Welcome to Today’s FYB Post where We will be Discussing what is considered by Many to be the Most Mysterious Subreddit of All Time. Now while it is True FYB has Posted Numerous so called Internet Mysteries in the Past from Slightly Absurd to Absolutely fucking Insane. This Time Though when Examining A858 it Quickly becomes Apparent that this is the Internet Mystery that’s the Strangest of Them All. So with that Said let’s get Going.
A858DE45F5b098C9 (or A858 for Short) is an Extremely Mysterious Subreddit that Showed Up in 2011 Posting Strange and Complex Hexadecimal Sequences Multiple times Per Day. For the first Year after its inception A858 went completely Unnoticed by the Online/Reddit Community as it continued its Output of Daily Encrypted Messages. Finally a Small Handful of People ended up taking Notice of A858 and the Word of this Bizarre Subreddit began to spread across the Web. After a Short while A858 had built such a Significant following that Computer Students, Code Breakers, and Reddit Users decided to Join Forces in Large Part Due to the Intense Difficulty in just Attempting to Decode a Single A858 Message.
An Added Roadblock for the Collective of Internet Detectives was A858 Keep it’s Subreddit Private. This meant that You could only gain Access if You were Deemed Worth, and Subsequently Invited to Join. To Combat this Problem the Internet Detectives formed Their Own Sister Subreddit R/Solving A858. This way Any Information could be Shared with the Entire Group even if the Majority were Not Invited, and Thus Lacked Access to the A858’s Subreddit Posts. Now the Users had There a Preverbal Mountain Work ahead of Them (there were THOUSANDS of A858 Encrypted Posts) that would have Easily Overwhelmed the Average User. As the Detectives Work Diligently the Results were Virtually Nhill as A8585’s Encryption Proved to be Damn Near Impossible to Decipher.
As the Days turned into Weeks that became Months Only a Quite Small Handful of A858’s Posts had infant been Cracked. The Problem was NONE Provided any Actual Insight and Seemed to be almost as Random as A858’s Encrypted Coding. One of the Decoded Messages was a Basic “Thank You Gold” when a Subreddit User in A858’s Subreddit Purchased (and then Gifted) a Month of Gold Membership. Another was an Excerpt from the 1949 Book Title Actions and Passions By Max Lerner. The Excerpt was “Do Not Confuse Your Vested Interests with Ethics. Do Not Identify the Enemies of Humanity.”. The Last of the Decoded Posts was an Primitive Computer Image of Stonehenge with No Additional Information Attached to It.
Then in August of 2015 a User in the A858 Sister Subreddit noticed that all of a Sudden without Rhythm or Reason Someone was Posting Hexadecimal Chains that Matched those of the Original A8585 Message Board. The Sister Subreddit discovered that the Newly Appearing Hexadecimal Posts They were seeing being Posted there was in fact The Creator of A858 Who was conducting an AMA (Ask Me Anything) Session. The Users Quickly Launched into Action a created a Script that Automated the Code Breaking Process. This Allowed Users to Ask Questions/Interact with A858’s Creator Freely and Significantly Faster.
The Most Prevalent Question asked of A858’s Creator was Why had the Creator decided to Brake Their Prolonged Silence. The Five Word Answer given By A858’s Creator was “The Audience Was Getting Frustrated” which Meant the Creator was Keeping Active Tabs on the Participants Progress. When asked what the Purpose of the A858 Subreddit the creator Responded “We Cannot Disclose the Purpose. A858 will End when the Purpose is Disclosed or Discovered.” indicating that there was a More than One Person responsible for A858’s Creation/Content. The Most Significant part of the Interaction with A858’s Creator was when the Creator Disclosed that One of A858’s Messages HAD been PROPERLY Decoded, but that None of the Users Noticed Other than the Creator. Apparently a Woman from the United Kingdom (UK) had been the One who Managed the Proper Decoding, Yet She Deleted Her Account soon after She Cracked the Coded Message and Never Returned.
In Mid 2016 A858 Peeked in Popularity when Main Stream Media like Fox News and The Daily Dot began Covering the Mystery. Then Suddenly Out of Nowhere a Post by the Now Deleted User u/TeamWMod showed up on the Sister A858 Subreddit. TeamWMod Claimed in His Post that the A858 Project has Ended and Thank You to all Participants, and went on to say Any Further Decoding or Research into A858 would be Futile. TeamWMod claimed “The Information Available to the Public is NOT Sufficient to Solve all Outstanding Puzzles.” and “Again Any Further Efforts on Solving A858 will be In Vain.” A User Named Fragile confirmed TeamWMod’s Message as Legitimate since TeamWMod had Demonstrated Ownership over A858 by Temporarily making Fragile an Approved Submitter to the A858 Subreddit. The Last thing TeamWMod Posted before Deleting Their Account that “We will Not Respond to Any Questions in the Comments Noe by Direct Message.” After TeamWMods Announcement the A858 Subreddit was Locked.
Some Time Later a User Named Eathed wrote a Post Called “Some Closure” in which They Claimed that He (along with Fragglet) had been able to Contact the Person A858. Eathed went on to Reveal the Person They spoke with Claimed He was Paid (by an Unnamed Company) to Post Coded Puzzles using Encryption or Various Methods of Text Manipulation. The Company occasionally requested that a Post be Made to Draw Attention to the Project one of Which was the Previous Stonehenge Post. Eathed and Fraggley stated that They would Not Divulge ANY Information or Personal Information Pertaining to Who They talked with or The Unknown Company that Hired Him. The User Duo claimed They wouldn’t divulged such Information since They still Unsure of the Actual Purpose of the Project. They did however ask Why the Project Ended while there were so Many Unsolved Puzzles, and this is What They were Told by Their A858 Project Contact. The Contact Answered by Saying that the Company Paying Him No Longer Wanted to Fund the Project Any Longer, and They Shut it Down.
Eathed and Fragglet’s Contact went on to Explain most of the A858’s Posts were Randomly Generated Text with Extremely Difficult and Constantly Changing Encryption. So Even if a User did Manage to Decode One of the Encrypted Messages Virtually Every time the User would be Oblivious to Their Accomplishment. This had been the Reason the Puzzles where Damn Near Impossible to Crack, and the Cause for So Many Users Growing Aggravation/Frustration while attempting to Decode A858’s Encrypted Posts. Now for those Who May Not Be Aware the Difference Between a Encoded/Encrypted Message a Encoded Data is meant to be Read in a Different Format, and Encrypted Data is Meant to Remain a Secret. Eathed and Fragglet did however ask Why the Project Ended while there were so Many Unsolved Puzzles, and this is What They were Told by Their A858 Project Contact. The Contact Answered by Saying that the Company Paying Him No Longer Wanted to Fund the Project Any Longer, and They Shut it Down. He also said that He fully Believed the Project would Never be Rebooted.
That though Proved to Be Wrong as Wrong could be. After Two Years in 2018 a Post titled r/A858 is Back Open appareled in the Sister Subreddit. The Sister Subreddit had continued Their Attempts to Unravel the A858 Mystery in Spite of TeamWMods Post (Claiming doing so Would be Useless since the Project was Over). There were some Notable Changes that had been made such as the A858 Subreddit would No Longer Be Private, A858 was NOT the Moderator, and the Original A858 Appeared to have been Deleted. Just a Week Later the Reactivated A858 Project’s Subreddit was made Private and Remains so to This Day.
Thus in the End No One is Any closer to Solving the Mystery of A858, but that hasn’t Stopped Users from Formulating Theories. One of the Top Three Theories is A858 is an Alternate Reality Game, but Why would Someone create a Game that was so Insanely Difficult? So Difficult in fact that the Creator would have to Break Their Silence After over a Year since the the Game Started, and to do a Q&A Session with the Players since “The Audience is Getting Frustrated.” Another of the Top Three Theories is A858 was in Reality a Number Station. Number Stations are Shortwave Radio Stations that Broadcast Encrypted Messages to Spies/Shady Organizations in Various Different Countries. It has been Documented that Terrorists use Ebay, Redditt, and Other Social Media/ Online Services to Pass Encrypted. This however Doesn’t match up with Eathed and Fragglet’s Contact who Claimed He was Hired by a Company, and that some Posts like the Stonehenge Post was to Draw Attention to the A858 Project.Moreover the Fact that some Messages had been Decoded (Properly or Not) Punches Holes in the Number Station Theory. The Last of the Top Three A858 Theories seems the Most Plausible at Least to Us here at FYB which is A858 was a Recruitment Tool. If A858 is/was indeed a Recruitment Tool then it would Most Likely be Run by Cryptography, Security Firm, or Government Organization (Military, CIA, NSA etc.). This would Explain Why A858’s Heavily Encrypted Messages and Similar Theories Surround the Mystery of Cicada.
In Summation while Many find the Fact that there NO VIABLE Answers pertaining to the Mystery of A858 rather Comforting. The Reason We say this is Because once You have all the Answers then the Investigation is Over and Done. The Mystery is Solved and the Illusion is Destroyed. Sometimes its better to be left Wondering What it was all about Rather than to have a Definitive Answer.
Thanks For Reading,
By Les Sober