Generation Loss

thumb|379px|rightIn 2007, a British audio programmer and electronic musician attempted to make a video documenting generation loss, which is when one tape is copied from another but each incarnation wears the quality down by a certain amount. He used a spare tape recorded at by a friend in the early nineties, featuring footage of a nearby intersection, edited his own music into the clip, and then copied it back and forth until the footage had deteriorated enough.

However, this clip circulated on 4chan's sector /b/ in mid-2008, with first-hand reports claiming that watching the entire video in one sitting caused a sharp burning sensation in the back of the skull. Common side-effects included hearing screams deep in the tape's grinding music, seeing human shapes in static, and seeing a disturbingly thin young boy in the window to the immediate left of the yellow traffic light. While the effects can be avoided by pausing the video and watching or reading anything else for any amount of time, it is unknown what will happen to an individual if the entire video is consumed without stopping, as these effects vary person to person.

Some users have reported long-term effects of seeing the skeletal boy around them in public, or hearing vague whispers and clicking. One user reportedly committed suicide out of desperation by throwing himself from his apartment window, his body discovered to have severe bruising on the back of his skull.