Content warning: this write-up contains a mention of rape and heavy violence. If that upsets you, it may be wise to gloss over this write-up. I don’t blame you if it does; it sure as hell upset me.
Hello, dear reader, and welcome back to my blog. If you read the write-up posted just before this one, then you’ll see that it’s one of two that I mentioned earlier this month. I had said I wanted to cover it at a future date. Well, I never did specify when, so I hereby say that that time is now.
Now, before I even get to the story, I want to address one thing—something related to the title. This story technically has to do with red rooms, which is a topic that’s been on my to-do list since 2019. I debated on whether I wanted to dive into them in any meaningful capacity, but I ultimately opted against it. My reason is simple: I think Internet mysteries are so over-talked about that there’s absolutely nothing I could add that would be worth a damn. All I would be doing is parroting the same thing dozens of YouTubers have said. Only it would be in text form instead of a video. But, who knows, maybe I’ll change my mind.
With that said, there is something I can add to—even if it’s only a bit. That is the horrifying story of sophia_red_room.avi! One of the many obscure entries on the Conspiracy Iceberg, this is one that caught my eye the day I first laid eyes on it. So, without further ado, let’s once again take a trip down the Conspiracy Iceberg!
What Is A Red Room? A Half-baked Explanation by Yours Truly
I know that most of you reading this are likely familiar with what these are, but just in case there’s one person who stumbles across this write-up, I want there to be a quick explanation for them. So, feel free to scroll down if you wish; I doubt there will be anything here you haven’t heard from countless other sources.
For those who don’t know, a Red Room is a website that hosts a live stream where you can watch someone be tortured and subsequently murdered. It’s said that you can pay to have the person tortured in a manner that you desire. For example, if someone wanted to see someone get their jaw broken via a hammer, they could pay to have that done. Alternatively, if I wanted to see them sit through the entirety of Bio-Dome, I could have that done. Personally, I’d rather have my jaw broken than suffer through 90 minutes of Pauly Shore acting like a moron, but that’s just me.
There’s never been any concrete proof that Red Rooms exist; they’re believed to be an urban legend akin to snuff films. Still, there are those who think they are real, but they’re “invite only” and well-hidden in the deepest, darkest corners of the Dark Web. I have no interest in trying to seek one out because I’m a coward, and really, I have no desire to see someone tortured. But, I digress; now that you know what a Red Room is, let’s get into today’s story for real.
write_up_title.avi
I know that’s not how .avi files work, but it’s the best I could think of when writing this.
The earliest reference to this story I can find is from a 4chan post from March 13, 2020, and was made by our old friend, “Modem.” Something tells me that almost all of the obscure and strangest entries on the Conspiracy Iceberg can be traced back to Modem, but I will refrain from hurling accusations. What I can do is say that the explanation given by Modem is one of the few times that I was actually able to comprehend what they were saying. However, it is still a bit cryptic.
According to Modem, sophia_red_room.avi is “an art film” that, at a later point in the story, is described as being “excruciating to watch.” Supposedly, it depicts “the descent of a Sophianic figure into the material realm/Khaos,” followed by “her subsequent enslavement and destruction.” The post continues by saying this supposed “art film” involves “a blonde, luminous waif” who was “invited to a house party somewhere in the greater Boston area” at some point in the early 2010s. For those who don’t know what a “waif” is, it’s a term used to describe a homeless person, usually a child. The age of “Sophia” is never given in Modem’s explanation, and I’d rather never know because the mere thought of something like this happening to someone is upsetting enough as is; I don’t want to know if it happened to a child to make it even more upsetting.
As a side note, I’d want to take a moment to say that I have absolutely no idea what a “Sophianic figure” is. I looked it up, and I believe it has to do with Gnosticism, which I know nothing about. The hyperlink leads to a Wikipedia page on a Gnostic figure named Sophia, so feel free to do your own research. As it stands, knowing her entire backstory isn’t important for this conspiracy. Also, as a quick addendum, I will be referring to the “Sophianic figure” as Sophia for the sake of consistency.
Moving on, after being invited to this supposed “house party,” Sophia is “corrupted, raped, murdered, and dismembered” by seven men. These men are “clear stand-ins for the Seven themselves.” If I had to guess, they’re meant to represent the seven deadly sins. I don’t know of anything else those seven could be outside of that. Unless there’s some extended lore to Modem’s posts. But I’m not combing through all of their posts for this one story, so let’s continue.
Modem continues by stating that “the party is the world.” I’m not sure if they mean this literally or allegorically; I imagine the latter since it sounds like something Lars von Trier would say when explaining one of his movies.
“You see, this scene of a woman consuming her own breasts in front of her children symbolizes the struggles of motherhood. It is not at all pointless gratuitous violence for the hell of it.”
Before I get sued, that’s satire; Lars never said that. I just like poking fun at him because of Antichrist. That movie was so ludicrously violent and graphic, and all of it served to showcase “grief.” I’m not convinced he didn’t have a fever dream and wrote about it.
Anyway, let’s once again carry on; I’ll lay off the tangents, too. Modem continues by saying that one of the seven men “wears a Burger King crown” and refers to himself as “Mundus Rex,” which translates to “The World King.” I want you to remember this hit for later because we’ll be returning to it. As for the other six men, they’re all “identified by some thematic property” that’s “exceedingly subtle” and “definitely not color-coded.” Modem does not elaborate on what distinguishes them, so only Sophia and the guy with the Burger King crown have some semblance of an appearance.
After that, Modem says something that makes extremely little sense to me—barring one bit. I’ll let them speak for themselves as it goes in one ear and out the other.
The Queen of the Zodiac become the Pornographic Whore of Babylon. we have no idea who created this film, but it does not indulge in its subject matter. we suspect one of the Higher Sofia’s senior Aeons, one with a penchant for instantiating as audiovisual data. or maybe the Higher Sophia itself.
The part about not knowing who made the film makes sense to me. The rest of it, however, does not. I imagine this has to do with Gnosticism; if it does (or if it has to do with something else), then feel free to educate me in the comments.
Whatever the case may be, Modem rounds off by saying that Sophia’s “limbs are scattered to the four winds and buried.” After that, we see her alive once more. She’s at a bus stop by herself, waiting. She’s also naked—save for a “bed spread trailing behind her like a wedding gown.” This attire feels quite inappropriate since it’s also a rainy spring morning (that’s what Modem says; I have no idea how they could discern that).
The final detail mentioned is that Sophia’s hair is once again golden, and her eyes are “the color of the sky.” I assume this means that her eyes are grey. Unless it’s a sun shower, but I doubt that since this entire story reads like a creepypasta. I have more to say about that, actually, but I’ll wait to get to it.
With that, however, Modem’s post ends. However, it isn’t the end of the story. Like with most Conspiracy Iceberg entries (or conspiracy theories in general), there are some variations. In the case of this one, there really isn’t one; the story hasn’t been posted about a lot, so the variation is minimal. Nevertheless, it does change a few things enough that I want to make a note of them.
There are two posts I want to look over; both are short, so I won’t be lingering on them much. The first is from a thread that was made on September 9, 2020; the original poster responded to one user who enquired about Sophia’s story. Their answer was a heavily condensed version of Modem’s telling of events, stating the video involved a woman who was “tortured and killed by several assailants,” with one of them sporting a paper Burger King crown. They added that the video was “paranormal in nature” and was a representation of “the ruination of reason and virtue by the evil forces of the world.”
The second post is from December 28, 2020, and is one that I’ve used twice this month, once for The Sad Man and then for Fox is Here. It’s also the one that introduced me to this story. The user gives the same details as Modem’s telling but does mention that the Burger King crown had “Rex Mundi” labeled on it rather than “Mundus Rex.” Although the two mean the same thing, the former translates to “King of the World” as opposed to “The World King.” While not a major difference, it’s one that I find rather interesting.
The next difference is the one that made me want to write about the story in the first place and helps to elaborate on the supposed “paranormal nature” that the previous post mentioned. Supposedly, “the woman resurrects at the end” of the tape. There are two things I want to make note of here; the first is that the use of “tape” makes me think this was a VHS tape of a snuff film. I know that’s a minor detail, but I figured it was worth a mention.
The third is how the woman (presumably Sophia) was resurrected at the end. When I first read this story, I immediately thought that she just rose back up, like someone cast a spell to bring her back to life. I’m guessing that’s not the case. Despite that, I have to say that the mental image I had—of a woman who was tortured and murdered rising back to life on a grainy VHS tape—was incredibly unsettling to me. But since it’s October (as of the time of this writing), it’s in season.
Now, that’s where the story would end. However, I wasn’t quite satisfied with only using 4chan as a source for this write-up. So, for laughs, I decided to Google sophia_red_room.avi in hopes of finding another source to use. Granted, I didn’t expect to find anything—it is an obscure Conspiracy Iceberg entry—but I figured it would be worth a shot.
To my delight, my second Conspiracy Megalist was the third result, which made me smile quite a bit. However, I’m not about to use myself as a source—not unless I’m telling a first-hand account of something that happened (which I’ve done in the past). With that said, the first and second results, however, caught my eye.
A user on Twitter (or X if you really insist on calling it that) has sophia_red_room.avi as their username. As far as I can tell, they have posted absolutely nothing related to the conspiracy, so I imagine they picked the name so they would appear in the search results when you looked it up. Still, I did not expect that whatsoever, and I figured I ought to mention it.
With that, the story of sophia_red_room.avi comes to an end. I’ve said in the past that I tend to steer clear of stories where children are hurt. At least, I believe I have (my memory is spotty when it comes to the past few years). Regardless, I’ve tried to make a small effort to overcome that since, inevitably, there will be mysteries I want to cover that will enter territory that I find uncomfortable. It is, unfortunately, the way life is.
This story, however, was not one that I expected would go there. Initially, when I found it, my assumption was it would be a run-of-the-mill Red Room story but in the vein of “3 Orangutans 1 Blender.” If you don’t know what that is, it’s an Internet urban legend about a supposedly unbelievably disturbing shock video. It sprang up around the time 2 Girls, 1 Cup was a big thing. My expectation with sophia_red_room.avi was it would be a supposedly horrific video where a woman was tortured and murdered. Not one involving a child—let alone a child who came back from the dead.
So, yeah, this story was certainly a surprise, but one that left me more puzzled than anything else. Now, with that said, let’s jump into the theories. Not that there are many to go over; this is an obscure Conspiracy Iceberg entry, after all.
Theories
1. It’s real
Truth be told, this isn’t the most far-fetched Conspiracy Iceberg entry—not if we take it at face value. Horrific and deeply disgusting videos of people—be they children, teens, adults, or elderly—being tortured, raped, and murdered are accessible on the Internet. You could argue that the video was simply edited to have a “deeper meaning” (like what Modem put forward) so that it would be pseudo-intellectual nonsense, the footage of Sophia at the bus stop being shot before the Red Room stuff. Unless there was some detail that I misunderstood, it isn’t like we saw her come back to life on camera.
Where this theory falls apart is the troubling lack of information available online. There’s no proof—like an FBI or police report—on a case like this, let alone evidence that such a snuff film exists. In this day and age, I cannot imagine a case as grotesque and upsetting as this managing to go under the radar; I remember when the claims about Frazzledrip were making the rounds online. If you don’t know what that was, Hillary Clinton and some of her associates supposedly cut the face of a child off to siphon Adrenochrome from her. That’s the jist of it; I considered writing about it, but the Clinton web of conspiracy theories and rumors is so hard to follow that I don’t think I could do it justice.
Anyway, my point is that it’s incredibly bizarre that a story like this would not have gotten picked up by some fringe news outlet. While Frazzledrip had high-profile United States politicians who were supposedly involved, this would nonetheless be eye-catching due to the equally (if not worse) nature. Unless the folks on the Dark Web are better at covering their tracks than American politicians, I’d be a bit skeptical of this all. Then again, American politicians are inept and incapable of keeping their emails private and classified documents in their right place. So, perhaps that aspect isn’t too hard to believe.
2. It was made up for the Conspiracy Iceberg
I went over this theory in the write-up for Fox is Here (not to mention the other Conspiracy Iceberg write-ups this month), so I’m not going to linger on it for long.
If you aren’t familiar with Iceberg Charts, most of them have entries that are made up by the creator for laughs. In the case of the Conspiracy Iceberg, there are a fair number of them. These are the ones that I’ve covered—especially the ones from this month. Heck, most of the ones I’ve covered throughout this blog’s life were likely made up; just take a look at Rose Eater, The Mariana Trench Bone Pit, and N.U.G.E.T. for references. All of them are cryptic sounding and exceedingly weird and are almost certainly going to attract the attention of all sorts of people (especially the second—in my humble opinion).
However, just like those three conspiracies, this one has the same pitfalls. Namely, a lack of reliable sources. Sure, you can make the argument about fake news and biases that many big-name sources would have; I think that’s more than reasonable. The problem is that when it comes to a story like this—one that’s incredibly shocking and deeply troubling, an image board known for pranks isn’t what I’d call the most reliable citation.
Couple that with the lack of documented proof of red rooms, and this story becomes one that’s doing a lot of heavy lifting to look plausible. Though, as stated earlier, it’s not impossible or even that far-fetched. It’s not like the theory is proposing something like a pill that can let you breathe in the vacuum of space. As I said in the first theory, the perpetrators could have shot the footage of Sophia at the bus stop before she was dismembered.
3. It’s a tasteless allegory for Burger King’s food
Fast food isn’t healthy for you, just like being tortured for a red room video isn’t healthy for you.
My Take
As was the case with Fox is Here, I think this conspiracy is nonsense. As far as I can tell, Modem was the first person to mention it, which has me deeply suspicious since most of what they post is cryptic and flat-out bizarre. Of course, it’s always possible they found out about this from another web forum or image board, but I sincerely doubt it. This has all the hallmarks of a conspiracy with an eye-catching title that had some slapdash lore made up for it.
On top of there being so little to go off of, the only place I’ve seen this case talked about is 4chan. Given the nature of that site, I wouldn’t put a lot of stock in what’s said is true. Sure, there are true stories shared there, along with plenty of weird and awful things. However, many more fabricated things have been posted there. This story strikes me as one that was made up, likely for shock value.
That’s really all I have to say about this conspiracy; it isn’t one I have a whole lot to say. Not unless you want to read my sleep-deprived ramblings, which would be me talking in circles about the same thing for several thousand words. If you want that, then believe me: you don’t. Anyway, despite that, there are two things I want to address.
The first is related to something I said earlier about how Modem’s version of the story was told, about how it reads like a creepypasta. The entire time I was reading it, I kept thinking to myself that I’d heard something similar in a scary story compilation when I was younger. I can’t remember which channel it was, but I swear it involved the narrator stumbling across a Red Room and seeing someone tortured, only for her to come back to life on camera.
Now, I could be wrong, but I swear to God, that’s how the story went, though something tells me that it’s more than likely a case of a false memory on my end. If it isn’t, then it could also be a pure coincidence. And if it isn’t that, and the story does exist, then I have to wonder if maybe Modem took that story and used it as the basis for the theory. It wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility; people draw inspiration from all sorts of things. At the same time, however, there’s a good chance that I’m probably reaching, if not outright misremembering, but oh well. I figured it was worth bringing up.
The second thing is my take on Red Rooms. Back in 2019, when I covered snuff films, I never gave a take. In hindsight, I think that was a stupid move on my part since I’ve given my take on countless other things. Oh well, that’s in the past; I may as well make up for it now.
I’ll be frank: I don’t think they’re real. The fact we’ve never had any documented incidents of them speaks volumes to me. While I have heard theories that “real ones” are invitation-only, I don’t buy it. The FBI has honeypots all over the deep web and dark web. You can’t tell me they can find all sorts of awful, reprehensible stuff on there but are too stupid to not find something like a Red Room. You can have whatever view of the FBI you want, but I cannot fathom them being so colossally braindead that they would miss that.
On top of that, I doubt that everyone who partakes in them would be able to keep their mouth shut. People tend to blabber about all sorts of stuff; I doubt Red Rooms would remain a secret, even with the threat of death. Police informants rat out gangs and other dangerous groups. I doubt that Red Rooms would be some sort of magical exception. As a side note, this is why I’m skeptical of so many conspiracy theories, but I digress. I do try to maintain an open mind, but here? Nah, it doesn’t work out for me.
With that said, I will concede one thing. The concept of Red Rooms is by no means something implausible. While I may doubt their existence, they aren’t something that I can’t see somehow, in some way, existing. I mean, it’s a live stream of someone being tortured, with the audience throwing money with suggestions. It wouldn’t take that much effort to set such a thing up.
The problem simply arises with how quickly the stream would be taken down. Unless you were on the sketchiest of sketchy websites, I believe most would take your stream down faster than Nintendo has videos taken down on YouTube. But, hey, this is just my two cents. Please, don’t take my word as gospel; I’m not one to seek out things like this. I’m just some guy with a blog who writes because it makes me happy.
That said, you should be careful when browsing the Internet. This is where a NordVPN advertisement would go if I was sponsored. Sadly, I make no money; please, advertisers, give me some money so I can afford more spaghetti-os.
Conclusion
And so, another Decemystery story—along with another Conspiracy Iceberg entry—comes to a close. Like I said in the write-up for Fox is Here, I would like to get around to the majority of entries on the Conspiracy Iceberg—primarily the more obscure ones since most of the prominent conspiracy theories have been talked about ad nauseam. Crossing this one off the list feels great since it means there’s one less morbid topic to discuss down the road. I was always told as a child to get the things I disliked out of the way so I could spend time having fun; I figured I needed to apply that to my writing.
With that, though, I would love to know what your take on Red Rooms is. Do you believe they are real or merely urban legends? Leave a comment and let me know; and as always, stay happy, stay healthy, and thank you for reading!
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