to - still trying to find the patterns in them, but I'm sure if I power through we can get there. Everything in this room works slightly differently or is weaker/stronger than each other - let me take you through them all:

Flagg spends 15 minutes describing the effects of several antimemetic instances of SCP-5340. Only five of the available instances are described during this segment, and SCP-5340-95 is explained three times before the video concludes.

The video begins with Flagg sitting on the floor in a room, surrounded by SCP-5340-96 through SCP-5340-127, including far more aggressive antimemetic agents, in contrast to the relatively safe instances created prior to this video. Flagg's appearance is unkempt, he shows signs of sleep deprivation and appears to be shaking throughout the video.

Flagg: This is the Backyard Memeticist. Yeah. That sounds right. The Backyard Memeticist. It's been a quiet couple of weeks, but I've still had the chance to make a couple memory eaters. Between university stuff and work it's been… stressful. To say of least, as I'm sure you can tell. So first up we've got-

Flagg pauses for approximately half a minute, raising his hand to his face.

Flagg: No- No, that can't be correct.

Flagg: I must spend my time doing something. The university doesn't respond to my emails anymore, it can't be that. I no longer leave myself reminders to go to work. I would never do that for no reason.

Flagg collapses to the ground, exhaling heavily.

Flagg: I'm just- I'm only on autopilot now. A post-it note I have says I have nearly 100 of these damn pictures now. I can only list 70.

Flagg: I know this isn't right. I have moments like this where I can see it all and I can just-

Flagg appears to be in a state of severe emotional distress.

Flagg: This is wrong. It's been a month- months.

Flagg pauses for a minute, audibly sobbing.

Flagg: It doesn't make sense. They don't just add up like memetics did. If I could just get to the bottom of it all, a unified theory, I could put it all together. Climb my way out of this maze of my own creation.

Flagg: That must be what I'm doing. Through the fog and the chaos, it's always what I'd do. I'm trying to make sense of it all. I must be making sense of it all!

Flagg: I'm a fucking scientist! I'm about to be a doctor! This is what I've always done, it's all I can do. It can't take that away from me- It can't take that away. It can't.

Flagg: It peels away the layers that make up me and this is all that's left at the centre.

Flagg: But I don't- I just don't know how much more I have left to give.

Flagg continues to cry for a further 24 minutes until video feed is cut.