“Don’t Click Videos With A 4:44 Runtime... It’s An Alt Timeline” | CLANCYPASTA

[00:00:08] I know this might sound crazy, and you might not believe me, but last week I accidentally

[00:00:15] fell down a YouTube rabbit hole that gave me an alternate timeline to history.

[00:00:23] Okay, so let me start from the beginning before I lose my mind.

[00:00:29] For the last month or so, I decided to make my YouTube browsing experience a little more

[00:00:34] interesting. With how the algorithm has been altered throughout the years, it's really hard

[00:00:40] to find interesting content anymore, especially for a guy like myself who practically lives on YouTube.

[00:00:47] What I decided to do was to only click on videos that had a mono-digit runtime.

[00:00:53] For example, 1111, 2222, 444, you get the idea. It didn't matter if it was just

[00:01:03] 11 seconds, I'd click it in hopes that my personal algorithm would start feeding me

[00:01:09] interesting content that I wouldn't find otherwise. This was just an experiment at first,

[00:01:20] but it worked. I was getting recommended strange yet creative little passion projects by ordinary

[00:01:27] people. No lame corporate propaganda disguised as, quote, content made by billionaires anymore.

[00:01:37] It felt like I was living in 2014 again. Anyway, that's why my experimentation had gone on for

[00:01:44] at least a month before I was recommended a really bizarre video. Last week, on my front page,

[00:01:56] first row, three videos over, was a video titled, Local 10 News, Weather Forecast, Olympia,

[00:02:05] Washington, 2-20-2024. That was two minutes and 22 seconds long from a channel named OWA News.

[00:02:16] The thumbnail was what threw me off. It was a 50-something year old man who looked like Kurt

[00:02:24] Cobain, smiling with a forecast map behind him. My attention focused in on this because I thought

[00:02:31] my eyes were deceiving me, or my mind was making stuff up. Nope, I saw it correctly.

[00:02:40] So then I thought it was a joke, or a strange edit? Let me clarify, I was a huge Nirvana nut as a

[00:02:50] teenager, buying all their CDs and T-shirts with Cobain's face plastered over all of them.

[00:02:57] Like many others, I fell pretty deep into the 27 Club conspiracy rabbit hole,

[00:03:03] immersing myself in anything Kurt Cobain. In other words, I'm very familiar with how the man looks.

[00:03:12] So you can understand how this wasn't something I'd scroll past.

[00:03:18] The man in the thumbnail appeared clean-shaven, with short, well-kept hair, wearing a grey suit

[00:03:25] and blue tie. I noted that his hair looked like a silvery blonde, probably a symptom of his age.

[00:03:34] Nah, maybe this guy just happens to look a lot like Kurt, I thought. Still, it was 4-44,

[00:03:45] it fit my YouTube click standard. So, out of a sense of intrigue, I clicked it.

[00:03:52] If only I could unsee everything that came next.

[00:04:00] The video cut right to a man speaking as the banner and logo for the station rolled out on

[00:04:07] screen. Channel 10, Olympia, WA Area News. Good morning, Olympia. I hope you have your

[00:04:16] jackets ready, it looks like it's going to be a cold one this morning.

[00:04:21] My face scrunched in confusion hearing this voice as the screen transitioned over to temperatures

[00:04:28] overplayed onto a map of Olympia, WA. A man then walked quickly across the map from the

[00:04:35] left of the screen to the right where he stopped to look at the viewer. This was the same man from

[00:04:43] the thumbnail with his bland grey suit and tie and washed out silver blonde hair. Kurt Smiles.

[00:04:54] Make sure to bundle up those kiddos for school on Monday as well,

[00:04:58] we're seeing signs that indicate snow for the start of the week. He continued.

[00:05:04] As he spoke, another banner element appeared at the bottom of the screen.

[00:05:09] OWA News Weather. And there it was, forecaster Kurt Cobain with an x or twitter handle of

[00:05:20] at Kurt Co Weather. That same banner disappeared after about a second as he continued with a

[00:05:27] standard forecast of snow, moving his hands along the map of moving precipitation.

[00:05:37] I was in shock. There's no way this is the same guy, right? What the hell is happening?

[00:05:47] What is this? Who is this? I thought for a moment, was this a fake meme video? An ARG?

[00:05:57] Some kind of AI stunt? Well, in all honesty, it was no different from any other boring local

[00:06:07] news clip, which was shocking given the fact that it had a breathing 57 year old Kurt Cobain.

[00:06:16] Usually with a meme video, ARG or AI, there's always something that suggests a dubious intent.

[00:06:25] This was completely low key and ordinary. In fact, most probably wouldn't have even

[00:06:32] noticed if this video was suggested to them. Of course, I turned my attention back to the video,

[00:06:40] taking note that it was posted that morning. It wasn't fake. I'd like to add that this video had

[00:06:48] 104 views and the channel had a little over 1000 subscribers. It wasn't big at all.

[00:06:58] This was begging me to dig deeper. So I opened a few tabs on my browser.

[00:07:06] The YouTube channel who posted the clip, a search for Kurt Cobain to verify that he

[00:07:12] died in 1994, and a search for that ex twitter handle.

[00:07:20] Firstly, the internet confirmed everywhere that Cobain tragically died in 1994 at the young age

[00:07:27] of 27 years old. Check. Next, the ex handle. Turns out that it didn't exist, or at least

[00:07:38] someone scrubbed it at some point. I was able to find a shred of evidence that it existed

[00:07:45] from another user who tagged at KurtCoweather once about 3 years ago.

[00:07:52] It looked to be a conversation regarding an agreement to a comment that disappeared.

[00:07:59] I mean, how many other guys are out there named Kurt covering the weather anyway?

[00:08:05] I came away thinking the validity of an alive Kurt was inconclusive at best.

[00:08:12] When I saw all this, I was a bit more justified to assume this channel was some elaborate prank

[00:08:19] or hoax. Maybe someone uploaded it not intending to be found but as a little joke on anyone who

[00:08:26] found it. There was only one more tab to dig into.

[00:08:32] The YouTube channel, Channel 10 Olympia, Washington Area News or OWA News, was small

[00:08:42] and unorganized. It looked like any standard local news YouTube channel if maybe a bit more scuffed.

[00:08:50] There were uploads of all kinds from this station. Local stories, national politics,

[00:08:57] weather, opinion pieces, and even some personal looks behind the scenes.

[00:09:03] Now like I said it was unorganized. They had an upload section. That's it. No playlists,

[00:09:10] no shorts, no most popular section, no recommended channels. Just straight uploads.

[00:09:19] Not only that, but they had joined YouTube in 2011 and had uploaded heaps since then.

[00:09:28] I scrolled back and took note of any time I'd see the weatherman without clicking on anything.

[00:09:37] Kurt appeared in all their weather forecasts of course. Every now and again in other clips too.

[00:09:44] There was a video about two years old titled,

[00:09:48] Voted Olympia's Favorite Local Celebrity, Weatherman Cobain. Coincidentally it was

[00:09:56] the only video I'd seen with a mono-digit runtime. 5.55.

[00:10:05] The hairs on my neck stood up a bit. I had this creepy feeling that I was being watched

[00:10:13] all of a sudden. Usually I consider myself a pretty down to earth kind of guy,

[00:10:22] but I legit stopped what I was doing to look behind me.

[00:10:27] You ever get a strange bout of fight or flight? Like something bad is going to happen?

[00:10:34] Well I did. So I got up from my desk to walk around my apartment, making sure I was completely

[00:10:41] alone. I was careful to inspect my front door and lock it along with all the windows.

[00:10:50] Call me paranoid, but I even ran a few virus scans on my computer just to be safe.

[00:10:57] This feeling was something that only grew with time. I couldn't quite shake it,

[00:11:04] despite all of my insane precautions. It took a while, but I composed myself long enough to

[00:11:14] bravely do as the universe suggested. I clicked that video. A generic jolly song played as the

[00:11:26] banner and logo of the station rippled, similar to the start of the other video. As the song took,

[00:11:34] the screen transitioned to the front door of some small, white, colonial styled home.

[00:11:41] It looked like a standard white picket fence house. The front door swings open,

[00:11:47] and it's none other than Kurt with a big smile on his face.

[00:11:55] Welcome to my home, Olympia! Come on in! He said invitingly before motioning inside his home as

[00:12:02] the camera moved forward past him and into the entryway. The screen faded to white as it came

[00:12:11] forward, reminding me of one of those HGTV shows with a dreamy sound effect and cheesy music.

[00:12:20] As the screen faded out from white, Kurt was standing there with a tall, dark woman

[00:12:27] and three daughters, while on the opposite of him was a female news anchor.

[00:12:33] All of this was set in a very clean, open suburban living room with beige carpet.

[00:12:39] They all sat down in frame on this large leather sofa. It squared the whole living room off from

[00:12:46] the well-lit kitchen behind them. Once again, very modern and dull compared to what ideas

[00:12:55] emerge when we hear the name Kurt Cobain. It almost felt like a creepy parody or something.

[00:13:04] This place looked exactly how you think it looked. I'm not kidding.

[00:13:12] Kurt was wearing another suit. This time it was a beige getup that nearly blended him into the

[00:13:19] scene of the house. Looking at him was like looking at a politician. Clearly, there was a

[00:13:25] lot of care and thought put into the way he appeared. Standard TV nonsense.

[00:13:33] Though, he looked thrilled. This video was celebrating him, after all.

[00:13:41] Sitting next to him, holding his hand, was this woman with dark brown hair tidied up in a bun.

[00:13:48] She had these dark brown eyes that contrasted well with her white dress. She looked stern,

[00:13:55] not bubbly like Kurt. The perfect opposite energy to him.

[00:14:02] Then there were the three daughters. Two of them looked under the age of twelve,

[00:14:06] the third was perhaps in high school, much older than the other two.

[00:14:13] I assumed this was his family, considering Kurt and the wife were holding hands with

[00:14:20] rings on their fingers, and the girls looked like a perfect combination of them.

[00:14:28] My mind was leaking out of my ears, my brain resisting what I was witnessing, which

[00:14:35] made me laugh in the solitude of my room. As the song continued, the woman opposite of

[00:14:44] the couple smiled, and sat down holding a microphone labeled OWA10.

[00:14:52] The female news anchor looked a bit like Nancy Gribble from King of the Hill,

[00:14:57] with large blonde beehive hairdo and a respectable white suit.

[00:15:03] She looked to be around the age of Kurt, maybe a bit older. I only took note of this because her

[00:15:10] eyes looked tired, which was in contradiction to this huge toothy grin she had. The smile

[00:15:17] pulling on her skin was very forced. Meanwhile Kurt looked genuinely thankful to be there.

[00:15:26] The woman looked almost maniacal if I'm being honest. As the camera focused on the newswoman,

[00:15:35] a banner appeared below as she spoke. It read,

[00:15:39] News Anchor Michelle Johnson. To remind the audience before disappearing.

[00:15:46] Michelle said, Now Kurt, you've been with Channel 10 for a solid 20 years now,

[00:15:52] and in that time you've made quite an impression on the folks of Olympia.

[00:15:56] Every year Channel 10 polls the folks at home asking who their favorite person is, and

[00:16:01] this year? Well wouldn't you know it, they picked you! Now normally Olympians vote for non-locals,

[00:16:08] but this year they all came together to let us know that our very own Channel 10 weatherman

[00:16:13] was their favorite. How does that make you feel? Her voice sounded as forced as her smile,

[00:16:22] overly jubilant, high-pitched, and fake. It was a bit uncomfortable, kind of like when you're at

[00:16:29] a family gathering and your aunt is pretending like she wanted to be there when you know

[00:16:34] she argued to stay home. A cameraman appeared from behind the camera to hand Kurt his own

[00:16:41] OWA10 microphone. Kurt smiled and mouthed, Thank you, before responding, Well Michelle, I'm

[00:16:54] speechless really. Honored. I'd like to thank Olympia for this honor considering I'm not a

[00:17:00] native, but you all took me in and I'm thankful. It's quite a privilege, Michelle.

[00:17:08] Kurt said looking straight into the camera, God, it felt like he was talking to me.

[00:17:20] There were only 33 views on this video. Hardly anyone saw this, at least on YouTube.

[00:17:29] So many questions swirled around in my head, I had to pause the video to gather myself again.

[00:17:37] I clicked back to my previous tab I was using to confirm he was dead. Unchanged.

[00:17:45] A surge of energy pulsed through my body in frustration. I began to maniacally bounce

[00:17:53] my leg trying to think. My heart rate was clearly rising as I felt my blood boil with nervousness.

[00:18:02] There's no way, right? I found more and more websites all talking of his tragic demise 30

[00:18:11] years ago. Maybe I was going at this all wrong. Maybe I should be looking for evidence of him

[00:18:21] somehow surviving. Maybe his death was some creepy fake story that we all believed.

[00:18:29] What if I looked up conspiracy theories on his survival? What if I've been looking in the wrong

[00:18:34] places and someone somewhere knows of Kurt running away and starting a new life? Besides, wouldn't

[00:18:42] that make sense a bit? Kurt hated being famous. What if this was like those Elvis conspiracies?

[00:18:52] So, I tried. I scoured the internet for too long, finding myself in the deepest,

[00:19:02] dankest of recesses that probably haven't been seen since 1998. Nothing. The closest thing I

[00:19:11] could find were theories arguing about what actually happened on that day in 1994. Yet

[00:19:19] even all those posts accepted that Kurt was dead. I gave up. I could feel my brain pumping steam

[00:19:29] through my ears. I felt dizzy and kind of sick. It took a while, but I realized that I was wasting an

[00:19:38] incredible opportunity. If this was real, this could be the craziest story ever. Here was the

[00:19:48] channel. I had written down little notes of the channel name and the X handle, so I had proof.

[00:19:54] Hell, what if I took screenshots and downloaded videos too? That should be enough to prove it.

[00:20:03] I glanced at the clock. 1.30 in the morning. I had been at this for a long time. To think

[00:20:13] I was browsing YouTube on a whim when I found this. Why the hell is this happening to me?

[00:20:21] There's no way that out of all the people who have watched their videos, someone else has had the same

[00:20:28] ideas as me, right? I couldn't be the only one. Now I could try to go to bed, or I could really

[00:20:39] pour myself into investigating this nonsense. Really get a feeling for who this man is and

[00:20:46] what's happened to him. I decided on the latter, and continued the video.

[00:20:55] The anchorwoman responded in a very over-the-top chipper tone.

[00:21:00] Aww, now isn't that sweet? And what do you think of what your husband has accomplished,

[00:21:05] Mrs. Cobain? Kurt handed his mic to his wife, who looked a little shy. She fumbled a bit,

[00:21:14] taking the mic from her husband, offering him a nervous smile before speaking.

[00:21:22] It's incredible. We moved here from Arizona 20 years ago and have never looked back. I can't

[00:21:29] tell you how proud we are to see him on television every morning. The girls love it.

[00:21:36] As the video went on, I had this really unusual feeling hit me as everyone spoke.

[00:21:46] Nothing made sense. I tried to fact-check everything they were saying. Arizona? 20 years

[00:21:54] ago? His wife's name? The News Channel? Each time I hit a brick wall, I couldn't find anything about

[00:22:03] any of this. There was a woman from Phoenix, Arizona with his wife's name who is registered

[00:22:09] as a lawyer. Unfortunately, there were no images of her anywhere. The daughters were nonexistent.

[00:22:19] Neither was the news anchor, Michelle Johnson. For hours, I watched all that I could on this man

[00:22:29] until the sun came up. And understand, there's no possible way I could have watched every single

[00:22:36] video they had of Kurt on their channel. There were too many. Kurt Cobain was alive and living

[00:22:43] an entirely different life as a 57-year-old man in Washington State. He had been to so many local

[00:22:52] events. He features his family on several videos, events where Channel 10 would raise money for

[00:22:59] good causes. It was ongoing. The videos where he and his family went to these charity fundraisers

[00:23:09] were crazy. Mostly because no one seemed to give a damn that he was Kurt Cobain outside of the fact

[00:23:17] that they know him from the local news. He wasn't an American icon who single-handedly

[00:23:24] defined the early 90s. Kurt looked happy. He looked alive and well-adjusted. Perhaps he got

[00:23:36] clean, grew up, and matured out of this angsty 20s. Call it lack of sleep or call it overexposure,

[00:23:46] but I became desensitized to it all after a while. It was like I was watching any other

[00:23:52] random YouTube channel with lives I'd never know, yet from a distance, I felt I knew them well

[00:24:01] enough. Very parasocial, I know. After all this, the strangest thing was I couldn't find any

[00:24:12] instance of Nirvana or his upbringing in Aberdeen or move to Seattle.

[00:24:18] The timeline laid out by this Kurt and his family was completely different. I don't think this Kurt

[00:24:26] ever started a band, much less wanted to pursue a music career. This Kurt told a completely

[00:24:32] different timeline of events that seemingly altered his outcome. Of course, he wasn't aware of this.

[00:24:43] But I was. From the little a fan could glean, he seemed like the same old Kurt that his bandmates

[00:24:52] talked about. A bit eccentric, kinda jokey. He cared deeply about his opinions and clearly cared

[00:25:00] a lot about others. The only difference was the time that matured him, aged him into a more

[00:25:07] confident and rooted man who never became a musician. I'll admit, this life seemed paradoxical

[00:25:17] from the Kurt the world thought they knew, yet it all made sense. For instance, there was no mention

[00:25:24] of his parents ever getting a divorce, an event that might have defined him for the rest of his

[00:25:30] life. The sleep deprivation had kicked in. My mind was opened in a way it's never been.

[00:25:41] I began to think about timelines, how certain events have rippling consequences, whether for

[00:25:47] better or for worse. For instance, did I view into a timeline where Nirvana doesn't exist?

[00:25:58] In which case, what were the 1990s in the USA? How many musicians and artists don't exist or

[00:26:07] the same because Kurt Cobain never picked up that guitar? In what circumstance would Art Behan

[00:26:14] had Kurt's parents never separated when he was growing up? Would his music even sound the same?

[00:26:25] Before I knew it, I somehow blacked out on my desk. I woke up drool covering my keyboard.

[00:26:35] How long was I out? Turns out it was 8.44pm when I looked at the clock. The last time stamp I recall

[00:26:46] was 7.53am. I have no memory of actually falling asleep or what I was doing last.

[00:26:56] I glanced at my computer screen. It was my YouTube home page. I was logged out.

[00:27:06] That was the only tab open. I had this horrible sinking feeling in my gut that scrambled me to

[00:27:15] log back in and find that YouTube channel. Luckily, I had saved many of the videos I

[00:27:21] watched to a private playlist on my account. Boy was I upset when I got back in. It was gone.

[00:27:34] OWA News was gone. My watch history was wiped, yet everything I had looked up on the browser

[00:27:42] was still there. This included my archive searching for the x-slash-twitter handle

[00:27:48] at KurtCowether. I was so dazed and confused. What just happened? The screenshots I had taken

[00:27:59] were gone from my hard drive, the one thing I was able to actually get saved as documented proof.

[00:28:06] I was so pissed off and angry at myself. I honestly felt like screaming,

[00:28:16] no one is going to believe me. I was so entrenched in this lost YouTube channel rabbit hole that I

[00:28:25] had completely forgotten to get things downloaded, archived. Before you all start getting pissed at

[00:28:35] me with the, how could this idiot NOT download these videos or take screenshots, I would have.

[00:28:42] Bullcrap. Let me say this, I did take screenshots. That's the second thing I did to writing everything

[00:28:51] down on paper, but they're gone. They disappeared. My paper is still here, but what evidence is that?

[00:29:05] I ask that you have some compassion for me. I'm a single 36 year old man,

[00:29:13] I can barely afford what I have. Most of you reading this are probably younger than me with

[00:29:18] computers that you built yourself. I bet they operate smoothly, able to withstand 1000 tabs

[00:29:25] open with gigabytes of files that download in less than an hour. Not me. I don't know anything

[00:29:32] about computers. But what I do know is that I have a potato PC that's so outdated, I'm too ashamed

[00:29:40] to mention it. If I have even 15 tabs open, my computer lags. Try asking it to get years of

[00:29:48] videos to download at once while I watch them. Yeah, right. To top it all off, I live in the

[00:29:56] middle of nowhere. The download speeds and internet service out here are garbage. Try to

[00:30:03] put yourself in that situation. It's maddening. I did try to get some shorter clips downloading

[00:30:14] while watching them, but it just wasn't happening. The video would lag and the browser would freeze.

[00:30:22] I had to make a judgment call on whether to stop what I was doing and start downloading

[00:30:27] clips I hadn't seen or view them before the downloads. I had randomly run across this insane

[00:30:36] stuff with no warning. What would you have done? To be fair, what I didn't consider

[00:30:45] was how long I'd be watching everything. You don't understand how much content this channel

[00:30:53] had. It'd be like trying to watch every clip on Red Letter Media's channel featuring Rich Evans

[00:30:59] in a single night. It's not going to happen. The quest grew bigger than I could have ever imagined,

[00:31:07] and it fell through my fingertips. In summary, I don't know what the hell happened.

[00:31:17] There's no way I could have imagined it. Like I said, every search I did outside of YouTube

[00:31:23] is catalogued in my history and reflects the sequence of events. I fully realize that most

[00:31:31] of you will think I'm insane or on something despite that not being true. I can't change

[00:31:40] whatever judgments you draw about me. So, know that I've come to terms with being labeled

[00:31:49] unhinged. That's fine. My decision to share all this with you isn't to convince you that it

[00:31:57] happened, but to open your minds to the fact that this could happen. Because it happened to me.

[00:32:09] There are some of you who'll read this and know in your hearts that what I'm saying is true.

[00:32:16] It happened. One day, you'll scroll through YouTube and you might be recommended a video

[00:32:22] that takes you completely off guard. This video may have a person you know or a franchise that

[00:32:30] you love, but it's not that. It's in a different context. One that you know isn't the case. It

[00:32:38] couldn't be the case. You feel like this video was especially curated to your interests,

[00:32:47] to your understanding. What you've just stumbled upon is perhaps a video from another timeline.

[00:32:58] A universe that for a brief moment, for whatever reason, intersected with yours.

[00:33:04] Even if you're better equipped than myself to document it, you can't shake the fact that because

[00:33:10] history and reality says otherwise, no one will believe you. Despite your evidence to the contrary,

[00:33:20] they'll think you made it up. I've thought about it. For all you know, this post might be from

[00:33:33] one of these alternate timelines. Though not from your timeline, my post decided to reach you

[00:33:40] in a universe I cannot know. You and I would have no way of really knowing. If this is the case,

[00:33:55] this post will inevitably disappear too.