i was just linked an article about a Ridiculous Thing that happened in the UK, and not ten minutes later i feel like i just plunged headfirst through ice into a freezing river. i feel like i've fallen through the sets of reality and am running breathless from the sound of the langoliers' chomping jaws
the kernel of the situation is this: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13127687/immersive-willy-wonka-event-glasgow-police.html
someone, for unknown reasons, decided to spontaneously throw a - presumably unlicensed -willy wonka themed "event." i do not know all the details behind it, and i will not bother looking into it much deeper because two weeks from now someone like dan olsen is going to deliver a 45m summary on the absolutely batshit backstory that certainly lurks behind this disaster, you can count on it.
in short, it's dashcon for kids - they promised some "immersive event", filled a website with AI generated images, and could not actually deliver anything remotely like what they depicted. what they did deliver is truly bizarre however, in unexpected ways.
the whole joke of dashcon is that no actual work was put into it - the famous ballpit is a kiddy pool, something you can buy off amazon and just inflate and you're done. this is much weirder: these appear to be largely custom props, some assuredly quite expensive. how did these come into being? were they scavenged from some legitimate production? but then the guy behind this surely would have known they were not enough to pull off the scheme, so why go through with it knowing the obvious outcome?
or did he get a loan that he thought was enough to make it all happen, then never did any of the math, just started ordering set pieces and only then realized that $30,000 is not really a lot of money? but then, again, why go through with it? it'd be one thing if like, people showed up to an empty building and the guy had fled the country, that's just a basic scam, but he bothered to rent a space, he bothered to put props in it, he hired a performer, and he was there. there's no possible way this man thought he was performing a scam. he must have thought this was going to work, and it's not clear how that's possible.
the thing is, as strange as all that is, the name of his "event company" is so much weirder to me: "House of Illuminati." what even is that, that's nothing. so on a whim, just wondering what i'd get, i google it, and the very first result sends me reeling.
i learned the following facts:
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the UK apparently has a bureau, ministry, department, whatever you want to call it, that keeps track of businesses, and it has the incredible name of Companies House
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the URL is, somehow, the phishingest domain name in the history of the internet. there is not a single "computer person" alive who would not react the same way that i did to it - namely, to first jerk the mouse away to avoid a clearly machine-generated honeypot, and then to double-take, blink, and rub ones eyes, unable to believe the TLD is really what it is. the domain is as follows:
find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk
i feel like i've left earth right now
