Username:666
Username:666, initially uploaded to Niconico as A cursed video on Niconico is a Japanese horror or creepypasta screenlife YouTube video uploaded on February 26, 2008. Created by PiroPito, it shows a fictional scenario where an internet user tries to visit the user "666" on YouTube, and refreshes until they are taken to a heavily distorted, hellish version of the website that features the channel. In 2022, there was a bug where if one changed the YouTube URL, it would redirect to one of the fictional user's videos.
Video
An unseen computer user attempts to visit a YouTube channel URL with the name bearing the number of the beast. The account is shown as suspended, but the user continues to refresh the page a few times. Slowly, the layout of the site begins changing and taking on a sinister appearance, until the user is suddenly taken to a heavily distorted, hellish, and bloody version of the website, with the channel now accessible. The user then goes through the channel's videos, and before clicking on the last one, they are greeted with a blank pop-up window, and proceeds to click it. The user tries to escape by pausing the video, closing the browser, clicking the back button on the browser, using Task Manager, and shutting down the computer, but none of these methods work. At the end, a hand comes out of the YouTube video player and the footage cuts out.Background
PiroPito, better known by their online handle nana825763 is a Japanese surrealist filmmaker, game developer, and let's player. He is best known for "Username:666" and other horror videos, such as "Another YouTube" and "my house walk-through". PiroPito has been uploading videos to YouTube since 2006. In an article by BuzzFeed News, Rachael Krishna praised his Minecraft Let's Play videos for being charming.In an interview with PiroPito, he stated that he's inspired by "various films and novels, cult films, avant-garde films, surrealist films and paintings, dreams and the unconscious", and artists like "Shuji Terayama, Brothers Quay, Schwann Kmeier, Yasutaka Tsutsui, Kobo Abe, Yumeno Kyusaku, Greenaway, Suzan Pitt, Andre Breton, Max Ernst, Shigeru Mizuki". Since 2019, PiroPito started making the game Metaphysical Region, with a trailer releasing in 2023. The game is still in development.
History
Username:666 was based on "A cursed video on Niconico", which PiroPito made for the Slashup05 flash movie festival. The plot is similar; The user attempts to watch the video "sm666" on Niconico, only for an error message that says the video can not be found to show up. The user then refreshes, the layout changes with the text becoming mojibake in the process, until they are taken to the watch page with similar effects to YouTube in the later video. After the user tries to escape, the danmaku comments read "No escape" before the last one slowly appears; "Behind you". As that happens, the same hand appears, and the video freezes before fading out. The video also includes a full-screen version of the last few minutes of the video for the last 6 minutes. The URL is discovered at the very beginning of posts consisting of mojibake on deleted threads on 2channel posted from November 6 to 8 at 12:00 AM. "A cursed video on Niconico" was uploaded on December 28, 2007.In Japan, both "A cursed video on Niconico" and "Username:666" went viral in the months following the original video upload. Its status as a viral legend has become well-known on the internet. YouTube banned an account named "666" as a reference to the original short, which it lifted in early 2024. In 2022, there was a bug where if the user changed the YouTube URL "