Screamer: Difference between revisions

Internet screamers is another term of "screamer" that defines various form of online media as a form of video, website or a program that are intended to scare the viewer.

One of the most notable example of internet screamer was acomputer game made with [[Adobe Flash]], [[The Maze]]. Created by [[Jeremy Winterrowd]] in 2003, this interactive media is disguised as a simple computer game in which players use their mouse to guide a blue square through a narrow path without touching the walls. As the player advances through the levels, the walls progressively become smaller, making it increasingly challenging to avoid hitting them. This design prompts players to bring their faces closer to the screen and concentrate on the game. At the third level, the walls become so thin that it becomes difficult to avoid touching them. At this point, regardless of whether the player succeeds or fails, an image of [[Regan MacNeil]], the possessed character portrayed by Linda Blair in the horror movie [[Wikipedia:The Exorcist|The Exorcist]] suddenly appears on the screen accompanied by an edited sound effect of her screaming playing twice. This jumpscare tactic is a hallmark of internet screamers.

There are various other types of screamers that involve staring at a dot or finding the difference between two pictures. One notable example is the 2001 screamer called "[[What's Wrong With This Picture?]]" or simply "What's Wrong?" The screamer, which pretends to be a still image, begins with a normal stock photo of a dining room and asks the viewer to find something wrong with it. After 30 seconds, the image suddenly changes to an eyeless woman with a wide open mouth putting her hands around the side of her face, accompanied by a loud scream. This screamer gained significant popularity and was even featured in ''[[wikipedia:The New York Times|The New York Times]]'' on April 22, 2002. The creator of the animation, Jaybill, stated that he made the screamer "exclusively for the purpose of scaring my girlfriend."<ref>https://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/22/business/compressed-data-why-is-this-room-so-popular-shh-you-re-about-to-find-out.html?searchResultPosition=1</ref> The screamer also inspired the "[[When you see it|When you see it, you will shitbrix]]" memes where it pretends to be an image (which is actually a .gif itself) before an animated image appears on the screen.<ref>https://web.archive.org/web/20101016212629/http://www.urlesque.com/2010/10/13/screamers-the-history-of-the-scary-maze-prank/</ref>

In some cases, internet screamers may be created with malicious intent, designed to deceive the viewer into believing that their computer has been infected with a virus or that they have unintentionally accessed illegal content. These types of screamers can be particularly dangerous, as they have the potential to cause panic or anxiety in the viewer and may even result in them inadvertently downloading malware or other harmful software. Malicious screamers may be disguised as seemingly harmless content or may be found on websites that contain malicious scripts in the screamer's source code. Scareware is another type of malicious software that seeks to both scare the viewer and harm their device. These types of screamers use various tactics to freak out their victims, such as putting the viewers' device/browser into full-screen mode right after a page loads, locking volume adjust at the highest level, opening infinite tabs/windows, downloading other malicious software on the viewers' device, and shutting down the device's system or making the device unusable.

One well-known example of a malicious screamer is [[McDonalds.exe]]. Upon execution, the program would display an excerpt from a horror story before returning to the desktop and opening a dialogue box containing an email address and phone number. After a brief second, the screen would cut to a black-and-white image of a pale woman, which would intermittently display on the screen until the process was terminated. Malicious scripts also have its purpose to scare the viewer from being prevented to close the tab as the screamer appears, which are used in [[Srerrt.exe]] and [[To my dear her]].