"This Man" - proof we are living in a simulated reality, or someone out there is seriously f**king with us.
This Man is a person who has allegedly appeared in thousands of people's dreams since 2006, but has never been identified in the real world. He was the main focus of a website called Ever Dream This Man?, created by Italian sociologist and marketer Andrea Natella in 2008. The website claimed that the first person who reported dreaming about This Man was a patient of a psychiatrist in New York City in 2006, and that four other patients of the same had also recognized the same face. The website also claimed that more than 3,000 people had contacted the site to share their stories and drawings of This Man. The website offered various possible explanations for the phenomenon, ranging from the mundane or supernatural. None of these theories were supported by any evidence or investigation.
The website gained attention from the press and online users in October 2009 and became a viral sensation. This Man's notoriety spawned several internet memes that spoofed flyers of the website, references in films and television shows like The X-Files, and a manga series by Weekly Shonen Magazine. It was later exposed that This Man was a hoax, and was actually a guerrilla marketing campaign by Natella's advertising agency. Natella admitted that he had fabricated the whole story and that he had based the original sketch of This Man on a photo of his father when he was young. Natella said that he was inspired by the concept of dream invasion, which he had encountered in some movies and books, and that he wanted to explore the power of the internet to create and spread urban legends and collective myths.
Story
Reported evidence of This Man appearing in dreams allegedly goes back to the 1980s.[1] According to the Ever Dream This Man? website, the first image of This Man was sketched in January 2006 by a "well-known psychiatrist in New York," based on the descriptions of a patient who claims he was a recurring subject in dreams, despite never knowing a man like him in real life. Several days later, another of the psychiatrist's patients recognized the drawing and said he was a figure in his dreams as well; the psychiatrist sent the image to fellow professionals, and collected the testimony of four more people who claimed to recognize the man.[2] Since then, more than 8,000 people from cities across the world such as Los Angeles, Berlin, São Paulo, Tehran, Beijing, Rome, Barcelona, Stockholm, Paris, New Delhi, and Moscow, claimed to have seen the man while sleeping.[2]
Anonymous stories from alleged witnesses vary in his behavior and actions in their dreams, whose content ranges from romantic or sexual fantasies, to attacking and killing the dreamer, to giving cryptic life advice. His relationship with the dreamer varied between accounts; in one, he was the dreamer's father, while in another, he was a schoolteacher from Brazil with six fingers on his right hand.[3] His voice was also unidentifiable due to the fact that he rarely spoke, as well as the difficulty in remembering sounds in dreams versus images.[1] There were some recurring themes in his messages, such as telling dreamers to "go North."[1][3]
In a 2015 interview with Vice, site creator Andrea Natella explained that he first dreamt of This Man in the winter of 2008, wherein the man "invited [him] to create a website to find an answer to his own appearance."[1] Following This Man's instructions, Natella created the website ThisMan.org, including an identikit image of This Man created using the mobile app Ultimate Flash Face.[1]
An actual living human that looked like This Man was never identified. Natella has received thousands letters and emails from people about who they think This Man resembles, ranging from fictional characters like The Man from Another Place (from Twin Peaks) and the dummy (from The Twilight Zone), to real public figures such as Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and Stephen Hawking.[1] Some people claimed they themselves were This Man, including an Indian guru named Arud Kannan Ayya, who cited it as proof of his miraculous powers.[1]
ThisMan.org posited five theories as to This Man's origins:[3]
The Archetype Theory: This Man is an example of Carl Jung's concept of the unconscious "archetypal image" people see during very difficult life situations.
The Religious Theory: This Man is a manifestation of God.
The Dream Surfer Theory: An outside force implants This Man in people's dreams, whether from someone's supernatural projection, or mental conditioning by a corporation.
The Dream Imitation Theory: People only dream of This Man after having already learned about the phenomenon and the image has left an impression on their minds.
The Daytime Recognition Theory: People poorly remember faces from their dreams, and they only assume it represents This Man after seeing the image.
36-40, M
