Since September 2013, about 70,000 videos have been uploaded to a Youtube account called Webdriver Torso. These videos, which mainly feature blue and red rectangles on a white background and electronic tones, have been continuously uploaded to the account at an average rate of one video per 20 seconds. Once the account was discovered, theories about its origins abounded. Aliens, artists, internet trolls, the illuminati, and the French have all been suggested as culprits. One of the most pervasive theories was that the channel was being used as a modern-day numbers system, so that spies (whether French or otherwise) could communicate.
As videos continued to be posted, Webdriver Torso became one of the internet’s favorite mysteries. The youtube channel currently has 42, 776 subscribers and thousands of commenters have posted their theories and suggestions about how to solve the mystery.
On May 8, an Italian blogger who goes by “Paolo B.” posted on his blog, called Soggetto Ventuno, that he had solved the mystery of Webdriver Torso. He had become fascinated with the mystery, and by using this website, discovered that it belongs to a network named ytuploadtestpartner_torso. After some more in depth internet sleuthing, he realized that the network was probably owned by Google Zurich.
Paolo continued to find and post evidence supporting his theory (all the while apologizing to Google in case he was posting something that they didn’t want made public). Google didn’t respond to his posts, but many of Webdriver Torso’s related channels that Paolo had posted were made private, and on June 6, Webdriver Torso posted this video, which starts out looking like the others, until 0:05, when Rick Astley’s profile shows up.
After this came out, Engadget questioned Google Zurich who said, “We're never gonna give you uploading that's slow or loses video quality, and we're never gonna let you down by playing YouTube in poor video quality. That's why we're always running tests like Webdriver Torso,“ finally admitting their ownership of Webdriver Torso while rickrolling anyone who was following the story.
Perhaps next Poalo B. can use his considerable research skills to solve another one of the internet’s many unsolved mysteries, like the Reddit account A858DE45F56D9BC9 which 12-digit numbers several times a day and has an entire subreddit dedicated to decoding it, or the cryptic Cicada 3301 messages which have supposedly been used by some shadowy organization to recruit talented hackers for an unknown purpose.
By MaryElizabeth Koepele
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