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2012·The social era

Cicada 3301

An unsigned recruitment puzzle that thousands of people tried to solve and nobody has explained.

You might remember it as 3301 puzzle

A trend people joined in with

This Moment began as a post on social media, not as a video upload.

The story

What this was

On 4 January 2012 an image appeared on 4chan inviting intelligent individuals to find a message hidden inside it. It led through cryptography, steganography, phone numbers and physical posters in half a dozen countries. It ran again on 4 January 2013 and 2014. The organisation stopped posting verified messages in April 2017 and the third puzzle is still unsolved.

It first appeared in 2012, during the social era.

You were there

More from 2012

The same internet

The social era

More like this

Related

Nothing related yet. Relationships are recorded where evidence supports them, not inferred from similarity.

Behind the record

Where it came from

There is no original upload to identify: this Moment did not begin as one. ViralWorld holds no copy of it either — what it was, when it appeared and what people called it is the record.

Nothing here is claimed to be the first publication of this Moment, because the first publication was not an upload. This Moment began as a post on social media, not as a video upload.

Not established. This index only names a creator where the evidence supports it.

What happens
On 4 January 2012 an image appeared on 4chan inviting intelligent individuals to find a message hidden inside it. It led through cryptography, steganography, phone numbers and physical posters in half a dozen countries. It ran again on 4 January 2013 and 2014. The organisation stopped posting verified messages in April 2017 and the third puzzle is still unsolved.
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