(suspenseful music) - In 1995, a website was created by a man known as none other than KevinTX. It's called paranoia. com, and its main focus was to foster what he described as a free speech platform to anyone wanting to host their own little piece of cyberspace.
The website largely functioned as a repository. Back during its prime, hundreds of users flocked to Kevin's site hosting all sorts of strange, abrasive webpages on his servers. In fact, Kevin partook in this too, and seemed to relish in the fact that paranoia was garnering so much attention so quickly.
(suspenseful music) "Just to set things straight, Paranoia is run, not-for-profit. I personally provided all of the initial equipment and have supported the system's costs in finances and time at a personal loss because I feel so strongly about the presence of a system like this on the net. It's been very rewarding to watch an idealistic dream turn into reality.
I've met a lot of really great net-denizence and have seen firsthand how this project has been able to empower people who wouldn't otherwise have nice net access at a low cost. " (suspenseful music) It's clear that Kevin's motives were noble, even if some of what he states on his various pages are a bit eccentric. Nevertheless, he harbors an excitement for community, a drive to give people a voice of expression and scattered across Paranoia's archives, for better or worse, we're able to find just that.
(suspenseful music) The world of paranoia. com is expansive, and contains some of the most random and bizarre content that I've ever seen. It's a mixed bag, a look into the minds of complete strangers.
A time capsule, if you will, of the wholly unconventional and immoral. Paranoia. com/Satan contains the name, emblazoned over a black background.
Paranoia. com/Xtreme brings us to an unapologetically 90s homepage for an electronics store. Paranoia.
com/theslurp lands us on a page for. . .
(Nexpo sighs) . . .
"Pedophile Pride". . .
Jesus Christ. And Paranoia. com/stagg brings us to the homepage of a very outspoken stranger named Stagg Meander.
"It was very cool of Paranoia to set up this server so depraved bastards like me can put up subversive web pages like this one. Thanks dude. " Of course, all of this is but a tiny sample of what you can find here.
However by now I'm sure you all get the picture. Paranoia's reign over the internet throughout the 1990s was relatively big, and even gained the attention of major media outlets like the Austin Chronicle, at one point granting KevinTX an award for best local website back during its heyday. This site, from top to bottom, is a monumental rabbit hole, and the interesting thing about it is that it's been archived hundreds of times on the Wayback Machine since its been created.
Unfortunately, though, this is the only way to access it today since paranoia. com was eventually shutdown due to server issues. Reportedly, the project became too much for Kevin to handle, and so by the late 1990s, he had informed users that it would officially be set to die.
That's not to say, that the URL itself is dead, though. In fact, it's very much still alive, and upon heading to it today. .
. (keyboard clicking sound) Wait, that can't be right, P-A-R-A. .
. Yeah that's right. There's no way this is the actual si.
. . No, nope, it's Disney.
But I don't remember ever hearing about this or watching, or playing, or experiencing anything remotely close to Paranoia. Paranoia, by definition, doesn't exactly scream family friendly, so why in the world are we led here? (calm music) At four in the morning, on February 18th of 2021, a Reddit user named Logical_Elephant made their way to a subreddit called r/InternetMysteries, a hub dedicated to uncovering oddities from the dark side of the net.
Curious about a recent, almost random discovery they had, they inquire about paranoia. com and its strange connection to Disney. (eerie music) "Disney owns paranoia.
com which was a controversial, kind of illegal website in 1995. I've noticed that searching for paranoia. com redirects you to the Disney page.
What puzzles me is that in 1995, Paranoia hosted many controversial or close to illegal content websites. I'm not sure if it's normal for them to buy these types of pages but it seems strange to me. I have seen that in approximately 2000, Paranoia closed and became kind of a French page, then it would redirect you to disney.
com. Being a controversial page at the time, has anyone heard about it? I've been researching and I can't find any information about the page.
For example, rotten. com was also working at that time and there is much more information about this. This means that Disney bought this domain, and if so, why would it buy such a domain?
" (eerie music) It's a question so simple, yet it peaks the enduring interest of internet denizens like me. Why do they own this domain, and why are they still sitting on it to this day? Below this, the OP includes a myriad of updates that they stumbled upon after their initial discovery, one of which being a link to repository of URLs the Disney Company has purchased since their online inception.
Hosted on a website named hackerone. com, we can observe a trove of URLs, with some containing purposeful misspellings, some related to their parks, some to their gaming department, and even a few random outliers that I wasn't quite able to source. Even with this, though, Paranoia, with it's peculiar, adult-oriented definition stands as a stark outlier.
An anomaly of sorts in this list of family-friendly titles. All in all, though, this list, while handy to have, unfortunately doesn't tell us much about the broader picture. (eerie music) One week later.
(dramatic music) Logical_Elephant returns to r/InternetMysteries for one more go at getting eyes on this case. "A few days ago, I made this post about paranoia. com and its connection with disney.
com. Although I haven't solved why Disney bought it, I have discovered a lot of things about paranoia. com and it's very interesting.
Paranoia. com was a website that hosted pages created by its users for free. This with the lack of control of the internet in 1995 equals posts about pedophilia, drugs, prostitution, euthanasia, television cracking, bizarre images, and mind control.
That and along with other pages that were against internet censorship. There was not much interaction between users, except with those mentioned in the wall of the page since it was not a social network in itself. It was just a place to make your page and add the content you want.
It closed because its bandwidth had been reduced and Kevin asked to avoid using this server to keep what they had usable until they disappeared. " Below this one, they link to various 90s articles mentioning Paranoia, along with a Unabomber fansite, something called the Church of Euthanasia where they explain how to cook a human body, a psychoactive drug archive, and a site focused on "The Simpsons. " Interestingly, though, this go-around, their post caught much more attention, lending this investigation a theory it desperately needed.
"I think you nailed the reason Disney bought the domain, it was likely a title for one of their projects. Buying domains tied to IPs is extremely common in the media business. The reason you might not be finding a lot of examples is because Disney and other corporations use shell companies to buy domains so they don't get extorted on the price, and also to conceal their involvement with the domain until they're ready.
For example, if Activision bought a domain called Skyrim2ElectricBoogaloo. com, that would tip everyone off that they were making a direct sequel to Skyrim before they were ready to announce the project. Similarly, a woman who owned a small business making coffee cups that were powder blue around the top wouldn't ask for as much money for her Skyrim.
com domain if the company offering to buy it was called Ted Franklin Consulting, LLC and not Bethesda. " I'm not gonna lie I like this theory because it just makes sense. But there is one thing throwing a wrench in this, at least for me.
I need to give you some context on where I'm coming from, though. (eerie music) So let's take a quick detour, back to. .
. (suspenseful music) In the late 1990s, internet adoption was growing. It was an unmapped expanse, ripe for the taking.
Perfect for those wanting to make a quick buck. Companies, left and right, swooped in, buying up hundreds, thousands of domain names centered around anything and everything you can think of. Pets.
com, Broadcast. com, Ranch. com, Gandalf.
com, MSN, eBay, Amazon, you name it. The stock market was growing at an unprecedented rate, as even corporations and entrepreneurs with no prior internet experience were getting in on the action. Internet domains were currency, and those with an eye for business saw an opportunity.
The gold rush was on, and for a while, things seemed to be going pretty damn good. People left their day jobs to trade stocks, company valuations peaked. However, something was on the horizon, something unforeseen.
A little something called. . .
(suspenseful music) Y2K scared the ever-living shit out of people. And it all based in alack of technological foresight. There was this persistent belief that computers, the internet, and technology as it was known would cease to function at the turn of the millennium all because the first two digits of the year were set in stone within computer systems.
Effectively, as the clock approached the new year, computers wouldn't understand where to go next. Time would progress backwards. In essence, throwing everything reliant on the internet at the time into complete chaos.
This idea, this fear only catalyzed the frenzy of what later became known as the dot-com bubble, the hysteria of buying up every domain you could think of in hopes for a big payday. But as the year 2000 came and went, everything turned out fine. The storm quelled, and the stock market fell from its peak.
Down, down, back to where it all began. It's not out of the realm of possibility that Disney partook in this, even if Paranoia is a considerable outlier in the domains they purchased. But, let me ask you something, why would The Walt Disney Company, in the early 2000s, purchase paranoia.
com, and not. . .
(keyboard clicking sound) Aladdin. com is not owned by Disney. (keyboard clicking sound) SnowWhite.
com isn't either. (keyboard clicking sound) Fantasia. com, same story.
(keyboard clicking sound) And AliceinWonderland. com, I'm sure you get the idea. Some of the biggest Disney IPs in history have URLs that are not owned by the company that popularized them, however Paranoia is.
Now, while this commenter's theory is a solid one, I'm just not convinced this is why they have it. (whooshing sound) (thunder rumbling) (rain pattering) Over the years, whispers about this mystery have come and gone. Theories crop up, yet lead to nothing.
It seems like it just wasn't getting the attention it needed, but it is weird. (calm music) (static buzzing) Before we continue, tonight's video has been brought to you by PDS Debt. Aside from taxes, I think we can all agree that one of the most despised things imaginable is debt.
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(whooshing sound) (suspenseful music) - [Nexpo] Explain like I'm five, can someone tell me how come when you put the in the URL paranoia. com, it takes you to disney. com?
Companies will buy domains that share names with their products so that if someone just types in the name of their product, they get sent to the company's website. In this case Disney released a movie titled "Paranoia" so they bought paranoia. com and set it to ship people to disney.
com. Typically they will ship people to a page on their website related to the named product, but in this case the movie is several years old and wasn't a success so they aren't promoting it on their website, just dumping you on disney. com.
(Nexpo sighs) In 2013, a movie released starring Harrison Ford, Liam Hemsworth, Gary Oldman, and Amber Heard. It was an action thriller about an employee caught up in a heist situation and. .
. Okay, okay, I'm not gonna bore you with the details here. "Paranoia" was a film distributed by a studio named Relativity Media.
Relativity Media was launched in 2004, and was a subsidiary of Sony Pictures. Sony Pictures and the Walt Disney Corporation are two entirely separate entities. And essentially, this theory, one that was accepted by the Redditor who asked the question, unfortunately isn't exactly true.
(calm music) Like I said, whispers about this mystery have come and gone, and that's led to an inconvenient reality. Discussion about Paranoia and disney. com is scant, and answers have been admittedly difficult to come by.
With this, I'd like to pivot our tactics here, instead of focusing on what's been said about this in the past, let's rather direct our attention right to the source. (suspenseful music) Welcome back to Paranoia. According to the Wayback Machine, it's been archived over 430 times since December of 1996, however the major phases hinted at by Logical_Elephant involve the years 1996, 1999, 2001, and 2002.
Scrubbing through Paranoia's archives for ourselves, we're able to see that its early years were more or less uneventful. KevinTX appeared to be growing his platform, and at a cursory glance, it seemed to be takin' off. The structure of his front page mostly remained the same too, as Paranoia was nothing but a hub of sorts, just for the odd and unconventional.
In the year 1998, though, we can observe a pretty substantial change. There are only two archives during this time period, however jumping to the latest one gives us, not the main website, but a message. (mouse click) (suspenseful music) Unfortunately, www.
paranoia. com is no more. All but one of the pages here have been moved since at least the summer of 1998.
Please visit your favorite search engine to try to locate the page's new home. When it comes to paranoia. com as we know it, this archived version, is it.
. . This message remains here for nearly two years.
Well, until paranoia. com undergoes this change. (suspenseful music) At first glance, this seems like your typical early 2000's homepage, just in French.
Reminiscent of cyberspace titans like MSN and AOL, paranoia. com begins hosting news, stock information, the weather, and even offers it's own email service. The interesting thing about this, though, is that the site actually doesn't go by Paranoia at all, as all across the site we see another title.
It's something called Excite. And they appear to have offered a messenger, a mobile SMS service, and even custom profiles. Furthermore, the copyright information at the bottom of the page reveals a company of the same name, Excite Europe Limited.
(suspenseful music) It's an interesting discovery no doubt, however it doesn't exactly tell us much about the Disney company, or why they ended up buying this. What we do know, though, is that the original version of Paranoia wasn't actually purchased by them, it was something much less controversial. Unfortunately archives of Paranoia's transition to this Excite branding only carry forward through April of the same year, 2002 is a complete dead zone, and then right here, on February 7th, of 2003, we get our first glimpse of paranoia.
com redirecting to Disney's hub site, called Go. (suspenseful music) Again, I have absolutely no recollection of an IP tied to this name Paranoia, yet to be fair I was just eight years old when they bought this. Kid me was probably just too busy, you know, being a kid, watchin' cartoons, and most importantly.
. . (eerie music) (calm suspenseful music) (calm music) In late 2002, Disney expanded its efforts into a myriad of entertainment mediums.
Kingdom Hearts makes its debut, "The Lion King" premieres in IMAX. Epcot is celebrating it's 20th anniversary and a cartoon called "Fillmore" graces televisions for its short three year tenure. Interestingly, "Fillmore," while ending its run on Toon Disney, actually made its debut on ABC Kids, an affiliate channel of the Disney Company.
In fact, Disney has purchased a monumental shit ton of companies over the years, and this revelation right here has made me think, what if by the off chance, Paranoia isn't directly tied to Disney at all? I mean, what if it's a random project of Boss Realty? A&E?
ESPN? Catalyst Investments? Silver Creek Pictures?
Buena Vista Games? Freeform? WLS-7?
KRTK-13? What if this entire time, we've been looking in the wrong place? (calm music) You know, this mystery is interesting.
Some of you may not even care, I mean, why? Why? Why is it a big deal anyway?
Who really cares if paranoia. com redirects to the official Disney homepage? I mean it's something so silly.
So innocent, and what if I don't find it? Then what? I just accept it?
I move on, going about the rest of my life with this annoying, stupid little question resting in the back of my mind? I mean, statistically upon viewing this chart, this task seems impossible. It could literally be any of these.
So where in the world do we even. . .
(dramatic music) (mouse clicking) (suspenseful music) (static buzzing) - [Announcer] Standby Fairbanks, St. Louis, Buffalo. Get ready.
Remember, we're live coast to coast. (indistinct chatters) - Live coast to Coast America plays Paranoia. You're playing from satellite cameras in living rooms around the country.
You're connected by internet and by telephone, your old battling one studio contestant, "Paranoia. " It starts now. (audience cheering) Yes, this is "Paranoia" and I'm Peter Tomarkin and we're coming to you live coast to coast- - [Nexpo] To be honest, I'm not quite sure if this is it, but it feels like we're pretty damn close.
Late into this videos script, a fellow investigative YouTuber named Kylie tipped me off on this show, and while she said she wasn't able to confirm anything, she had a hunch that we're getting there. In April of 2000, the Fox Family channel premiered a game show. It involved four contestants at a time, one in the studio, and three scattered around the world.
"Paranoia" consisted of ten rounds of multiple-choice questions, and the in-studio contestant was put up against the satellite players in a race for a grand prize of $10,000. Get a question right, and move onto the next round. Get it wrong, though, and lose $1,000 of potential winnings.
It was a program that undoubtedly pushed the limits of what a live 2000s game show could be, and in retrospect, I don't think I've seen anything quite like it since. The unique thing about "Paranoia," though, was that it incorporated audience interaction. The Internet, in 2000, was budding, and if you, sitting at home, wanted to jump into "Paranoia" for yourself, it was, apparently, just a website away.
- We're back with more "Paranoia" after this. Yeah, this is Fox Family Channel and you're watching "Paranoia" live. If you haven't already done so, get on that phone right now, pick it up and call toll free 1-87-paranoia and play our game and win some bucks and affect the outcome of the game.
If you've got a computer, you know what to do. Log on to paranoia. excite.
com. (dramatic music) - [Nexpo] And holy shit, there it is. (mouse clicking) And there we have it.
This is "Paranoia. " This is why the Walt Disney Company owns this domain. It was a random show with a two month tenure owned by a subsidiary company of the corporation the URL was later redirected to and completely forgotten.
Excite is a multinational company that facilitated a multitude of web and entertainment mediums, and the portal to play Paranoia for yourself, at least back then is right here. America plays Paranoia, a game that led to a mystery and a mystery that endured completely under the radar for years. (melancholy music) You know, this oddity has bugged me since Logical_Elephant first made their post three entire years ago.
It's something so simple on the surface, yet perplexing to me all around. It's an oddity that seems entirely ominous, yet is so much less so in reality. Paranoia.
com is owned by Disney because of a scrapped game show that was forgotten to time. It's a relic of broadcast history, only remembered by the few who caught it. Maybe you'd just gotten off work, maybe it was a late-night rerun.
No matter where you were, I'm at least confident on the conclusion we reached. It wasn't anything crazy, I know, but, hey, at least it was closure. Paranoia, this Paranoia was never related to Disney at all.
As we've seen, the site is a monumental rabbit hole in itself, and perhaps we'll return to it at a later time. For now, though, I'm glad we found our answer, and threw a bit of life into an almost completely forgotten artifact of broadcast history. Thank you all so much for joining me on this journey tonight.
Videos like this one are some of my absolute favorites to make, and there's really nothing I enjoy diving into more than retro internet stuff. There's this charm to it that I can't quite pinpoint, and it's a nice breath of fresh air from the heavier content like disturbing things. Thank you all so much for watching.
I'll see you in the next one. I love you all, and good night.
