Today I have on Cooper from the YouTube channel chill fuel. And we're going to talk about some of the biggest mysteries on the internet, the dark side of YouTube, the dark web and some other strange things. So please do not go on any of these websites. Do not go to the dark side of YouTube or explore the dark web at all. It is not a safe place to be and terrible things can happen and things that cannot be unseen. You've been warned. Please welcome Cooper from chill fuel to the program. How you
doing? Cooper?
I'm doing great about yourself.
Great. Yeah, I'm really excited. This is a I found your channel friend sent it to me said you should have this guy on your show. Fascinating stuff. And I watched all your videos. And it's crazy because we only have like, I think what 10 videos or
something Levin is what I'm at right now. Yeah, just around there. 11 videos,
but 150,000 subscribers or how many was crazy? Yeah,
we just we just passed over 200 Um, about a week ago. So um, yeah.
That's and then you've been doing this? What a year?
A little bit over a year. Yeah, I started up the channel in October like is when I created the channel of 2021 and 2020. And then I posted the first video in December of 2021. So yeah, December 20. Oh, my apologies.
Okay, so that was like the first video uploaded as 735,000 views. So that was your first video. Like, there wasn't other videos that you deleted? Because they
No, no. The first one that was uploaded to this specific channel?
Did you have other channels or something?
Yeah, no, I am. I've been like doing some sort of online content creation for a little while I this was definitely the most successful sort of channel that I've had. But I did start off with doing different edits. And when I was really young, I was doing edits for other people in content creation and trying to learn more about the space and get into it. And I had little pieces of successes in like small niches, but nothing quite like that this current channel.
Okay, so how long has it been that you started doing editing and all that stuff?
Well, I had been working with computers like, basically my entire life. But I in when I got into the actual content creation side and editing, I was probably been about seven years ish.
Okay, so that's it. That's a good run, then. Yeah, so how long does it take you to make make each of these videos because you don't put out a lot, but the ones you put out are really, I mean, they look like you put a lot of effort and working.
Yeah, thank you. Um, but they, they do take quite a bit of time, I've been trying to get some help on them more recently, to try to get the upload schedule to be something that is more normal, so that I can actually make some sort of brand out of out of it. Because uploading once every two months, and my first couple of videos that I was making is not really a sustainable model. But um, it takes me about from start to
finish. With the help. I'm currently getting around three weeks, from starting off, like with the concept of, here's an idea for a video, let's go ahead and do some research on it, build a script out of it, and then get into the editing process and to upload about three weeks at the moment. Yeah,
like doing full time or like, is this like a hobby kind of thing?
Um, it's at the moment, it's fairly full time. But that's only been changed. That's happened within the past couple months.
Okay. So how much research do you do on each because I love doing the research. For each video,
it kind of depends on the topic, some of them can take you down extremely deep rabbit holes that ended up just taking a huge amount of time to like look into and really figure out the true, the true piece behind it. Some of them can can take a very, very short amount of time to actually get to into it. So some mysteries, I like to really dive in and figure out like, what's going on here? What if people not actually found out about this sort of thing. And some of them, there isn't much
to find out. It's a pretty cut and dry piece where there's not any more information out about it. And that's what makes the mystery. So some of the research pieces can take like a majority of that three week period that I was referring to some of them can take just a couple days. It really okay.
That makes sense. Yeah. Cuz some of them like I know there's one you did on a, like a missing ship. And yeah, it's like there's probably not a lot of information on and then there's people's theories and things I guess you get on that rabbit hole, but yeah, it's kind of like There it is. And that's what we got. That's what we know.
Yeah, no, exactly. That is a great way of putting it.
Yeah, so what got you interested? Because most of the videos are more like web based and like puzzle mysteries that are on the internet and stuff like that. Was there something that we first got interested in that stuff?
Yeah, I'm definitely there was a video that was that I saw. That was called us, cicada 3301. I don't know if you're familiar with it. But it was made by a channel called lemme know, it probably has, like, close to 30 million views
now. Um, but it was a large web mystery that was essentially this, this game that that the creators of it were playing where there was, it was a, it came out to be a recruiting scheme, where they were making these extremely complex puzzles and putting them out there for people to solve that would lead them down. This is weird solving. And the people at the end of it would then be contacted by this group to join
them for some reason. And it's just a very surface level of it, the videos 30 minutes long or so. But, um, I watched it and I was so interested in like, the concept of, of this thing that somebody just created. And the way that the Creator, let me know, was storytelling behind it, that I just really, really got interested in it. And I studied cybersecurity in school. And so I was really interested in a lot of that sort of stuff already. And I thought, what was their mystery that has not been
looked into enough yet? And can I cover it?
So those people were trying to recruit people for something, but nobody knows what that is?
Um, yeah, I haven't watched the video and probably a little bit over a year now. But um, nobody really knows exactly what they were recruiting for. But, um, it was very complex cryptography and different pieces of like, web hunting, that you had to go down to try and solve the series of riddles. And it was just a it was a really weird, strange story that, um, was created by these people.
Yeah, so And there's, you do a couple videos about that kind of stuff on your channel about these puzzles. One of them it looked like it was more like an like an art piece or an art project. Yeah, yeah. It's more like an outright. I mean, they basically said, this is a game. Game. And yeah, it's interesting when people start that kind of stuff. So you try to get into that and try to figure it out, though.
Yeah, no, I mean, that's that is a lot of the the fun parts about it. When I was first researching for the first video that I made on this channel, I was just doing my own independent research, not planning on making a video about it at all. And there's about unfavorable semicircle, this YouTube channel that had just posted a huge and huge amount, like 84,000 a year videos that were ranging from anywhere from six seconds to 10 minutes of just weird imagery with distorted text, and all of them
were different. And I was like, What could this possibly be? There has to be some reasoning behind this things existence. And so I just researched a huge amount of myself. And then I was like, Hey, I start reading up a script on this and see if I can make something out of it. And that's where I went.
Yeah, that thing blew up. And that was a cool video because Yeah, well, I didn't know about this kind of stuff, but you thought there's all these theories like it could be the recruitment tool, I can cicada video, or it could be just a mentally disturbed person. Yeah. Weird thing was you said I think there were uploading videos like every two minutes or something. Yeah. How could they even it has been more than one person right? That that's
that there's the assumption it has to be more than more than one person or it has to be some sort of like artificial intelligence that has kind of run a mock and is just getting this data and then just converting it straight into YouTube videos because like yeah, uploading every two minutes is absolutely absurd. There's no way that that is doesn't have to do at least with some computer program in some way.
So nobody maybe programmed the AI to do this it maybe did it on its own thinking it was trying to be part of something that was programmed to do but it went screwed
up. Yeah, it's definitely a possibility. It's definitely a possibility.
And then another theory on that one was Aliens Yeah. Why don't you put that in your video right?
I did. Yeah, I did preface it in the video though, that that like it it is a more it is a more fringe theory but um, but it is one of the ones that people propose because it's like could this be is potentially some way that an alien or some Ultimate Life Form is trying to communicate with us they figured out some way to like upload content and is trying to communicate with us that was a proposed theory I didn't go down that rabbit hole too much specifically because there's not really too much
information about it like out there but um, it was one that a lot of people who were involved in the community did propose as a potential
Yeah, well that kind of reminds me of the the email video that you did about the Jack ferrosi Frosty you froze Yeah, Jack froze. Oh, yeah. So this guy dies and then his friends get emails from his his email account. Once after he dies, that was really like, I feel like that's got to be some sort of prank,
right? Yeah, no, I think that that one is is definitely more of like the the, you have two ways of looking at it depending on how you just kind of believe in stuff as a person you have to think like is that this is obviously either somebody who's connected to him gaining access and pulling a pretty cruel prank on the people that are close to him. Or it's it's some it's something else. And you kind of have to look at those two things and think What do you personally believe in?
And that's kind of how I present a lot of my videos, I say, here's the information about about this sort of stuff. Here's what I've been able to gather about it, you can go ahead and make your own conclusions based off of what I present. And, yeah. And
how do you find a lot of this information? Is it just from everything like YouTube and and just Google searches and things? Or are you going to the library looking at microfiche and things like that, like how you go down the rabbit hole.
Some of them are as simple as just looking at a lot of articles that have been written about the pieces and looking into different press releases going on web archive, if you've ever been to archive.org It's just a ginormous web archive of like old web pages that are now defunct and don't exist anymore. People upload them themselves. And you probably even have screenshots of your own channel that are up there from going back because people just it's it's an A lot of it is automatic
at this point. And going on.
People say whatever you put, if you put something on the internet, it's there forever. Because if you delete it, there's this archive thing that's that's taking all the archives from years ago. Yeah, yeah. Wow, that's kind of scary. In a way.
It is scary. Yeah. And there's always the thought that like, there might not be enough data in the world to store everything. But I mean, we're getting more and more server sizes and, and terabytes and terabytes and petabytes of data that is on the internet every day. And so while we might be running out of it, in a sense, it's also be coming easier to create. So everything that you put out on the internet has potential to be there forever. It just does.
That's scary to think of it is. So you the YouTube video, that's the first thing that I came across on your channel, and the dark side, the dark web, I want to talk all about the dark web, and you don't really talk about the dark web. It's more of the dark side of YouTube, which is kind of just scratching the surface of the whole dark web. But it's weird. This is a true thing. And I know you say don't do it, but
I did it. Period on YouTube. And then all these like weird, emoticons and characters come up and you type and you click on that. And then all these weird videos show up. How did you find out about that?
Um, yeah, so I have a Discord server, where I just have some people that are interested in the community to join around talk, talk myself and other people who are also interested in mysteries and that sort of thing. And somebody had just like said, Hey, we should try typing this in on YouTube, they direct messaged me, and we're like, hey, try typing this in. And I'm just seeing some really strange results. Like, do you have any idea what this could be? So I tried it myself.
And I was like, Whoa, this is weird. I gotta, I gotta dig deeper. And so I just went down, I went down the rabbit hole myself, and just was digging through pages and pages of like, what was coming up? Why was it coming up? And trying to figure out more about it, because it was a very weird thing. I mean, like, you have all these people that are clearly making this content themselves, but it's targeted towards so many
different pieces. You have the horror aspect, you have this this strange, just like weird part of YouTube aspect where it's like, targeted towards kids with like, weird graphic content. And then you have this, you had like the ones that are just memes like that people were uploading with the same title. And I was like, What could this possibly be? Where did this come from? And, and there's a lot of different there's a lot of different pieces, you can go
down with it. And there was just something that somebody sent to me and I was like, Okay, I gotta cover this. It's, it's interesting.
So you you spent hours going through this algorithm earlier. And so what were some of the weirdest stuff that that you saw? I know, you mentioned some of it in the video. Was there other stuff that you saw? He didn't want to mention?
Um, yeah, I mean, there's definitely some stuff that was more on the graphic side that you'd find on a like, Reddit page. That's like a, that's just gore. I don't know if you ever heard of the gauntlet, but there's, um, it's, it's, it's this. It's this series of videos that are apparently like so disturbing that it's very hard to make it to the end of it. And it's called the gauntlet because of how gory it is. It's like how hard it is to make it to the end
of it. And so there was a lot of videos that were kind of from that sort of gauntlet that were hidden in the deeper parts of the search results and like far end because A lot of these videos do get removed, the ones that straight up contain just like very gory content are removed a lot quicker. Most of the time, of course, a lot of them still do get through. And there's the ones that go on the edge of is this a lot on YouTube are going to remain up for
longer. But um, if you type in that, that that string and you just scroll down to like the 50th page, you're going to get some stuff that you probably did not want to see that.
Yeah, I don't know how old you are. When I was a kid, they had these. Back in the video store days, they had these videos of faces of death, I think it was called and they were real life deaths that you can rent. Oh, it was legal. But that was one thing that you could rent. And for some reason, I decided oh, yeah, I want to check this out. Oh, bad ideas, ERISA. And then there was another series, I think it was called traces of death that was even more gory, and yeah,
horrific. And so and now they have this kind of stuff on the dark web. But it's crazy, this some of this stuff. That's like what you're seeing on YouTube and the dark side of YouTube, somehow it gets through filters, or whatever.
So I think something that I'm like I kind of touched on in the beginning of the video I didn't get too deep about but um, the deep web different than the dark web, first of all, but the Deep Web is essentially just a series of of website links and stuff that do not appear anywhere on search results. That that is essentially what the deep web just is at a general
level. And so I found it interesting how pieces of content from like this, suppose that the deep slash Dark Web can make its way on to the search results through these weird strings that you wouldn't typically think would ever be searched for. Because obviously, there's billions and billions of search results depending on
whatever you put in. But these pieces have been converted from the deep web to mainstream and hidden in this strange search result that YouTube didn't think they'd ever really have to look out for. Which I just, it was really fascinating to me that little pieces had come out from from the deep web, and a lot of the same content that you can find on there is, is on YouTube and a place there where you think it's really just hiding in plain sight. You don't even don't even think about it.
Like they're trying to, it seems like a lot of the people are uploading stuff with a scary picture, under this string of characters to try to get cheap views
for sure. Yeah, it's definitely a part of it.
But some of it is like legit, I didn't see too many things that I thought were legit. I mean, I was like, I think this is just fake, or it would be a scary picture, then you click on it with something
new, something completely different. So the reasoning behind that, is that originally, well, at least this is my thought about it. I believe that originally a lot more of the content that was showed up was the more gory content. And over time, this is this is a phenomenon, the string has been around for years. It's I'm not exactly sure when it started, but I know that it was at least around in 2019, it
existed. And so the kind of thought behind that is that if you were to search up, say something on the string on YouTube, and at the beginning, when you searched it up, a lot of the content was Gore, say 100 videos of gore, and one video that was more along the sides of joking and that sort of thing. The 100 videos that were all Gore, most likely were removed. And then the one video regardless of where it originally showed up in that search result is now at the top.
And that cycle kind of repeats itself all the way through the years. And so you end up with hundreds of videos that have the string in it, and are still a lot on YouTube. And due to that reason they have the most views, they have the highest click through rate because they're at the top of that search result now, so to get around a long time, and they actually have those views and they haven't been removed, where the gore content lasts maybe a couple weeks or a month and then it
gets removed. And then it's re uploaded and YouTube is going to feed you the videos that have hundreds of 1000s of views rather than the ones that have hundreds and so you end up with the gore content being much more like further down in the search results as a result of that when the string has been around for a while.
So did you see some shit that like really like shook you?
I saw I saw one video um that was that was pretty pretty shocking that was it depicted God I clicked away I clicked away pretty quick but I was looking at the string with with a buddy of mine and we came across a video that was somebody had been crushed and and their body twitching afterwards and I was like okay, there's there's definitely some of this Gore out
there. It is definitely like it comes up with a search results and like that kind of confirmed for me and I didn't want to get too much deeper into like, a lot of other videos that were further down in the search result. After that, but um, that was one that I was like, Okay. I don't want to be too graphic with it, but I saw it. I was like, yeah, that is you think
it's real? It, it was actually a video that I had seen previously in what, in the gauntlet thing like, a buddy of mine just showed it to me without telling me what I was even watching Oh, he was just like, go check this out and showed me it. And so I had actually seen that specific one before. And I believe it to be real. Yeah.
That's scary. And then do you worry, though that like, can you get in trouble for watching that video? Because it's I mean, would it be more obviously the poster is going to get more trouble. But can you get in trouble watching it?
I don't think it's um, I mean, maybe in a sense, like, it is not allowed to like watch something that is that Gore, like on in general. But the reality of the situation is that the these videos exist online, and a lot of them have hundreds of 1000s of views. If that was something that was going to be actually enforced, it would be very, very difficult. I don't know the actual legality of it. But I doubt that there is anybody who is really trying to enforce it.
Right? Yeah. So YouTube, what they try to do is remove the stuff. So explain the Elsa gate thing. So this was like, Yeah, where they would have these kid friendly like thumbnails. And then the kids would click on it, it was not kid friendly stuff. But YouTube, did they fix this problem, or they removed a lot of videos,
they removed a lot of videos, and they tried to and they doubled down on YouTube kids, they doubled down on it, whenever you upload a video now and you have monetization enabled, they're going to ask you a slew of questions regarding advertising, and if the video was meant for kids, it's one of the biggest ones you have to mark it is this video man for kids, you have to click on one of the options. And if you don't, you can't even upload the video, it's it's become a
very serious thing. Because obviously, there are a huge amount of rules and restrictions regarding media and advertising targeting kids in traditional TV and movies, and there's a very long string of rules that are attached to it. And as this content moved online, and every kid is running around with a phone and iPad now the regulations for it didn't come immediately. And and that kind of left it up to people like YouTube and these other these other groups to to enforce it
themselves. And they were not paying a good enough job of, of keeping up for that sort of stuff. And so originally how it started was there was these big phenomenons and children's targeting media like frozen that
had these characters in it. And people figured out that when there were not as many new restrictions around monetize monetizing a channel that they could upload videos, that would become very easily monetized have a great CPM, because it's targeted towards kids and kids targeted CPM was very, very high at the time, you could you could make way more money off of 1000 kids viewing a piece of your content on YouTube versus 1000 adults just because it's a market that people are willing
to put more money into as advertisers and so you would have these people that would have a picture of a character like spider man like Elsa from from these popular franchises in the thumbnail and and you click on the video, and there was there was a very large string of them that revolved around something weird with the way that these characters who are cosplaying. them were acting.
And there was a bunch of different channels that had millions of subscribers that have now been like deleted, that made this content, some of them being more PG and some of them
being completely okay. But then you had the people that were taking that same sort of content and making it very non suitable for kids, which is a huge issue in general, but very much so for YouTube, because as soon as they realize that these companies like that are creating these large media, like Elsa are like frozen and sweater man, that those advertisers are putting their money into videos that are showing this sort of stuff and depicting this sort of stuff.
You have these ginormous advertisers pulling out and so YouTube's going we have to fix this weird issue that's happening and people figured out through as animating like characters got easier that they could make this very gory content targeted towards kids that's that has the same sort of stuff in it that is even more
absurd. And I could get into a bunch of different rabbit holes and and the different sort of stuff that was with it, but it was a huge issue and it It's kind of what started the whole ad pocalypse on YouTube itself.
So do they. So you think they fix it? Cuz I know every time I upload a video it says, Is this suitable for kids? And I pretty much always like, no, yeah, like somebody, if you say, yes, then to somebody watch it and make sure it's okay or do they just assume that take your word for it.
So I don't know the exact the exact process itself, YouTube kind of keep that stuff under wraps what it means, but um, if it is something that is going to be placed on Youtube Kids itself, which is, which has become the place where a parent or guardian can give their child, a YouTube account, an app with YouTube Kids enabled on it, where they can't get out of YouTube kids. And if content is going to end up on there, the idea is that it will be manually reviewed, reviewed first, and to
make sure that it's okay. And then if it passes all those checks, then it can be shown to people and kids on YouTube kids, and they can make advertising dollars from that.
Okay, well, that makes sense. Yeah. So hopefully they've they fix that problem. But yeah, again, if you do the special characters, you find all sorts of
weird crap. It obviously it's an issue that is not completely fixed. And a lot of parents don't have the time or resources to be able to sit down with their kids and make sure that they're only going on YouTube kids that they're not opening up the Chrome tab, or the Safari and web browser on their on that same device and going to these going to YouTube not filtered by kids. And it's something that is very hard for the parent to actually control
and be aware of. If your kid basically has any sort of technological device, they can they can find the content that they're not supposed to see on YouTube pretty easily. So it's
harder than the parents.
Yeah, for sure. Definitely.
Right. Well, so that's like the so you say that's kind of more like, because there's the surface web, which is a regular internet that everyone uses. And then there's the deep web that's like, not index, but it's anybody can get into it. And then there's the dark web, which I don't think that's on YouTube. But that's like a separate internet, where apparently, I'm just learning about this, you need special software to use it. I think it's called an onion router, and
computer on an identifiable. But it looks like Google Chrome, and I didn't realize that it was actually developed by the US government. So that spies could exchange information.
Yeah, um, there is there's a lot to the the deep and dark web ended up itself, that the dark web is like one part of the Deep Web is kind of how it works is like the Deep Web is this ginormous amount of a non indexed information. And then the dark web is the part of that that is kind of where the illegal activities occur. And if you're going to be partaking in that sort of stuff, you do need like the donchian router and
that sort of stuff. But you can get to it if you are not going on any illegal sites and that sort of thing, just by using the onion browser, but you do obviously open yourself up to a lot of potential harm when you do something like that. And you don't have the proper protection behind it.
When it happened, like you could get hacked or something.
Yeah, that is obviously it's a completely unregulated space. And so you're kind of leaving yourself up to, first of all, your ISP, if they're taking a look at your web history, which every ISP can do, they can see obviously, what you're accessing. First of all, and when it comes to, it could get you into some trouble with with law depending on where you
go. And it can get you in trouble with the people that you come across on the dark web, because it's very easy to completely destroy your computer with with, with different different software that if you don't know what you're doing. And it's very easy for if you're using a non protected browser, you can also just have downloads immediately go onto your computer by accessing a website, where like most modern browsers, where you're on the regular web, protect you from that sort of
thing. If you're using an unprotected browser, you can easily get your entire computer destroyed and all your information packed into just by accessing a website and not clicking download or anything it can download this file can automatically start you can have it you're leaving yourself just up to a whole range of issues that could potentially harm your computer.
Interesting. So it doesn't matter. Even if you have the virus protection, all that stuff. It doesn't work with these browsers, these browsers are fine. So then who could who's kind of in charge? Like who has the upper hand in this like who's in charge of it? Is because so you're kind of people stealing each other's stuff? Or is there somebody that has like an advantage in this game?
Well, most of like the the dark web from my understanding of it is more of like using the marketplace sort of way Were kind of scammers we'll get we'll get together to and people who are trying to deal drugs and that sort of thing. We'll get together online to to actually, like sell this, you can buy software to hack into people's stuff, you can, you can actually buy that software itself, you can, you can, you can obviously get all of your illegal drugs. And that's to deal on the on, on the
dark web. But a lot of people are going to go into the dark web, using an emulated version of Windows. I don't know if you're familiar with that. But essentially, it allows you to, you have your computer, when you turn it on everything that is that is your computer, and then you can run some sort of emulating software that can enable a essentially a copy of Windows on your computer and its own desktop version. So you allocate resources to it as you
would a regular computer. And then it is a completely isolated version of Windows. So if you have a fresh copy of Windows on your computer that you can emulate, then it allows you to, to, like have this sort of space without anybody being able to access any of your actual information that is important to you. Because you don't have any of your files on there. You don't have anything on there, obviously, it just windows and the dark web and the deep web browser.
Okay, did you did you explore for research? Do you go on the dark web, but I
haven't done it too much. Personally, when I was younger, I did, um, foot just just just to poke around it and look at it. Yeah, because there was, um, there was some there was some topics that I was interested in. I remember when the whole Silk Road thing was happening, I wanted to look into I wanted to look into like, what what else is on there and just just kind of do the research myself. This was before I was trying to make videos or
anything about it. This is a while ago, um, but I did take a look at some of it. And it wasn't it definitely is not the same as it is now and what you need to access it. You could you could download a browser a lot easier and be in kind of be more certain of your safety doing so because it just was not as didn't have as many eyes on it. Especially after the Silk Road. This was something that was law enforcement kind of
a thing that was like a drug and it was black market, internet. They sold drugs and supposedly like assassin services.
Oh, yeah. Right.
And the guy got busted. And that's why I got taken down because he tried to hire somebody to kill somebody. Right?
Yeah, it was a it was a hit, it was like a scheme to try to try to bust him. And so from the start, it was it was the it was not necess in any way, shape, or form. But it was somebody posing as like offering those services, contacted the the owner of the website, because they were trying to
figure out ways to pin him. And they, they ended up being able to essentially get him to, he wanted to get rid of some people on his website that were scamming individuals and himself out of money through selling drugs, he was upset with them. And he was like, I don't want to deal with this. The person was also blackmailing the owner of the website himself, because he has some of his information and was threatened to leak it. And so he was like, Okay, I'm gonna
hire this dude. And then that is what they ended up busting and for the way that they actually busted him, because they still needed to confirm that this person they're speaking to online that is trying to just trying to get this this coal for hire service is actually this person in real life. It's very hard to like, in a legal sense, pin that person without direct without, like, some sort of
direct witness to it. And so they they actually staked out a I believe it was a coffee shop, and waited until he was a he accesses computer and then went to the bathroom. And then when they when he did, they went over on his computer and was able to make the connection between the real life individual and the person, his online persona that was sending the messages.
Faster. Yeah, but so yeah, all these videos, I watched about the dark web. Everyone says don't go there. It's like always like, I wish I never went there. I don't know if like, how much of this is urban legend? Or how much of this is true? I mean, like, Do you believe in the red rooms? Is that a real thing where people are murdered and tortured and you can go on this dark web and see this happen?
I do think that red rooms are real. There is definitely a marketplace for it. That like I definitely believe that there are people that are willing to pay to see that and I think there are it's kind of like a in my idea of it's kind of something that's it's one of the honestly like when you come to the dark web and you think of these marketplaces, it's one of the ones that make more sense than some some other absurd ones
out there. Obviously I'm When people tell you not to go on the dark web and stuff themselves when you're watching a video, a lot of that is for their own protection. I believe it's like, they cannot be advertising this on YouTube and that sort of stuff, it could get them demonetized. And there's a whole range of issues that can get them pushed down with views. And so you can't really be advertising like, Hey, here's the dark web, go check it out.
Have fun for yourself. They have to like put it in a way that's like, don't go here. It's bad. Like, you're gonna get yourself in trouble. Don't do it. Um, which, which is solid advice. Keep in mind, yeah.
That advice too, so don't get demonetized I get monetized. But if I ever do, I don't definitely go. I mean, that's what it sounds like every video I've said, I've listened to the people warn you don't go. I mean, it sounds fascinating to me that this exists, the real thing because people just don't talk about it. You don't hear. There's all this crazy stuff like animal torture and directions on how to summon a demon a cannibal. Hey, there's use of people's last words
video. Oh, yeah. People dying. And the last thing they say? I mean, just some bizarre, bizarre things. It's out there. Yeah. I mean, I don't want to go look at that stuff. But it's there. It doesn't.
Yeah. And then like you said, I'm pretending to whether it being real or not a lot of the stuff on that sort of like gory content. That is super absurd. Like I'm witnessing somebody last words, or these very, like, dark things that people will pay money to see, a lot of them are fake, I do want to say that a lot of them are staged events, because it's simply easier to stage an event like that and make money off of it than it is to do the real thing. And it obviously comes
with less consequences. So while all these marketplaces and such do exist, and there is that real side of it, a vast majority of the content that is claiming to be one thing is a lot of the time fake on this because it's easier for the people to make money off of it.
Now that makes sense. So have you heard of is it Mariano's web, that supposedly the darkest web if you wouldn't know what you need, like to have to be able to code and hack to even get there?
Yeah, so um, yeah, Marianna is web. It's from my understanding of it currently, it is, it is theoretical, it's not something that is proven to actually exist. And I could be incorrect on that. I kind of want to almost fact check that but I'm in. And what I've heard about it, it's deep web, we're going to take this out. The Myth of Morgon is web the darkest corner of the internet. Yeah, so it's not something that is actually 100%, like a proven
fact that it exists. But it is said to be like, the darkest part of the dark web, where there's just an insane amount of secrets about the world and about all these sort of, like, really weird pieces that are out there that are said to be in the marranos web, but um, we don't really know if it's real or not, we just, it's it's kind of just something it's, it's more of like an urban legend type thing. Okay, understanding.
So then, yeah, what's interesting to me too, is that, like, how do you police this stuff? Because I mean, we're both we're on the same team here. We're green, telling people not to go and this is a bad thing. But I mean, I feel like a lot of these people that are into this kind of stuff are really smart with hacking and computers, and I'm terrible that stuff. But I feel like the government and the police, are they are they staying a step
ahead? Because it sounds like they can't access a lot of this stuff.
Yeah, I mean, it is very hard to stay ahead of the bad guys, when it comes to this
sort of stuff. And bond Forsman in the past has had a very hard time, kind of keeping up with with the criminals on the Internet, whether it's cybersecurity breaches that cost companies millions and, and that sort of thing, or whether it's just something that's on the dark web, it's very hard to police it just because there's more money in in the, in these dark, dark places to be made, then is going into policing these sort of same things.
Right? Like if I'm a really good hacker coder, crypto, pert, whatever, whatever you want to call it. If I'm really good at computers, like the probably the money is in being a bad guy, like you said, or maybe working for a private way not to work for the police and the government.
Yeah, and that's sort of a big issue, not only in policing, this sort of stuff, but also in teaching this sort of stuff because it the people who are the best in cybersecurity and computer science are not going to become teachers have it to other people there. They're going to go off and work for a private company, most likely if they want to do it the legal way, which a vast
majority of people do. And they're probably not going to end up on a law enforcement Aside unless they have a very strong belief in policing, this sort of activity. And so it is very hard to keep up with it. And a lot of it is at the point where it's kind of
unpredictable. But when you have these sort of marketplaces that gets so big, like the Silk Road, where it's, it's hard for the law enforcement not to have some, like, not not to be aware of it, that kind of when they get involved, but a lot of the parts of the dark web and of the Deep Web are ever changing, you have these illegal websites and illegal people that, um, it's set up in their websites go directly to change every couple
of weeks. And then the people who are inside the community who are deep inside of it know, the new website to go on, they know the access that the new sort of stuff, and the bad that the good, the good guys don't. That's kind of just the reality of it. So it is something that is extremely hard to police. And I think that as technology, as technology advances even further, it's going to become harder. It's just the reality of it.
Do you think that there is hopefully there is some sort of team that dedicated to this, that's, that's, you know, going into these sites to try to hack it or to try to talk to the people to try to get them to meet up so that they can?
Yes, yeah, no, there are there are teams, like in law enforcement that deal with specifically Deep Web dark web, um, circumstances there, there are teams that are assigned to it.
Yeah, because I feel like with the whole, I don't want to say the word but the pandemic, that that whole thing like, is I think we get demonetised. If we even say that word, that whole thing happened, like we got caught with our pants down, right, like people are not ready for this. I mean, nobody was expecting it. And I feel like we're on the verge of a big sort of cyber hack from either from another country, or maybe just some, you know, some guy in his mom's basement that
could do all sorts of stuff. I mean, what you did one video about the the crypto hack, that was the it was 25,000 Bitcoins, which I think equals out to eight, is it 8 billion?
Well, it was it was 800,000 Bitcoins, in total that like was initially stolen, they recovered, they recovered 200,000 of it, um, overtime. So there's a little bit under 600,000 that are still missing from from the event. But yeah, work because
the they see, I never I don't understand Bitcoin, I'll be honest. Like, there's no serial number or anything,
like ever. So the thing is, it is traceable, that you can go through it and you can trace down who actually has the Bitcoin because it's kind of the nature of of blockchains that you will be able to track down what wallet actually has this Bitcoin. Now, if you do the research for it, however, the person that is connected to that wallet is where it gets tricky. And, and forcing that person to actually give back those funds is where it's even trickier.
Because the issue when it comes to this sort of stuff is in Bitcoin blockchain is that while it is traceable, it is um, it is not controlled in the sense that, say there's a faulty transaction and can be reverted. So that's the part where, where it's unregulated, you can't have somebody give back the money, you can't enforce it as you would a bank can see a faulty transaction and say, We can revert that in a second. Hmm.
So what can you can how do you how do you police that that I mean, that's like, it seems like another nightmare to try, there's
another nightmare. There, you kind of have have to connect it to, to the real life entities behind it and figure out who did the hack you after you track down? After you do all the research and tracking down where these lost Bitcoins are the people who didn't do as good of a job of hiding their identity connected with it? Are they going to be the first ones to be targeted and have law enforcement go after them to try
to get these funds back? And then there's obviously even the video I talked about a person named Alexander Vinnik, who was connected with a lot of issues in Bitcoin and he even had his own exchange that was laundering money of from the hack through his own Bitcoin exchange. And he was caught for doing that. And they're in the midst of trying to recover some of it right now.
But um, it's kind of like independent, independent law firms and researchers tracking down where a lot of the funds are, and then reaching out to the people who are involved and saying, hey, well, we'll help you get it back in a legal sense and give us a kind of a it's kind of how a lot of us are sort of ends up. It's it is something that is extremely, extremely hard to do. Obviously, this is hacks that go back to 2012 2013.
And they're just now making the first payment back to some people have a fraction of the Bitcoins that they actually lost. So,
yeah, that's crazy price. Meanwhile, the price of Bitcoin, as you said in the video, like skyrocket, yeah, so they didn't they didn't get as many Bitcoins, but the ones they got back are worth a ton now, yeah, the price of that.
And well, that is nice for those people, too, because they're basically like had Bitcoin from 2013 to 2021. Not being able to sell it, but being able to get the benefits of it in 2021. The the the also the the side of that is that there are definitely people who are in that group that had all those Bitcoins, and we're thinking, Okay, I'm still I'm gonna hold on to this. And I had no intention of selling it, and could have even had a much higher return on their
investment. But um, yeah, it just fortunate that they did get back a multiple of them of the actual money that they lost. Yeah.
So I mean, because our country has to be at risk of a cyber attack from China, or Russia or another country, or like I said, somebody, I mean, that has to be, I think we're gonna get caught with their pants down, right? I mean, is there any sort of, I mean, what can we do? Is it is it worth getting those, uh, I don't always say the commercials for the like cyber protection is it worth getting? Is that gonna is that cannot even fix it.
Um, some of it, some of it can, it's definitely going to help you, I think that a lot of a lot of cybersecurity hacks. And companies, the way that they they go around protecting themselves is just being a step above the person who is doing less protection than them. So say me and you are both heads of large companies. And like we are, we are the two biggest players in some space. And every company is, in a sense, hackable
in some way it can be done. But you spend 50 million a year on your cybersecurity defense protocols, where I do, I don't really care about, it's not something that I think about, the hackers are going to target me just because they see me as the weaker person at Target, it's going to be less work. And if we're the same size company, they can get more about it. So companies are breaching their defenses, knowing that this is not going to protect them from a
hack. If somebody really wanted to hack them, it can be done. Regardless, the hacker
is like, like a police of one time I house got broken into and a cop told me, the best advice he gave me was just get a alarm, even if you don't have an alarm, just get the stickers of the signs. And he's like, if you're if they're a thief, and they see those signs, they're going to be like next house, because it's just it's one less house somewhere that doesn't have an alarm, even if you don't even have one, they're not gonna mess with it. So exactly the same theory. So it makes sense.
And there are issues recently that have happened with, um, with, with big hacks that like have life threatening outcomes, as in there were there's a water plant, I can't remember exactly where it was. But there was a water plant that was hacked into remotely and people were able to gain access to the water treatment plant and increase the levels of certain chemicals that were going into it by extremely large margins to make that water supply toxic.
And this was something that was done just due because the local water plants, cyber defenses were non existent. They didn't even have a password for their stuff. And so you're seeing is starting to see these these these things that are happening. And obviously, the more local you go, the less defense they're going to have against these sort of things. But they can still have extreme ramifications. So I do think we're on the edge of some big event in the cyberspace that is that is most likely
going to happen. Um, it's just a question of when.
Right? It's just like the the pandemic thing like it was. And I think people said that. I mean, there was podcasts and people talking about it, but it just wasn't the major story at the time. Yeah. Now, it's always after
you don't care about stuff until it actually happens. And
if I remember, yeah, I remember like, I think it was like, right around 2018 19 People complain about stuff. I was like, Guys, do you realize like, life's pretty good right now, you know, a lot of good things. You know, like, that's I just tried to be growing right now. It's probably could, you know, could always get worse to like, yeah, now where do you think? Because we got the crypto, and then now NF T's are a big thing that I'm hearing about. And then the metaverse, Where's all this
technology headed? And is this gonna make things better or worse for society?
I think it is something that's really hard to say at this point. We're starting we're such in the early stages of it, that these are kind of a lot of this technology is makes for really interesting headlines. But when it comes to actually being something that's life altering, I don't think we're really at that point yet. With a lot of this sort of
stuff. I think that they're kind of setting up the initial frameworks of how this stuff could be implemented in a way that will actually be I'm useful when people talk to me about entities and stuff and that they asked me questions about it. I think that as of now, the use case for it isn't really there yet. It's a cool piece of technology that has possibilities of being used in
certain ways. The one I always go to is in is in games and in places like the metaphor is where you can have these items that are have value to them. Something like NFT can be something like NF T's can be assigned to somebody for marketplaces online, where somebody wants to stand out because it helps them in that
game in that online space. But I don't think we're quite at the point where it's actually going to be something that is changing on a dramatic scale yet, just because it's not going to affect most people. Give it time. I think that it could, but I don't think we're really there yet.
So do you think it's a good investment to invest in crypto and NF T's in the metaverse and all that? Because my friends are trying to sell me on every day. They're telling you.
I am not personally a huge fan of NF T specifically, just because I think like I was saying the use case, I don't think is there for them yet. cryptocurrency is a different situation, because there is there is a use case for it. And there is a I think that there is a very large need for a lot of a lot of people who want an unregulated currency. The question behind it is will governments target it? And because it is that that sort of thing where like China has, when they're banning these crypto
currencies? Like because they don't want to lose that control of it? Can the government stay ahead of the cryptocurrency? Or can? Will it not?
How could they if they wanted to ban it? Could they even do that? How do they ban it?
Um, well, it China has a very controlled internet space, where they've been doing it since the start of it. So somewhere like that can very easily make it so that you can't access any website that has to do with trading cryptocurrency. And so there's going to be some individuals that do it under the radar. But they're in a much,
much smaller group. And the punishments for them are so extreme that it's something that is if if a place like China wants to ban something online, they won't have too much of an issue doing it.
Now, that's crazy. And like I saw that in the one video you did the dark side of Google Earth, that was really fascinating, because they explain this to my listeners, how China, they they recalibrate the so that they're not in the right places in real life, you're seen on a map, how the hell did they even do that
I'm essentially just applied like an algorithm to do places in real life where if you're viewing China, on Google Earth, everything that you're seeing will be displaced by up to 1000 meters in any given direction, any sort of thing, because they don't essentially want people to be able to look at their entire country and plan out some something or like get
more information about it. So there could be a marker that's telling you that this is a monument of some sort, where when you're looking at it, you can clearly see the monument is 1000s of feet away in a different direction, it's going to tell you that it's in a certain spot, it same thing with streets, same thing with like, any place there. And it's essentially just for control, they just want to retain some more control in that sense. And
that's a way to do it. So they just use a different protocol when I'm when viewing them. And they only give that information to Google about their actual places and that way so that Google doesn't really have any other option. And if they want to exist in China, then they have to comply.
Okay, so and then didn't our government do something similar? Because I thought before they would say area 51 Oh, it didn't exist. It wasn't real. But then when the Google Earth thing came out, it was kind of like they had to acknowledge there was something there, right. And then I think for a while, didn't they blur out area 51 Or some of these bases? Didn't they blur the images? Yeah.
Um, so it's actually interesting how, how a lot of the satellite stuff initially kind of sprung up and exist that night show a video that covers a little bit of this history coming out soon, but the initially when the when the satellite imagery was first kind of, like, the technology first existed for it for US government to access it. Um, it was only locked down to them. And this was something that the public cannot view. They had access to
this sort of stuff. But um, eventually it was it was released in it's called the big blue switch. Um, I believe it's the big blue switch. Um, something along those lines where
It was a really hot technology or they were allowed to use it.
So it was actually the government that, um, that it was in. Let's see. Yeah, it was in May of 2000, that the US government discontinued the selective the use of selective availability on on a lot of these satellite programs that allowed the public to actually view them and get access to it. And so you saw a birth of things like Google Earth, geocaching, being able to have these, like views of the world from a satellite available to the public. And so the the US government, did it regulate a
lot of it. In the earlier days of it, and these programs, and these, this technology was initially built for them to use, but over time, it has been become more and more available to public.
Okay, yeah, so it sounds I mean, there's really not a lot of secrets Then, with this stuff, because it's you can you could literally go anywhere on the earth, at least from a aerial perspective and see everything right, or is it some of this stuff? Is there more stuff fake than what we know?
Um, I mean, that's kind of that's kind of the question. And like, like it kind of covered in the Google Earth video is that a lot of regions, where there is something to hide are going to be blurred out in some sort of way. And obviously, you have places like China that are displacing their their coordinates, so that you can't figure out exactly what is where. And you kinda have to kind of think, what's the
reasoning behind that? What's the reasoning behind these areas that are just completely blacked out on Google Earth? What's there, and the only way to really find out is to go there directly. And most people can't do that. There's a lot I think that the the cool part about Google Earth is that it's so vastly absurd and in size across the world, and across everything, that there are pieces. And if you zoom in close enough, there are things that nobody has really seen before.
It's like allows you to just explore the entire world, albeit in a sometimes modified version, but right from your home, which is crazy to think about that that
exists. Yeah, there was crazy stuff like crash boats, and planes and cars that people could see. Like, what was the one that did those Wilson brothers? You mentioned that they saw this plane? And they tried hard? They're trying to get the funds to do it do a trip in that plane?
Yeah. And And yeah, that one is own is super interesting. And it's in such the far reaches of, of Cambodia, I believe that it's, it's too hard to reach. Like, in person for almost anybody. It's in a very, like, it's in a very, like weird place. And, and to actually get there like, there's no obviously no roads, no infrastructure. And so they they tried to make it out there, failed, almost lost their lives doing it, and then said, Hey, guys, we're going to do this
again. Give us some money. And we'll try to make it happen. Because it's something that they really believe in that this exists. And it could be the remnants of something, obviously, the more the bigger. The more accepted theory behind it is that it's simply a plan that was flying over. And so it'd be it would be crazy to get there and realize there's absolutely nothing there. But it's even more crazy to imagine what could possibly be there if the plane does exist.
Well, so it would just be do they do they think it was one of the famous missing planes though, or?
Yeah, that was? Yeah, that that was their belief was that it was the remnants of, of one of the missing flights?
Okay, the Malaysian one. I
think they should play 370, I believe.
Yeah. Then they said, I thought you said in the video that it was not the same size.
Yeah, it wasn't if you're going off the assumption that that was the actual missing missing plane was at the, the the type of plane that it was didn't actually match up with the outline shape that we saw on Google Earth. Okay, though, it just it it didn't, it didn't match the shape that like this is this is a very common plane and the plane that was part of the missing flight just doesn't quite align correctly. And so that
plane, right? Yeah, yeah. So it's somebody's missing plane. We just don't know which one Exactly, yeah. Yeah. be fascinating to see. Now, they don't go over the you didn't talk about the Bermuda triangle triangle at all. Is there anything we can see from Google Earth about that because that's such a fascinating topic.
Um, I actually, I, I've worked with a couple other channels and that was one of the ways that I was able to initially grow my channel was that I. A couple people reached out to me from larger channels when I was first starting out and said like after I posted my first video Somebody commented on it from a channel called Disrupt. And he said, like, hey, I really like your stuff, is there any email I can contact
you at. And so ended up working on some videos and actually made a video about the Bermuda Triangle for his channel. Um, it kind of just dove into a lot of the a lot of like, the reasoning behind how it got its eerie
idea. And whether or not all these missing ships and planes in it are a result of something that scientific, whether like, there's like a real phenomenon with, with compasses in that area where like it can throw people off, and then comparing those results to a much wider scale and seeing are there actually more crashes here than there are in a given area of a
different place. And there are slightly more some of the times but it's something that is been, it's kind of been less popular recently to as a urban legend that like this actually has some sort of reasoning behind it. That's non scientific. But over the Bermuda Triangle on Google Earth, you're really just going to see the sea.
Right now all we need is a is a Google See, we need something that does cover all the ground for of the ocean.
Yeah, that would be that sort of stuff. It would be the most interesting thing ever, because there's so so much that we don't know about the ocean right now. We're still making new and new discoveries about deeper parts of the ocean and creatures that live down there and new species of animals that live down there like every single day, and there's so much still undiscovered. I kind of think it's the last. The last thing that we haven't fully Yeah, last frontier that is still on our planet.
Yeah, fascinating stuff. Well, this has been great. We could talk for hours and hours, probably let you go and get back to making more awesome videos. I appreciate you doing this. I always like to end I know if I told you like any charity is there are cars or just something that people can do besides donating to your channel and helping your sponsors? Is there something else that where they can throw some money?
Yeah. Funny, funny that we were just actually talking about oceans. Um, if you do have anything to spare for the Ocean Conservancy, it's a great, great charity and being able to maintain what we currently have in the ocean, I think can teach us a lot about our Earth and about the future. And it's something that we are not taking great care of right now. Um, and I think that there's, there's definitely more
to be seen about that. And if you do have an A new to spare something, then Ocean Conservancy is a great charity.
Ocean Conservancy. I'll put that in the notes along with your YouTube channel, and people should check it out. You got some great videos, and definitely I'm subscribe. I can't wait for the next one. Thank you. Fascinating stuff. So thank you so much for doing this. I appreciate it, Cooper. Yeah, of course. All right. Talk to you later. Thank you to Cooper for coming on my show, make sure to subscribe to his channel chill fuel. For some great videos. The link will be in the comments below or the
show notes. He's only got 11 videos at this time, but there will definitely be more coming. And if you enjoyed this interview, make sure to check out some of my other interviews if you're watching on YouTube. A playlist will pop up in a minute is similar in interviews that I've had on my channel, and make sure to subscribe to my show so that you'll keep up with future
episodes. One last warning to make sure you don't explore the dark web or the dark YouTube or try to go on any of these websites that we've mentioned in this interview is not safe and terrible things can happen. So again, been warned. Otherwise, have a great rest of your day and remember to shoot for the moon