A YouTuber's Slow Descent Into Chaos 

i think the scariest part about this is the fact that 2008 was 14 years ago

There really is something special about old ARGs and stuff of that sort, now it feels like everyone will latch onto something like the Backrooms until the mystery is just lost.

I am actually really impressed that the author of this story called the disorder by its current name (Dissociative Identity Disorder) instead of its more popular, past name "Multiple Personalities Disorder". I also really appreciate that they did not make the patient violent or otherwise vile as that is all too common in media. This is especially impressive as this played out in 2008, a time that was a lot less sensitive to those afflicted with mental health.

For a "silent" observer he sure has a lot to say....

Oh man! What a nice and cool unique RU-vidr! I hope they don’t descend into chaos!

This dude is soon going to explain every ARG

The way this was written leads me to believe that whoever made it may have personal experience with DID. Especially by 2008 standards, the portrayal of DID, even the fact that they called it by that name, it's all very out of the ordinary in how accurate it is.

The name Erika could just be coincidence, but it makes me think of an old German marching song by composer Herms Niel titled Erika. It doesn't reference butterflies, but it does mention bees. The song slaps but unfortunately has some pretty dark history (It was popular back when a certain angry Austrian was running things), though the song itself is sung from the POV of a soldier longing to return to his lover (Erika is both a woman's name and the German word for the calluna vulgaris, or common heather)

A story about DID from 2008, interesting. It was a lot more unknown about how it affected people back then to what we know now.

tbh this seems like one of the better horror stories about did, it’s the experience of not knowing who you are or what the other people in your mind are doing that’s the scary part, unlike other stories that just gawk at the condition and say that it’s weird. it’s about the experience of did, not about being scared of it.

When I saw the title and thumbnail, my brain said "Dream?"

i'm always so disappointed when something that seems spooky and mysterious ends up being an arg

my favorite part of A RU-vidr's Slow Descent Into Chaos was when hans said "it's lauscher time" and lausched all over those guys

I love the twist. And despite the whole “you can’t just “fix” it like that” thing, I really love the fact that there’s no “evil” character. All too often you have the “evil twin” aspect to a twist like this, and it’s just refreshing to see a more realistic portrayal

9:53 actually translates to "My pathos would surely make you laugh, if you hadn't stopped laughing"

IMAGINE all the research and work they putted into this video. Like damn thats pure dedication right there

Good vid so far, but the title seems slightly misleading. It doesn’t appear as though lauscherhans actually experienced a “slow descent into chaos”; but the title originally led me to believe that he would be a normal RU-vidr who ended up going insane. Nothing wrong with the video itself, but personally, I would change the title.

I thought my day was going to be just another normal, mundane day... But then Retro uploaded a video. Now my day is filled with mystery and intrigue. Great job on the video! I've never heard of this RU-vidr/blogger before, and this is definitely an interesting story :)

I'm going to be honest: In the middle of the video I thought it would be just a simple ARG.. damn, I've never felt so good to be wrong! This ARG is truly an unique one, turning into a serious advice (not gonna spoiled it to who didn't watch and are reading the comments first/while the video runs in the BG) Also, thank you RGN for not incluiding jumpscares in these type of videos

Once DID was brought up, I braced myself for the worst due to how bad the representation for this tends to be. I’m going to talk about my experiences in this comment, but then move on to analyzing the video. If you just want that, I’ll separate my comment with some lines and you can just skip to that. I don’t think I have DID specifically, but I have some sort of very similar condition- we suspect a form of OSDD (Other Specified Dissociative Disorder), since some types of OSDD don’t have the amnesia barriers between alters (“alters,” “alts,” and “headmates” are all synonyms for the other people in someone’s head, by the way), unlike DID, as we see here with the protagonists not sharing memories with each other. And after some thinking about the story… I actually like it. It’s very well handled, in my opinion, especially for something made in 2008- I don’t know how much info was available at the time about it. The biggest issue I have is the end where they referred to Hans as being “a danger” while he was still separate from the Observer, which sounds a lot like the cliche of plural people (I’m going to use plural/plurality as an umbrella term for DID, OSDD, and anything else that causes this if I’m not specifically talking about one type) being scary or dangerous. While alters can be dangerous, they aren’t always. In fact, most forms of plurality are trauma responses, so a more violent alter is made if violence is seen as the best way to defend oneself. It tends to be defensive rather than malicious. I remember when I first told my mom about my headmates she was a little scared. She thought of news articles about people with voices in their heads telling them to murder people. But in my case, my health has improved due to my alters since they can be more responsible than me, take care of me, and give me a break from life by taking over. This also means we have no plans to merge like Hans did. On the topic of merging, I want to mention that’s not the end goal for every system- but it is better for some and ends up being part of the healing process, like with Hans. I just want to make sure that’s clear that not every system should or will merge. With that being said, I’d like to talk about the story itself. ----------------- I like to think the house is a metaphor for the inner world, the headspace, all terms for the mind. The inner world is a mental “location” that a system can build so that the brain has a logical way to “store” alters not fronting. It’s basically a way of the brain explaining where the alters go when not active. The headspace can look like anything- ours is a town, because we have quite a few, but for a smaller system like Hans and the Observer, a single house in a forest would do the trick. The Observer kind of reminds me of a gatekeeper- gatekeepers can have a variety of roles, like controlling who fronts or controlling who has access to certain memories. I know a system with a location in their inner world where the gatekeeper stores certain traumatic memories so the rest of the system doesn’t have to remember them. In the case of the ARG, this would be the basement. Despite them seeming to oppose it, the Observer did seem to want Hans to get into the basement. They left clues and keys around. Even if you don’t remember the past, that doesn’t mean it won’t affect you. The effects of trauma still come up, even if you don’t know why. So it could be that the Observer decided it was time to heal now that they were in a safe location, away from the institution (as trying to heal while still in a stressful environment just does not work). The process of unlocking the basement was kind of like someone slowly remembering traumatic events from their childhood, picking up bits and pieces over time as they actively try to remember it. Eventually, the past is remembered and that allows Hans to heal from it. I’m not quite sure what Erika represents. I think she might be representative of a pleasant or idealized childhood due to how loving and happy she was described as being- and then it turned out she wasn’t in the basement at all. Realizing there was no Erika could represent someone coming to terms with the fact that their childhood wasn’t as good as they thought it was as they remembered the trauma of it. Although it’s hard to accept, it has to be done to move on and prevent clinging onto something that never existed.

This is very interesting, my mother told me stories about her’s aunt. She was like a normal person, except that sometimes she would get unconscious and become someone else psychologically. My mother and grandmother called that “the spiritism”. Now I can understand that better.

Seems like a new endeavour other than minecraft theories, I like this. Hi Retro, could you maybe cover the mystery of Casey’s cave next?

im happy that one of my favourite childhood ARGs got some recognision it deserved. your channel is incredible and so are you

this was simultaneously the most stressful , chilling and heartwarming then frightening video ever made. What a rollercoaster of emotions! i loved the videos!

This was a roller-coaster of a story, with an epic plot twist at the end. Even if it is fictional, it is extremely innovative and entertaining to go through, as well as that it is very well put together. Hats off to everyone involved in this, including you, RGN.

29:14 This is a misnomer. Everyone has multiple distinct personalities. DID is multiple distinct IDENTITIES, literally multiple separate people occupying the same brain. Personality does not itself carry age or gender, which is why referring to the identities as "personalities" has been un-standardized for a couple decades now

Ooh! A youtuber’s slow descent into chaos! A perfect video to watch at 10:00pm!

your videos are literal masterpieces, a form of art I can say! The research done for this video is phenomenal!!

your editing skills, the way you narrate these stories is just immaculate. keep up the good work!

I personally would translate the text at 9:42 differently. I think it means something along the lines of "My pathos would have surely made you laugh, if you had not stopped the habit of laughing/if you did not get used to not laughing/if you had not stopped laughing (permanently)" rather than the lines written in the video.

Incredibly well narrated video all the way to the very last second! Def one of my fav video essays

Ok, having the characters in-universe solicit help from ARG-forums by disguising their treatment plan as an arg was honestly pretty brilliant of a twist, I will say.

I personally can't wait to read "A RU-vidr's Slow Descent Into Chaos Perfect for Minecrafters Kids and Adults, Top Builder Ideas, Guide Book, Graphic Novels"

I was getting very curious throughout if it was going to be a story about DID, mainly because it seemed so oddly consistent that the two figures were interacting with each other yet were otherwise not directly doing anything together or ever being seen together despite supposedly living in the same house as one another. This is honestly quite an impressive ARG!

I have a friend who, 17 years ago, did a similar thing with no external guidance; using multiple yahoo accounts to sort their own multiple personality disorder.

A little step for mankind, a last step for a man. cool quotation.

A few days ago I woke up to one of my dogs dead, choked to death by his collar. I haven't watched much horror related content since his death, since every time I would be reminded of his sunken dead eyes. This is the first horror/disturbing related video I've watched in a while, and I'm thankful it was a good one

It’s so crazy to me how people can make these types of experiences and curate them for an interactive audience. Super neat honestly.

I really enjoy your videos, after a long day of work I came home to eat and have a cold and enjoy this video, this genuinely made time go by smooth as all of your videos do too, thank you!!!!!

I love videos like these bc I love weird cryptic horror but I'd be too scared to watch it directly, although it'd probably be a lot more immersive, but even playing FNAF scares me too much to play lol

I happen to have DID and this is so interesting to me that this split brain was able to be tricked into integrating. I guess it was clearly causing them distress to be separate, so uniting these parts of the personality will hopefully help this individual function more easily.

i love args and videos on them. yours was so entertaining and i got hooked immediately. would love to see more like this on your channel, as long as that's what you want as well. also love your minceraft lore videos too!

I love your choice of bumper and background music in all of your videos so far.

One thing I’m German and a little detail I found ‘lauscher’ (lauscherhans). Lauscher means roughly ‘hearer’ so it describes a person who hears into other conversations or things.

Please dont abandon Minecraft Theories however keep up with this new content i love it!

Most obscure ARG Ive ever seen. I think you're the first ever person to cover it.

this is one of my most favourite videos on youtube, I love it and I frequently return to watch it 💜

I could complain about all the inaccuracies concerning DID and everything but this was a while ago. In my personal opinion, a system doesn't need to integrate to fully heal or function in society. However all sysmates need to work together. As a system myself, I haven't integrated yet but we're working together to heal. Maybe in the future, we will but right now we're going to stay separate. Oh! Additionally, yes all alters are different but there's many different ways they can connect or be separate from the host/core!! Thanks for the end message (I genuinely mean that btw)!!

The takes this guy has on lore is amazing.

That was really scary. What a nice story.

I believe that the video of the two people running fusing into 1 video is Hans's two personalities merging and him getting healed of his DID

gets straight to the point, very nice channel, keep up the good work man!!!!!

Good video! At 9:43 I would habe translated it as such: My pathos surely MADE you laugh, haven't you stopped laughing? And at 8:20 "es geht" is usually more like "I am ok/fine", but morr in a negative way. Es geht would be used, idk, let's say your dog died, you still have everything under control, but you are still feeling down. This describes "es geht". The rest is perfectly translated. I am honestly happy that you did it so well!! Also: There (is) no Erika Es (gibt) keine Erika Those, I think would be better

Finally someone who is like tekkitrealm but doesn't lie or make up stories thank you Edit: 147 likes!??!?! Whaaaaat!!!!!!!

I love how to always go into depth about how code is encrypted, the extra step you take to help us understand what is going on. Love your videos, keep up the good work!

You absorbed my undivided attention for more than 30 minutes. This was lovely. Thank you.

You're voice and likeness is perfect for this type of content, and after looking at other comments and your replies, I love how you took the route of trying to portray yourself like Leon Lush accidentally fell upon IAmSophie. I'd be perfectly fine if you uploaded this mixed in with your regular content, or even, like people mistaken this video for, unsolved mysteries on the internet! Love the fact you covered something more obscure because people would immediately know what the video was about. So glad I took time out of my day to watch this. Continuing onto the actual ARG, I feel like the DID trope is very common in ARGs. Once I heard the mirror bit, I immediately figured it out and it was really easy to predict. Overall, it had nice easy puzzles and it feels like this was a first project. If it was, it was really well done, and I congratulate who made this. I love the inclusion of obscure things and old books that most likely a lot of young people haven read, as it introduces a new world of literature and adds a bit of ambiance and sort of scariness to ARGs.

This was an incredible video covering an incredible project. I like the thought that one can heal a disorder by themselves, but I see how it could just as easily go south quickly.

This was a really cool watch. I'm just now realizing the play on words that the name of the online account was. Hansaltman. Hans Alt Man, Hans Alternate Man.

Oh man, Retro I love your vids but these last two on ARGs have been phenomenal, if I could request you dive into Petscop that would be amazing. Lots of people have covered it already but I would absolutely love to hear your thoughts and theories on it, you have lots of thought provoking inputs on these args, and it makes me even more interested in them!

honestly I love the structure of this video, the subject and the mystery.

I started by watching the lore videos, and now there’s so much more just incredible content

this was a cool watch. the ending was quite obvious and, in general, i was able to quite easily guess most of the plot-points, what will happen etc.

This was a whole flippin journey, I didn't expect to get wrapped up in on a Friday evening, but I'm so glad that I chose to watch. I found this ARG to be mad engaging as well as your video! Always with the right kind of info and the video also felt fluent! That you for letting me on this very interesting ARG!

I like the effort you put into explaining the decoding process of particular cyphers. You definitely don't have to do that, most other RU-vidrs who I watch usually just say "... which was decoded to XYZ" - it really shows you aim to educate, and I like that. I hope there are more ARGs that I don't know about, similar to OldRoot or the missing Alpha versions - I really liked the way you covered those.

Also wanted to say your previous videos are incredible

i love how they have the videos perfectly edited. how considerate!

It's cool that youtube description said that his personalities will unite if he will look at his reflection and one of the last posts is log of him talking to himself in the basement where he found only mirrors, fun detail :) When it comes to your last question: it was said by the doctor that this mansion is full of cameras, maybe Hans as observer personality managed to get access to cameras and that's how he got a "photo" of himself going into basement. Observer thought that he is spying on Hans and after Hans looked at himself in all those mirrors his personalities realized that they are one being

please do more of these im really loving em and im pretty sure everyone else is too

a non minecraft arg?, lets see where this one goes

This was absolutely riveting. Thank you for this video👍

RU-vidr upon spotting a chaos: I'm about to fucking descend

To me its obvious that this story took place in Germany tho. It starts with the name "Hans Altmann", cannt get a more generic german name then that. also his online-name "lauscherhans", "Lauscher" in german can either mean someone who eavesdrop or simply is a other word for ear. And then there are parts writen in german, soooo :> Side Notes: 9:43 That actually that is a Quote from Goethe's "Faust I" and translates to "My pathos would be sure to make you smile, If you had not renounced all laughter too." (277-278) 30:26 i think none of them where useless in that case - you can either make the ger. version "Es gab keine Erika" or use the other to get the eng. version "There was no Erika" d2Fz = was / Z2Fi = gab "Saw" and "bag" where never intended i think, just a coincidence that they would align in english if you read them backwards. Thats why he found out it opened a box on the wall and not a bag. It's interesting if you think about it - the use of english and german i mean. Maybe he had a german AND english speaking personality. Or it was simply to get it outthere to a wider audience, who knows :) Anyway, nice vid mate, really got me hooked! Keep it up!

This was a great video. After The Oldroot Mystery video, this was technically easy to understand. Nice video, RGN!

I really like your videos, seeing you do something other than minecraft is fantastic. Keep up the great work man!

The fact that I am german and I know someone whos family name is Freudenstein makes this kind of scary. He is my friend and I remember that his Grandfather was a psychologic Doctor. He died in 2020 I believe.

Deservers way more than 44k views, the editing and research put into this video is just to good to stay hidden, hope it blows up.

I love this. I hope more videos like this will come more often.

My God, the quality, the explanation, the research, the- the- the everything is epic

‘If I had meant Godot to be God I would have named him that’ - Samuel Beckett

Plot twist: this was all just a video teaching people how to use binary code

This probably won't get seen by you RGN, but thanks for making these videos. It doesn't seem like it, but your interesting topics and soothing voice help me fight anxiety. Keep it up man, you're doing amazing.

The text of my Phatos in german has some typos in it. Without typos it would be: Mein Phatos brächte dich gewiss zum Lachen. Hattest du dir nicht das Lachen abgewöhnt. So n is the letter wich replaces them all and is there three times non the less. (Also I quickly wanted to mention this but the original writer either is no german or maby they have intentionally forgotten the e in hatt[e]st.)

This is the only video in my downloads and I listen to it quite often. Very entertaining

I always love these kind of ARG videos… they do always feel like horror movies tho…

Damn this helped me feel something I haven't felt in a long time. A sense of the true feeling of greyness of reality.

When I first saw this video, I thought it was from someone else, I was very surprised to see a Minecraft RU-vidr like you to make a video like this. Still, SUPER COOL!! Excited to see what you have coming next

Your content is getting better day by day

From looking at the thumbnail, i thought we were talking about dream's descent into madness 💀💀💀

This one got me a little spooked! Haha! I'm a PA resident, my sister is fluent in German, we have Irish background and I'm learning Gaelic, I wrote a story about an area not far away that I recently moved from that I wrote a creepypasta novel about an ancient Irish god who "emigrated" and became a destructive demon, I'm very interested in folklore and local topography, and that is some house! It's kind of emblematic of the area. Oh, and to cap it off, I live in the middle of nowhere. Hahaha. Oh I knew someone who was diagnosed with DID many years ago, and I can see where Dr Grande is coming from when he says that it's a questionable diagnosis at best. Just my 2c. 😁

I really enjoy this video and can't wait to check out more.

You popped up on my recommended and now I'm listening to this! This is so cool :D 💕💕🍧🍧

I really liked this video. However I will say this: My interpretation of the title, “A RU-vidr’s Slow Descent Into Chaos” was that the video was going to be covering someone who descended into chaos. I didn’t realize it meant the uploader of this video would be descending into chaos, per the A.R.G. Not what I expected but still a good video.

Now as a system that has a form of DID/OSDD it feels super weird to have an ending thats just, becoming a singlet or in simplier terms, merging back into one Now, yes for some systems this can be a good ending, but for most its not a good thing and often times the merging only lasts for a short amount of time I honestly kinda preferred it when it wasn't trying to represent mental health

Congratulations to 400k subs!!! I remember looking at your channel yesterday and you said when are you going to get the 400k subs. I wake up and you have them right away :D. I hope you will get 500k subs soon!!! :D

For some reason, it really pangs me that this guy was going through something like this, like, just the really, really scary doom feeling of one not being able to be free of something that just traps their own mind, and possibly not being able to pull through something like this... this guy, has done otherwise, and it's just one of these stories, a truly unique one, that just kind of gives me hope for others or even myself who might be or are going through things like this. And weirdly, a new sense of doom I have yet to figure out... whats scary is, not being able to figure it out.. being trapped in my own perception of reality but not trying to get too personal... Anywho, amazing story! I'm so relieved this guy found healing in all of this :)

While I enjoy the Minecraft content, I'm really happy to see you branch out into other topics! Keep up the great work!

the part with dr. f really gives that creepy, cracks in the system feeling kinda like portal

33:07 I think the picture was taken by the institute and somehow was either shared to the Silent Observer or hijacked.

We should appreciate this guys editing and his work to his videos. Btw, New sub!