StinkoBlog

As of today, my friend, the crazy Google Video user, is still posting her videos at a constant rate. Today’s videos are in the 6000 range and 1500 range respectively. When I first posted about her, it was because I had found crumbs of her craziness all about the internet. She had mentioned a particular name (“Richard Hanning Jr.”) which led me down the path to identifying her. Perform a web search, and you’ll likely run into one of her many websites, and from there, you can just keep going.

As far as I can tell, she has at multiple websites that all are under different account names and most seem to no longer be actively updated. One site that’s mostly working is the Study of Evil. There are others, as mentioned, so you might run into another copy or variation of the Study of Evil on one of her alternate sites.

I had eventually found that her name was Laura while reading the above sites, and other archived information like this blazing indictment of Borders Books. Some of the sites even had pictures, but they were hardly enough to convince me I was looking at the same person. It turns out a lot of the pictures are from the early to mid 80s, which explains why they didn’t quite look like the person in the videos even though there are similarities. Of course, they should be similar, since they *are* her. I wasn’t sure until I ran into one of her articles what had an address posted. I had found this address a few times as I browsed all the crazy articles and did more searching.

It wasn’t until she started some of her videos stating her current address that I knew it was her. In some of her videos, she’d recite an address, and it eventually struck me that it sounded familiar – it was the same address that was listed in many of her articles!

I realize this isn’t terribly exciting, nor indicative of me having expert sleuthing skills, but it was very much like solving a puzzle and was a fun (albeit disturbing) diversion for a while.

From reading the various sites, it appears Laura was first hospitalized in the early 80s in at least two occasions over mental health issues. She was married for 18 years until a divorce a few years ago. She has at least one son, who makes “appearances” in her videos via cell phone calls, but otherwise there’s no evidence of other people in her videos.

Her writings are often paranoid, and she often struggles with her experiences, trying to convince herself she’s not crazy and there really is a conspiracy against her. Topics include satanic ritual abuse, mind control, and astral projection, among others. I suspect all of her posting is both a way to sort through her thoughts and to document the larger conspiracy for the public’s benefit. Or maybe not; it’s hard to tell.

Either way, it’s both fascinating and sad at the same time. Whether there really is a conspiracy against her, or she’s imagining it, I wouldn’t want to be in her shoes. It’s not as compelling as it first was, but I’m still checking her videos each day, which is kind of its own sickness.

Last week ago I ran across a post on Sensible Erection that fascinated me and sucked me in. The post linked to a series of videos posted to Google Video in the UK, and were web cam videos (ranging from minutes to hours in length) of a middle-aged woman talking and occasionally ranting while at her computer. She has a verbal tic in which she often repeats “whatever whatever whatever whatever” rapidly and something about gazillion infinities*. Some of her posts are extremely obscene with tourette’s syndrome-like outbursts and others are just her sitting at the computer talking to the camera (or to no one in particular).

The initial batch of videos was pretty large, and upon viewing a few, it became apparent that they were all posted within the last few days. It seemed really coincidental that someone would post about this and discover it so quickly. It turns out that it wasn’t a coincidence; she’s just posting so much that her listing of videos cycles quickly and only a few days worth of content is available at any given time.

She apparently records at two computers, and whenever she posts, she usually just increments the filename by 1. As of today, one series is at 5173**, and the other is at around 1270**. The first series includes filenames that a postfixed by “_2″, whereas the others are just the number (perhaps _2 indicates computer #2?). Given the numbers, I suspect she’s posted thousands of these videos, with a few hundred in the last week since I first started watching.  Aside from the numbers, there are no other identifiable markings on her posts; though some looked like they were posted by “Paul”, but it’s not consistent.

On occasion, I’d try to search for one of the names she’d mention in hopes to find more about her. Today, I was successful in my searching. I’ll post more about it later.

*After watching so many of these videos you’d think I’d have it memorized by now.

**As explained above, the links to videos above will most likely be dead if it’s been a couple days since I posted; hopefully you’ll be able to locate more recent videos based on the “standard” filenames.