Before September 29th

The Theorist Gateway website was first used during the August Merch Mystery Hunt (explained here). It was the final step of the game, where the password that spelled out "T#3Ør%" (theory) was entered. Returning to the site after September 16th, information about the previous ARG was replaced to be a static page with the title ‘hellointernet’ and an image. In the meta description of the website, it said “return on the date which is hidden”.

The image is a 762x762 png, reading out as a thank you message from MatPat. This note was written in Montserrat Light with a L33T-style steganographic cipher. By taking each substituted letter, the numeric string “524742323534” was discovered.

Taking that number string into a hex decoder, it would translate into “RGB254”. The RGB color (254, 254, 254) is one pixel darker than pure white (255,255,255).The filename, FEFEFE, is also standard hexadecimal for the same RGB color. Using a color filtering technique in imaging software, the hidden timestamp was revealed, stating “9.29.2018 00:00:01 PST” (one-second after midnight, September 29th 2018).