Dobar sociopsihološki vic: jeste li sanjali ovog čovjeka?
Editor's note: Ugh. Looks like we were fooled on this one. This whole website and story is a hoax.
I can't remember the first time I saw the composite image of the face of the man thousands of people have claimed to see in their dreams, but by now it seems like decades ago. It's not even exactly a timeless face, one you could imagine appearing commonly among strangers; more so, he looks like someone who might turn up in the newspaper, wanted for killing dozens of people.
According
to
the website devoted to him, "This Man," as he is regularly referred to, first appeared in New York in
2006, when a psychiatrist sketched the face of a man who had begun showing up
in her dreams repeatedly, bearing intimate knowledge of her life, and found
that several of her patients claimed to have been also visited by the same
person.
Since
then, as the image spread, people all across the world began to come forward
claiming to have also seen him, to have had various sorts of relationships with
him, to have been given strange advice. His presence seems both menacing and
foreboding at the same time, unclear in purpose, but haunting to those in whom
he does appear.
Whether
its some kind of urban legend, or an idea spread by suggestion, or whatever
other explanation, there's something penetrating about the idea of a person
being able to lace his way through countless dream worlds. Whatever the
reasoning, there is something penetrating about
the image, the way it seems to
watch you, to know more about why you are looking at the image than even you
do.
Recently,
I got in touch with Andrea Natella, the person who runs the This Man website and database, to
try to uncover more information about the phenomenon.
VICE: What was your first
experience with "This Man"?
Andrea Natella: It was during the winter of 2008 when This Man popped up in a dream. He invited me to create a website to find an answer to his own appearance. I used facial composite software and I took the first one I could find and designed his face: round shape, bushy eyebrows, thin lips, and a receding hairline. I circulated this draft among the colleagues of mine at my advertising office and among some international artists I know who all liked the project concept. I collected feedback and hints and so I built thisman.org, following This Man's instructions from that dream.
Andrea Natella: It was during the winter of 2008 when This Man popped up in a dream. He invited me to create a website to find an answer to his own appearance. I used facial composite software and I took the first one I could find and designed his face: round shape, bushy eyebrows, thin lips, and a receding hairline. I circulated this draft among the colleagues of mine at my advertising office and among some international artists I know who all liked the project concept. I collected feedback and hints and so I built thisman.org, following This Man's instructions from that dream.
Do you remember what his
voice sounded like, or how he communicated, any specific mannerisms, and/or
where you were physically as a location in the dream?
I'm afraid we don't have acknowledgment of his voice. Usually in our dreams we tend to remember more the visual part and rarely the audio one. It's very rare to find someone remembering a voice; at best they can remember a song. Usually This Man never speaks; sometimes he just stands by a door, and if he does speak, he uses a native language of dreamers.
I'm afraid we don't have acknowledgment of his voice. Usually in our dreams we tend to remember more the visual part and rarely the audio one. It's very rare to find someone remembering a voice; at best they can remember a song. Usually This Man never speaks; sometimes he just stands by a door, and if he does speak, he uses a native language of dreamers.
The sketch on your website
kind of looks like what I stereotypically imagine when I think of a pedophile.
But he also kind of looks like a dentist I used to have. Have you ever seen
someone in real life that you thought could be This Man, or heard significant
stories of people who have?
We receive thousands of [letters in the mail] each month. One third of them are about who This Man resembles. The most common associations are The Man from Another Place from Twin Peaks, the president of Egypt, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the English composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, the theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, or The Twilight Zone Dummy. A lot of people are confident they are themselves This Man like the Indian guru Arud Kannan Ayya who uses him as proof of his powers.
We receive thousands of [letters in the mail] each month. One third of them are about who This Man resembles. The most common associations are The Man from Another Place from Twin Peaks, the president of Egypt, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the English composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, the theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, or The Twilight Zone Dummy. A lot of people are confident they are themselves This Man like the Indian guru Arud Kannan Ayya who uses him as proof of his powers.
In many of the accounts of
his interactions with people, This Man seems passive, like his presence alone
is stronger than anything he could say or do. And yet that inactivity, the
repeating appearance, seems somehow active in itself, violent even. Throughout
the reports you've received, have you heard of any examples of concrete actions
taken by This Man?
Actually we have two big categories of dreams. The first one concerns typical nightmares where This Man scares, chases, kidnaps, and sometimes kills the dreamer. The second category is totally different. Here, This Man is friendly, he just stares at the dreamer sometimes helping him in such a way. It seems like a gnostic struggle between evil and good but it could also be a complementarity, as Yin and Yang.
Actually we have two big categories of dreams. The first one concerns typical nightmares where This Man scares, chases, kidnaps, and sometimes kills the dreamer. The second category is totally different. Here, This Man is friendly, he just stares at the dreamer sometimes helping him in such a way. It seems like a gnostic struggle between evil and good but it could also be a complementarity, as Yin and Yang.
Outside
of this classification we have a mysterious phenomenon. Several dreamers report
an "order" given by This Man. He says to "Go North." This imperative appears in
very different kind of dreams, but there is no coherence between these dreams.
We look forward to finding an explanation.
Here are some dreams about this phenomena from our database.
[Editor's Note: The written accounts have been edited for clarity]
Date:
January 5, 2014
City:
Atlanta
State:
Georgia
I
was in my room and I heard muffled screams coming from my parents room. I heard
things being dragged in the hallway outside my room and my door slowly started
to open. There was "This Man" walking into my room while dragging
both my parents behind him. He slowly propped them on the wall, both staring at
me. He wrote something in blood on my wall and stared back at me. It was too
dark for me to see it, so I slowed my breathing and tried to pretend to sleep. After
a while, my eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness, and I could see the writing on
the wall: "I know you're awake."
---
Date:
September 2, 2013
City:
Palm Beach
State:
Australia
Starting when I was seven, I had the exact same
dream on Tuesdays and Friday for ten years. I'm 17 now, and I have became very familiar with
this man, although I do not have very nice dreams about him. I dream
that I'm laying in my bed and he is wearing a cowboy hat, leaning over me and making
a strange noise—almost as if he was growling at me. And on his shirt is a gold
round pendant that has moulded into the gold, "
GO
NORTH." Other nights,
he would be standing across my bedroom, staring at me. Every morning when I wake
up, I burst into tears for absolutely no reason, it's like "This Man" is giving
me hormonal problems. When I saw the pictures on this website I started crying
out of fear. He never spoke to me. He only made weird noises.
---
Date:
March 7, 2013
City:
State:
Utah
I
dreamt of this man... He was following me through a park in the dead of
night. I couldn't
understand why he was following me, so I started running. He easily kept
the same pace as me. He gave a small groan and sped up until he was in
front of
me. He put his hand out, stopping me from running. He pulled me close to
him, but
he only spoke 21 words. I still think about them every night: "On April
9,
2021
go North. It's the only way to survive." After saying this,
the man ran away. I tried to catch up to him to ask more, but I couldn't keep
up. As I watched him fade away in the distance, I got a strange feeling. I woke
up immediately after he left my line of sight.
---
Date:
January 9, 2011
City:
Fort Lauderdale
State:
Florida
I
dreamt of this man... A couple years ago I had to see a couples therapist because
I was having reoccurring dreams about this middle-aged man who kept attacking
me. He never said anything. I woke up soaking wet in sweat every night. This was
the same time I met a guy in college who was very creepy and stalked me. He always
found a way into my dorm and would sit there all night. I was put on Trazadone
to help me get through the nights. I also have a dream where someone is always telling
me to
go north. Just like someone else wrote under the dream link. I got
it tattooed on my ankle because I swore it meant something. I'm almost positive
"This Man" is the one who comes to see me in my dreams.
--
VICE: What do you think This Man
wants?
Andrea Natella: We constantly try to understand this point, but we have no clue about what This Man wants, or if he wants something at all. One thing seems clear: This Man is a kind of wormhole. Some people are confident he is just my invention, but I am only a point in a time loop. This Man was dreamed even before I could draw his face. Even before the first patient identified him in New York.
Andrea Natella: We constantly try to understand this point, but we have no clue about what This Man wants, or if he wants something at all. One thing seems clear: This Man is a kind of wormhole. Some people are confident he is just my invention, but I am only a point in a time loop. This Man was dreamed even before I could draw his face. Even before the first patient identified him in New York.
We
have evidence of people dreaming about him 30 years ago. Every day we receive
news about kids who have begun dreaming about him somewhere new in the world. I
believe it's not This Man who does time traveling, but it's us who moves
through a fourth dimension. It's a loop with no chicken, nor the egg.
I
think the key factor of This Man's success on the web is his ability to represent
an extra dimension. As we travel in the global space with a click, we can also
"time travel" with a dream. He is a kind of star in the nights of Captain Ahab who help us to catch our inner whale.
Is there anyone people who
have not dreamed of This Man could train themselves to find him in sleep, or
even in person, or online?
Of course we could induce ourselves to dream about This Man. Dreams are made of thoughts and daytime facts. Everyone who saw the design sketch could dream about him. Once, someone even attempted to increase the number of dreams by putting a picture of him on the bedside table and this appeared to work well. Perhaps they don't really dream This Man, they only dream a simulacrum of him.
Of course we could induce ourselves to dream about This Man. Dreams are made of thoughts and daytime facts. Everyone who saw the design sketch could dream about him. Once, someone even attempted to increase the number of dreams by putting a picture of him on the bedside table and this appeared to work well. Perhaps they don't really dream This Man, they only dream a simulacrum of him.
So
we should prefer people that have recognized him only after having really
dreamed him. We actually don't really know if This Man is a set of dreamlike
facts, or if he is a man at all, or a simulacrum of himself. But if This Man really
is a wormhole among dimensions, maybe this distinction is futile. - Blake Butler
Ugh, We Just Got Hoaxed: The Real Story About the ‘This Man’ Dream Face
By VICE Staff
This sort of thing is encouragingly rare: we run a story, it turns out to be something that was denounced in 2009 and could be easily verified as fake with a single google, a few people call us dickheads and the editorial team drown in their own tears. Sometimes we mess up.
The truth behind "This Man" is that the original photofit – and the online database of supposed dreams people have had about him, thisman.org – is the brainchild of sociologist and marketer Andrea Natella. Andrea runs a company called Guerriglia Marketing, which – according to this Knowyourmeme post – specialises in "subversive hoaxes" and creates, in the grand European tradition of groups like the Situationists, "weird art projects exploring pornography, politics, advertising" and creepy dream dudes who don't exist. He's also the person we interviewed for a story about his own hoax.
Essentially, yes: what has happened here is we have walked up to the hoaxer, said, "Hiya, could you very immediately hoax us," and then they rubbed their little hoax-y hands with glee and said: yes. A goof has happened. We have goofed.
Thing is, This Man properly looks like the kind of dude you might see in a dream. You know: he's got a suede jacket on that smells distantly of cigarettes. His car is old and maroon. His voice is like a violin going backwards. He pats you on the back and you feel warm and nostalgic. You wake up with an erection you can't explain. Is it possible that seeing This Man can make you dream about This Man? Is the This Man story a self-fulfilling prophecy, priming people to dream what they've never dreamed before? Kind of like Inception but with memes? These are questions we cannot answer, because we don't dare talk to anyone about it in case we get hoaxed again.
Anyway: whoops.
More ironic VICE reports on hoaxes:
We Got Internet Scammers to Unwittingly Do Our Cover Shoot For Us
Was Jesus a Roman Hoax to Trick the Jews?
How to Prevent Fake News from Spreading on Social Media
EVER DREAM THIS MAN?
every night throughout the world hundreds of people dream about this face
www.thisman.org
HISTORY
In January 2006 in New York, the patient of a well-known psychiatrist draws the face of a man that has been repeatedly appearing in her dreams. In more than one occasion that man has given her advice on her private life. The woman swears she has never met the man in her life.
That portrait lies forgotten on the psychiatrist's desk for a few days until one day another patient recognizes that face and says that the man has often visited him in his dreams. He also claims he has never seen that man in his waking life.
The psychiatrist decides to send the portrait to some of his colleagues that have patients with recurrent dreams. Within a few months, four patients recognize the man as a frequent presence in their own dreams. All the patients refer to him as THIS MAN.
From January 2006 until today, at least 2000 people have claimed they have seen this man in their dreams, in many cities all over the world: Los Angeles, Berlin, Sao Paulo, Tehran, Beijing, Rome, Barcelona, Stockholm, Paris, New Dehli, Moskow etc.
At the moment there is no ascertained relation or common trait among the people that have dreamed of seeing this man. Moreover, no living man has ever been recognized as resembling the man of the portrait by the people who have seen this man in their dreams.
The aim of this website is:
- to help those who have seen this man in their dreams and to foster communication among them;
- to understand who this man is and why he appears in an apparently pattern-less array of situations in the dreams of such diverse human subjects.
DREAMS
"I have had this recurrent dream for some years now. A tall, dark man shows me a picture and asks me if I can recognise my father in it. The man in the picture is this man I have never seen before, he looks nothing like my dad, nevertheless I inexplicably answer that I do recognize my father. At this point I usually wake up feeling very peaceful. Other times the dream continues, I am standing before my father's grave, I place some flowers on the ground and I realise the photograph on the tombstone is missing."
"I fell in love with him from the very first time I saw him in my dream. Even though if I think about it I must admit he's really ugly. And yet each and every time, he sweeps me off my feet with his romantic gestures and sweet words. He buys me flowers, jewellery, he takes me out to dinner or to the beach to watch the sunset."
"I have always had this dream of flying in the sky over my city and observing my friends from up there. Since I moved to another house I started meeting this man while flying. Not every single time that I have this dream about flying, but often enough. He flies too, but he never speaks."
"The first time I had a dream about this man I was having a hard time at work. I had a dream about getting lost in a huge and deserted shopping mall. Suddenly this man appeared and I started running away from him. He chased after me for what seemed like an hour until I found myself against a wall in the kids' area in a supermarket. At this point he smiled at me and he showed me the way out towards the cash desks and I woke up. Ever since that night this man has appeared in all of my dreams and he always gives me directions to get out of the dream and wake up."
"I have never had homosexual relationships or even fantasies. But I dream about having sexing with this man all the time. I must admit he has a lot of imagination and he pleases me. Sometimes when I wake up I discover I have had a nocturnal emission."
"I saw this man in my dream, dressed as Santa Klaus. When he showed up I felt so happy, just like when I was a little girl. Then he smiled at me and his head became a balloon,floating in the air above me, but no matter how hard I tried to catch it, I just couldn't reach it."
" I dreamt of this man when I was in the 10th grade. He hasn't been in any recurring dreams just one very memorable and terrifying dream. In my dream I was stuck in a room sitting on a stool. A few feet away from me there was a television set. I was 'visited' by two men I had never seen before (not 'this man') and they both attacked me. I woke up covered in sweat and tears and I was screaming. I somehow fell asleep then I found myself back in the room. I started screaming and crying. Then This Man showed up on the screen. I begged him to not harm me. He didn't change his blank expression or speak. He slit my throat and I woke up. I suppose he let me out of the nightmare but I couldn't stop thinking about him for weeks. I still have some of the sketches I drew of him. I know it's kind of weird."
" I dreamt this man was in my mirror watching me, saying nothing, and he was wearing glasses. He never moved the entire time I saw him, he was like a statue, so still."
" I dreamt this man... was Brazilian and very handsome. He was a schoolteacher type with 6 fingers on his right hand. He said if the US had a nuclear disaster: go North!"
" I have seen this man in 3 completely different dreams. He was slightly different from the picture, but I recognized him immedialely. He appeared suddenly and disappeared in the same manner. His message in all 3 of my dreams was:" It's all over". That was repeated 3 times in each dreams. The differences in the picture and the man in my dreams are: his hair was a little longer in the top; his eyebrows were not as bushy. Other than that, he is identical. I had no fear of him, but many questions."
THEORIES
Several theories have been developed to explain the mysteriously recurring presence of this man in the dreams of different people who are not related in any way. The following theories are the ones that elicit the greatest interest among the dreamers themselves.
ARCHETYPE THEORY
According to Jung's psychoanalytic theory, this man is an archetypal image belonging to the collective unconscious that can surface in times of hardship (emotional development, dramatic changes in our lives, stressful circumstances etc.) in particularly sensitive subjects.
RELIGIOUS THEORY
According to this theory this man is the image of the Creator, that is to say one of the forms in which God manifests himself today. This is the reason why his indications and the words he utters during the dreams should be decidedly followed by the dreamers.
DREAM SURFER THEORY
It is the most interesting theory and the one that has the greatest implications, but it has also the lowest scientific credibility. According to this theory this man is a real person, who can enter people's dreams by means of specific psychological skills. Some believe that in real life this man looks like the man in the dreams. Others think that the man in the dreams looks completely different from his real life counterpart. Some people seem to believe that behind this man there is a mental conditioning plan developed by a major corporation.
DREAM IMITATION THEORY
This is a scientific psycho-sociological theory which claims that this phenomenon has arisen casually and has progressively developed by imitation. Basically when people are exposed to this phenomenon they become so deeply impressed that they start seeing this man in their dreams.
DAYTIME RECOGNITION THEORY
This theory states that the apparitions of this man are purely casual. Normally we do not remember precisely the faces we see in our dreams. The image of this man would thus be an instrument which, in the subject's waking life, facilitates recognition of an undefined oneirical image.
PORTRAITS
These are some of the original drawings made by the people who have seen this man in their dreams. The identikit that is currently used is based on these portraits.
"I have had this recurrent dream for some years now. A tall, dark man
shows me a picture and asks me if I can recognize my father in it. The
man in the picture is this man I have never seen before, he looks
nothing like my dad, nevertheless I inexplicably answer that I do
recognize my father. At this point I usually wake up feeling very
peaceful. Other times the dream continues, I am standing before my
father's grave, I place some flowers on the ground and I realize the
photograph on the tombstone is missing." Eerie accounts such as these
have been circulated around internet forums for several days now,
suggesting this sudden rash of sightings may have quite a sudden, but
mysterious origin indeed.
The entire phenomena happened so quickly, in fact, that a few are even
suspecting a viral marketing campaign designed to pull the wool over the
eyes of paranormal investigators and researchers into the unusual and
the unexplainable. The legend of this story is that a man, varying name
depending on who tells the story, went to a psychiatrist and sketched
the image of a mysterious figure who had visited him in dreams over the
course of several months. He sketched an image of the visitor, and it
was shuffled in with the psychiatrist’s papers on his desk.
Another patient later noticed this and declared that he had been visited
as well. Soon more started coming forward, all describing the same man
and a program was launched (as the legend goes) to attempt to track
down everyone who has had dreams of this individual. The program
eventually became a website and hundreds of forum posts throughout the
internet. The website, thisman.org, is a mysterious page with an image
of the man, several dreamed accounts from anonymous reports (presumably
written to the site) with offered explanations and theories on who the
man actually is. There is no information, however, on where the
web-site gets its funding... until you dig deeper.
Examining the source code and server information of the website, you
learn that Thisman.org is a privately owned and operated server created
by a man named Andrea Natella. A quick search for Andrea Natella
reveals that he’s a viral marketing specialist working with his
Italian based viral advertising agency, guerilliamarketing.it. The
"this-man" phenomena is debunked as a hoax, and fairly easily.
Unfortunately, thousands around the internet have already propogated
this hoax as the genuine article.
But what will this site eventually advertise? Given the content of some
of the dreams, it’s unlikely to be a product, but rather could
be one of two things. First, it could be an independent film company
relying Natella’s agency to get some exposure for their film.
Second, it could be Natella advertising his own agency. It’s
clear Andrea Natella is not above creating hoaxes for the purpose of
advertising, as he has written several papers on the subject, and even
allegedly has been involved in several previous hoaxes. So why is his
name appearing now so readily? It shouldn't have been this easy to
uncover a hoax. It is most certainly important for those in the
paranormal field to keep an eye on hoaxers such as this man.
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This Man (Ever Dream This Man)
knowyourmeme.com/memes/this-man-ever-dream-this-man
About
This Man (a.k.a “Ever Dream This Man?”) is an Internet myth associated with an artist’s illustration of a man with beady eyes, bushy eyebrows, thin lips, and a receding hairline. Since October 2009, numerous reports of this man appearing in people’s dreams have come from around the world, typically portrayed as a benevolent character.Origin
The copypasta story is said to have originated from thisman.org[1], a website launched in September 2009 by Italian viral marketing specialist Andrea Natella. According to the site description, the portrait (shown below) was drawn by a mental patient of a well-known psychiatrist:
In January 2006 in New York, the patient of a well-known psychiatrist draws the face of a man that has been repeatedly appearing in her dreams. In more than one occasion that man has given her advice on her private life. The woman swears she has never met the man in her life. That portrait lies forgotten on the psychiatrist’s desk for a few days until one day another patient recognizes that face and says that the man has often visited him in his dreams. He also claims he has never seen that man in his waking life. The psychiatrist decides to send the portrait to some of his colleagues that have patients with recurrent dreams. Within a few months, four patients recognize the man as a frequent presence in their own dreams. All the patients refer to him as THIS MAN.The website also insists that since January 2006, at least 2,000 people from all over the world have claimed they have seen “This Man” in their dreams, with reports coming from Los Angeles, Berlin, Sao Paulo, Tehran, Beijing, Rome, Barcelona, Stockholm, Paris, New Dehli, Moscow, etc.
Spread
Throughout October 2009, the mysterious copypasta spread across various blogs like Neatorama, Now Republic and io9, discussion forums including Yahoo Q&A, Facepunch and StraightDope Forum, as well as social news communities 4chan, Reddit and Metafilter, where lengthy discussions about the rumor’s validity and debunking attempts ensued. Numerous explanations about “This Man” soon followed suit, some based on sociological and psychological concepts like Carl Jung’s Archetype Theory or Dream Imitation Theory, as well as others that are more absurd of claims like the man is a dream skipper or the God himself.Hoax Debunked
That same month, some people began investigating the origin of Thisman.org and identified Italian sociologist and marketing strategist Andrea Natella as the creator of the website. It was also revealed that Natella runs an advertising agency called Guerilla Marketing, which designs subversive hoaxes and creates weird art projects exploring pornography, politics, and advertising. The site was briefly acquired by horror movie production company Ghost House Pictures, in promotion for an upcoming film titled This Man[2], written and directed by American filmmaker Bryan Bertino.Notable Parodies
Due to the mystery surrounding This Man, there are numerous parody websites and images ranging from “Who is this woman?”[6] and the now defunct Shaq version to image macros comparing the character to Andre the Giant.
Search Interest
[not available[External References
[1]Thisman.org – Ever Dream This Man?
[3]Yahoo Q&A – Ever Dream of This Man?
[4]Neotorama – Ever Dream This Man
[5]Comedy Central – Tosh.0: Ever Dream This Man?
[6]Disinformation – Ever Dream This Man
[9]Unexplainable – This Mysterious Man
[10]StraightDope Forum – Scariest Web site?
[11]Facepunch – Ever Dream This Man?
[12]Examiner – Ever Dream This Man
[13]Metafilter – Ever Dream This Man
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