Hmm, some group is protesting our SXSWi panel?? RT @StopTarpARG Alternate Realities are set to destroy our children

Alternate Realities are set to destroy our children

Social Media is a godless tool the advertisers use

Stop brian cain and his evil machinations

Goto stopTARParg.com and hear the leader speak!

Stop the TARP arg!!!

STOP THE ARG PANEL IN ROOM 6 AT 3:30PM
ON MONDAY THE 16TH
TARParg2009forthekids.org is a
Godless abomination!!!

Do you know what
Brian Cain and his SXSW panel
want to do to your child's mind???

Do you want your tax dollars to fund
advertisement???

Do you want to let the advertisers tell you
what to think???

The SXSW panel in room 6
is going to decide the fate of how
your tax dollars are spent.

We need to stop them!

And keep your children safe from
Brian Cain and his alternate reality.

Stop this illicit campaign of mental
warfare on the innocent and young!

Call 866-397-7406 to hear
the leader's manifesto!

Follow us on twitter:
StopTarpARG

Brian Cain and his ARG are nothing less than the destruction of society's moral fiber. This advertisting aimed at our children is a direct threat to our way of life. It is a vision of mindless decay of what is to come in the future. These ads are trying to eat into our children's brains. They are trying to shape the reality of what is and isn't. And the worst of it is, it's sponsored by the government. They know the quickest way to a man's soul is through his wallet. The government knows that unsuspecting fools will trust these godless advertisers and what they say. Don't be a fool. These Alternate Reality Advertisers will do anything, will say anything, they will try anything, and this is just a taste of what is to come. Listen to what I say and take heed. In the fugure, the toilet will analyze the urine. You owe it to yourself and your children to SHUT DOWN Brian Cain and his godless alternate reality game. Make him know we won't be a part of his false world and bottomless values. SAY NO!

Kids love money...Kids love puzzles! It's a perfect match

If we can reach just one child with our alternate reality game and make him realize that the U.S. economy is still the best financial system in the world then we've done our job.

We can shape these minds. We can mold them. We can make these children believe that the economy is working. That is job #1.

Citizens are confused, they are fearful. We can use that. We can mold what they think. With our arg we can change their reality and make them believe what we tell them.

TV? Who watches it? Newspapers? They still make them? By 2012 ARGS will be the only way to reach consumers. I helped make the government understand that.

Since I wasn't actually at SXSW and thus did not attend the panel, I don't know specifically what happened. I am relying on information gathered from tweets and the forums, but it's more than likely that what I say about the panel is totally inaccurate. Just so you know.

So as 3:30 CDT approached, a lot of twitter messages started appearing that Brian Cain and Brian Clark were missing from the panel. Brian Clark was apparently outside running towards the conference center after getting seperated from Brian Cain. What they were doing outside is anyone's guess. The panel started without them, although it appears that Brian Clark showed up not too long after it started.

Things weren't going well for the panelists. People started leaving the room and StopTarpARG was celebrating that fact over Twitter. I guess they also start removing protesters, but luckily StopTarpARG wasn't known, and could keep tweeting throughout. The panelists then had the people in the rooms start playing a game where everyone would tell secrets to each other - I'm guessing to bide some time for Brian Cain to show up.

This severely perplexes the attendees as very negative tweets start coming out, helpfully ReTweeted by StopTarpARG, who is having a field day. "Brian Cain's "Private Branded Entertainment" was the worst panel environment yet. #SXSWi" and "What. The. Fuck. Is going on in this brian Cain panel??? #sxsw" seem to convey the atmosphere in the room.

StopTarpARG then switched into gear and updated his website with a Youtube video and a rebus puzzle. The video showed some unknown assailant throwing blood on Brian Cain in a parking lot. Now we know why he hasn't shown up yet. Brian Clark is probably glad he split up with him (or is he the blood thrower... dun dun dunnnnn).

The cipher is slightly annoying in that I don't know what all the stupid little symbols are. Luckily strifey is better at them than I am and quickly answers "bacon cipher on flyer" (bacon s+eye+fur awning-ing fly+r). Now I'm really glad that we got a couple of decent shots of the flyer from Dee and Brian Clark. The Bacon Cipher was encoded via the ?s and !s around the edge of the flier.

????! !???? ?!??? ????? ?!!?? ???!? ????? ?!??? ?!!?? !???! !??!! !?!?!
 aaaab baaaa abaaa aaaaa abbaa aaaba aaaaa abaaa abbaa baaab baabb babab
  B     R     I     A     N      C     A     I     N     S     U     X

While everyone was trying to figure out the Bacon Cipher, Brian Cain finally appeared at the panel, pissed off, covered in blood and towing along some cops. Oops! The other panel members tried to laugh this off, but StopTarpARG was crowing that the protests were winning the day.

After the audience members photos were shown, the panelists invited them up to the front to determine if any of them were StopTarpARG by having them repeat the phrase "In the future, the toilet will analyze the urine." because it was a serious matter to find out if StopTarpARG had taken a photo of themselves. It was not a tactic to stall for time because someone's cell phone decided to die at that point and couldn't trigger a callback routine. Not at all, because these people are professionals.

Then the big moment came. If you had called into the 866-397-7406 earlier, you would suddenly find your cell phone ringing back from that same number. Answering it, you would hear a message from StopTarpARG. "The time to arise is now. Take off your shoe and throw it at the heathen Brian Cain. Throw your shoe! Throw your shoe!" I'm not sure if anyone actually ended up throwing their shoes at Brian Cain, but I can only hope they did because it amuses me to imagine a blood drenched man standing in the room dodging a ton of shoes being thrown at him.

I had an amazingly ridiculous time playing this game. From the beginning, I figured I could side with either StopTarpARG or the TARP panelists. For me, it seemed like it would be much more fun to side with StopTarpARG and poke fun of people that I have come to call my friends over the past five years of playing ARGs. Besides, they had 5 people twittering for TARP and StopTarpARG only had himself twittering against, so I just had to help even the odds.

I made the posts on my blog both as a way to keep myself amused and to amuse the Puppetmasters. Plus I figured it wouldn't hurt if they wanted to show instances of audience participation during the panel. I was not, as has been suggested, either in-game/bts or gamejacking. All of my knowledge about the game came from public knowledge (chat, blog posts, press releases, twitter, etc). And I don't think playing along and making unasked for contributions constitutes gamejacking - especially considering it was all done on my own blog with many other instances of me playing along in character. But that's an entirely different meta conversation.

In the end, I want to thank Brian Cain, Brian Clark, Dee Cook, Mike Monello, Steve Peters, Lance Weiler and everyone else who helped with the Stop TARP ARG. I can only hope that it was as fun for you as it was for me and the other participants. For what was a seemingly simple game from a players perspective, it was a ton of fun if you as a player just ran with it. Which I guess just goes to show that an ARG is what you make of it. :)