Systems Failure: a theory about the concept of “Anti”
I’m still trying to wrap my head around all these thoughts I had about Anti yesterday, and it’s surprisingly difficult to put them all into one unified post since there’s just so much to take in. Here is my attempt to do just that– it is VERY long, but… I think there’s something very important here.
I decided to take this one analysis at a time, and I’m starting with KILL JACKSEPTICEYE. I know, I know, I’m a few months late to this party– but this seems like a logical place to begin, at least for what I’m proposing here.
What I’ve come to realize is that Antisepticeye isn’t necessarily an “ego"– at least, not in the way all the other ones are. He’s something that’s above all of them, watching, pulling the strings.
(Disclaimer: by “all of them” I mean Schneep, Chase, Marvin, Jackieboy Man, and Dapper, with the addition of “Jack” which I’ll explain later. This doesn’t include Robbie or Shawn Flynn, since we don’t really know if they’ll ever make an appearance.)
I was watching KILL JSE again last night to see if I could find more context for this idea I’m having, and I found some.
It all lies in what Schneeplestein says:
“I have never seen anything attack a system like this before!”
“Systems failure. Each failed system will exponentially damage other systems…once one goes down, they all go down!”
And that’s when it hit me.
Once one goes down…
… they all start going down.
The “systems"… they’re the egos.
Anti might be picking them off one by one.
But how is he doing it? I can already hear some of you asking. That answer ties into just what the hell Anti even is, and for that, I give you my proposal:
Anti is something inside the channel– perhaps even the channel itself.
Here’s what I’m thinking:
“Anti” as a prefix literally means against. By his name alone, Antisepticeye is an opposite force to something– and I think that something is Seán.
Notice how I didn’t say Jack?
That’s because “Jack” is, in a way, an ego. Jack is not Seán’s real name. The video is called KILL JACKSEPTICEYE, not KILL SEÁN. He himself has even said that when he’s not on screen or doing anything YouTube related, he just goes by Seán. Seán is who speaks to us in every “IS JACK REALLY DEAD?” vlog. Jack is the one who Anti slit the throat of in SAY GOODBYE.
But then… why did Anti kill Jack and not Seán?
The answer is actually simple.
Anti cannot physically manifest himself outside of technology. It’s not possible. A person can’t glitch in real life. A person can’t speak in Zalgo text. A person can’t be omnipresent in the way he’s proven himself to be.
He has much more power than I think most of us realize. In terms of authority, he has about as much strength as Seán does– he just doesn’t always show it, because he doesn’t really have to.
And from what he’s said to us– if he’s not bluffing– Anti has taken the reins of the channel and has held onto them since October of last year.
As to why he’s going after the other egos? It’s because they’re all derived from Seán. Each one is a part of him in some way– and Anti’s trying to eliminate him completely, bit by bit.
Now we’re back to the main question: How? How is he doing any of this? How is he “always watching”? How does he manipulate them all, pulling his puppet strings?
If my initial theory is correct, if Anti is something trapped inside the channel or is even the channel itself– and I’m kind of hoping I’m wrong about that– then that means something with truly horrifying prospects.
Because… what’s the one common thing on every single one of Jack’s social media accounts?
The septic eye.
To me… the septic eye is the key.
If Anti’s really there inside the channel… he can see us, directly from the channel icon.
Of course he’d find out about every theory, every idea, every little thing the community says about him. It’s not like Sam can blink, after all.
So… what does that mean for the puppet strings? I’ll tell you:
We know that Anti gains strength from attention (or is it technically ‘eye contact’?).
We know that the other egos are aware of him, from what Schneep said (“Anti… depressants. We need to depress Anti. We need to get him out of zhere!”).
We know that he can see us, and that he responds directly to us.
What this means is that… Anti is trying to give us what we want.
In “SAY GOODBYE” he knew the community was looking for a scare.
In “ALWAYS WATCHING” he knew the audience would enjoy a little surprise.
In “KILL JACKSEPTICEYE"… he knew that some people in the community would want to see Jack’s character die.
In “Jacksepticeye: The Silent Movie” he knew that some of us would be disappointed if he didn’t make an appearance on Halloween this year.
So he intervened in each one to give us what he thought we wanted.
This is especially evident in the tags of KILL JSE, where you can literally see a fight between himself and Schneeplestein happening. The tags themselves are as follows (with bold/capital text substituted for Zalgo):
“doctor, life, giving life, saving, rescuing, curing, NO, dr schneeplestein, the doctor, life path, SAVE HIM, KILL JACKSEPTICEYE, VIRUS, PUPPETS, NOSTRINGSONME”
Anti saw that Schneep was trying to save him and literally said “no”.
He altered the video’s outcome to make sure Jack would die and that nothing Schneep could do would save him (though Schneep wasn’t really trying that hard, if you really look at what all he was doing).
At the last moment, Schneep had a moment of self-awareness, looked to the camera, and begged us for help.
We didn’t save him… but that’s not really the point.
The problem is that we wouldn’t.
We no longer wanted to because we wanted to see Anti again instead.
This theory has taken many turns and many forms in drafts before this one. I’m hoping that this makes sense to you, but… I wish that this wasn’t true. I’m not trying to prove any points here– I’m putting this all out there in hopes that someone can debunk it.
Because if Anti is supposed to symbolize something deeper… he becomes an awful, twisted cry for help.
Jack’s “death” in SAY GOODBYE could’ve represented the death of self that happens to overconfident YouTubers who become nothing more than inflated egos.
The way Anti eliminates the other egos could represent that Seán’s afraid of losing his originality– going around and killing them off because they were “stupid ideas” according to probably some haters.
Anti could refer to the egos and Jack as “puppets” because of how a YouTube career can dictate how a person acts and what a person becomes.
The way the buildup in each Anti video happens could be how Seán feels about having to respond to the pressure to not disappoint us– and finally giving in to that pressure to provide us with content we want to see.
We shouldn’t want Anti back.
And yet… we do.
Anti responds to what we want to see.
We look for hints in glitchy thumbnails, similar character voices and dialogue, responses to posts written in Zalgo, and suspicious video titles because that’s what Anti wants us to see.
Nice combination of many ideas (very, very old and new) I’ve seen countless places. 🙂
If Anti is the Septiceye, always watching takes on a new meaning…
Fully agree “once one goes down!” is definitely talking about the other egos. That has always been a fav of mine.
… We DID create Anti. As @thedarkenedkeeper put in her own theories and fics, we do have a strange mentality of what chaos our own creation can unleash. Despite us wanting to help/ save Jack or the others, there is always that…. Thought, of wanting to see what Anti can and will do instead of interfering.
