User blog:Dorkpool/Creepypasta Riffs: Broadcast Interruption

Happy Pie Day, everyone! In honor of today, I'll make this joke: notice me, sen3.14. That's all. Bye!

I'm just kidding, of course. I'm going to Riff. The story I'm Riffing is called "Broadcast Interruption", and I both like and hate it, for the same reason: it scared the crap out of me. Now, you might be thinking, "Well, isn't that what a Creepypasta is supposed to do?" It probably is, but personally I prefer sleeping to being scared. That being said, when I read this story, I thought "Jeff the Killer" was alright and was mildly disturbed by "Sonic.exe." (Oh, how I wish that were a joke) Clearly, my opinions have changed. But have they changed for this story? Well, let's get a bucket for our flesh, and Riff this bitch!

You might already have heard of the TV broadcast hijacking in Seneca, South Carolina; the story’s gained pretty wide currency on the Internet ''Currency on the Internet? What, has this story produced bitcoins?'' and part of the broadcast is available on YouTube, assuming it hasn’t been taken down for whatever reason.

For the uninitiated, the Seneca hijacking is one of the lesser-known broadcast signal intrusions. It’s lesser known, but apparently has made quite a few bitcoins. It was big news here, but the nation news media barely touched on it. Well, in all defense, some star broke up with some other star, and that’s pretty big news. Anyway, I’ve decided to jot down my impressions of the whole thing, even though other eyewitnesses have already described it more eloquently than I could. ''Can I have a link to these other descriptions? I happen to like eloquence.''

I was home on winter break when it happened, making chemistry flashcards in front of the TV. No one else was around. After watching the umpteenth Law and Order rerun, Since I can’t make the Law and Order sound, use your most dramatic tuba to do it. I got bored and started channel surfing. A couple minutes later, I stumbled onto “the Playboy channel” this shitty public access channel where, bizarrely enough, my old high school Latin teacher was reciting a poem while wearing this dorky ''“Dorky”? Should I be insulted?'' three-cornered hat.

I watched for a few minutes and had a good laugh—I remembered him as a pretty serious guy, not the sort of person who’d embarrass himself in public like this—when suddenly there was this static-y crackle Slender Man, stop trolling people. and the screen cut to this multi-colored test pattern.

Before I had time to change the channel, there’s another crackle and this weird cartoon shows up on screen. Dead Bart or Squidward’s Suicide? The animation style was detailed, but kind of jiggly and rough—it reminded me of those old anti-drug PSAs. ''Why? Was some guy cracking an egg?'' Anyway, it seemed “normal” enough at first—an ordinary-looking middle-class family eating breakfast together at a round kitchen table.

There was a mom with an old-fashioned hairdo, a dad, two cherub-faced kids, a boy and a girl—all very Norman Rockwell. The family is making banal small talk: the dad complains about his day at the office, the kids prattle on about soccer practice, “the mom complains that her husband doesn’t love her anymore” and so on.

Gradually, though, the scene starts to get slightly sinister—a green light is seeping through the open window, and the family starts to acquire a jaundiced, unhealthy look: their skin changes color ''To what color? Did they do a reverse Michael Jackson?'' and their eyes become sunken. In the background, a droning radio broadcast slowly becomes perceptible: the announcer gives the date as November 15, 2017, ''Well, I don’t think I’ll ever get a chance to make this joke again, so might as well do it now. Ahem. In the not too distant future…'' and starts to go on and on about some strange crisis—you can barely hear what he’s saying.

He says something about a green light, melting flesh, mutations, strange shapes emerging from the sea Well, someone pissed off Aquaman; again and again, the phrase “Report to the nearest shelter immediately” is audible. Still, the family keeps eating breakfast as if nothing was happening. These are probably the same people who will stay home despite there being a Category 5 hurricane.

And here’s where it gets really macabre. Before it was just kind of macabre, I guess. The family finishes eating breakfast and the mom loads the kids into a minivan. By now they look *really* unhealthy: They’re so unhealthy the author had to use asterisks! their bodies are skeletally thin, the whites of their eyes are a sickly yellowish color, and their hair is disheveled.

The car drives through a landscape bathed in the green glow from before. Strange shapes bob in and out of the screen, but you can’t quite tell what they are, and all the buildings the car passes look weathered and deserted. You know, I probably should be scared, but I can’t help wondering what happened to the Latin teacher guy with the hat. Finally, the car stops at a playground and the mom drops off the kids before driving away. ''“Bye, kids! Don’t get kidnapped by any pedophiles!”''

There are large, odd-colored rocks all over the ground and moaning can be heard in the distance. ''Really, people? You’re doing the naughty next to a playground? Have you no shame?'' The kids hang mirthlessly on the monkey bars for a while. Eventually, the camera pans over the playground and you see that the rocks littering the ground aren’t rocks at all but naked human forms, horribly disfigured. ''Really? You’re near a playground. Put on some clothes.''

They seemed to be either growing into or from the ground. I can’t say which. And they are very much alive. Behind the monkey bars, a tree can be seen with a human face growing from the trunk The origin of the Giving Tree—its features are writhing and contorted in agony.

The scene suddenly shifts to a white collar office where the children’s father is stooped over a desktop, typing away. His features are as sunken and diseased as that of the other family members, And he doesn’t take a day off because…? and the office is covered in a green glow. In the other cubicles, fleshless corpses sit upright at their desks, frozen in death. Apparently in 2017, the retirement age is dead.

Finally, we see the family return home for the evening, walking through the front door together. Their skin is no longer simply jaundiced but actually melting off—dripping from their outstretched arms and running down their faces in drops. That’s how it feels walking around in Florida heat.

As they are literally falling to pieces, the family sits down in the dining room and begins wordlessly to eat dinner. “Damn it, got some skin in my food.” Their flesh becomes more and more amorphous, ribbons of skin dangling from their bodies like the tendrils of an octopus. The true origin of Doctor Octopus. I can barely describe it, but they somehow begin to…merge with the chairs they are seated on—or rather, their skin grows over them.

By now, their skin has the consistency of melted ice cream, and they are barely recognizable as human—except for their eyes, which somehow remain intact. Eye wonder why that is. The camera zooms closer and closer to the table, and finally their eyes all move directly towards the camera, conveying a feeling of unfathomable sadness.

The screen goes black and large white letters appear on the screen: “Report to the nearest shelter immediately. Remaining at private residences is strictly prohibited.” ''Wow, not even a ‘please’? How rude.'' And with that, the screen turned to static. I stared in stunned silence for a few minutes before the banal local channel switched back on.

And that’s all I know, really. ''I think you're holding back. TELL ME ALL YOU KNOW!" I almost thought I was dreaming until the paper reported the story the next day. Wait, you read a newspaper? God knows what really happened: a ridiculously elaborate prank? An ill-advised viral marketing campaign? A viral marketing campaign for what? Buckets for melting flesh? The crazier parts of the Internet have their own theories. I’m sure those parts of the Internet also have porn. Then again, every part of the Internet has porn.

END RIFF

Apparently I scared pretty easily way back when. Though I do know why I was scared: this was actually a thing. No, seriously, I looked it up, and it exists. Though it's pretty hard to find a video from what I heard (and I have no wish to find it anyway). Naturally, thoughts of Armageddon and merging with chairs kind of creep me out. Though, now that I think about it, I'm not quite sure that the events depicted in the video are going to happen. There are a few reasons for this: first, if this is animated, someone had to make it and such. If it's real, and from the future, then why go back in time and interrupt some random channel? If you can go back in time, why not prevent this from happening? Second, let's say just for argument's sake that whatever that green glow was caused this video to end up in the past. From what I can gather from the video, it seems to depict an event that's happening at that time. If that's the case, then why would the message telling people to get to shelters be animated? Animation takes time, which means that a) this video was made before this event to be broadcast when the event happened or b) this video was made during this event to broadcast to people. Now, option a shows why it might actually exist now: it was made at the time, and someone must've broadcasted it for some reason. Option b is stupid. I don't know, I personally think that this was just a prank, and I hope I'm right. Avengers 3 is in 2018, and I'll be pissed if I can't see it due to some weird flesh melting light.

Now, as for the story itself, it's not that bad. Is it the best Creepypasta I've read? No, but's it's not terrible. Honestly, I think more lost episode stories should be more like this rather than "disturbing" versions of children's shows (or game or talk shows). But I personally kind of like this story.

So, what do you guys think? Was the story good? Was the Riff good? Do my theories make sense? Do you wish my flesh would melt? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.