Mini-Post: A Video Guide To The SCP Foundation

Hey gang,

We’ve got a double whammy this week: I’ve been traveling (again), and also, I am moving house. The good news, though, is that hopefully, this should be the last time for a while that I’ll need to rely on shorter, mini-posts to keep you all occupied while I go deal with, uh, life. (Just in time, given that it’s getting to be Halloween season, right?)

So: Today, we dive into the SCP Foundation via a few useful videos. If you didn’t get in on the ground floor back when it was still new, the SCP Wiki can be more than a bit overwhelming; there are a more than a decade’s worth of entries and stories on the site now, written and submitted by what I can only assume are, at this point, thousands of contributors. But if you’ve got the time and patience to wade through it all, what emerges is a whole series of weird, spooky, and delightful stories about an… unusual research facility geared toward cataloging and containing some of the most terrifying entities you’ll ever meet. Or, perhaps more accurately, the most terrifying entities you should hope you never, ever meet. Ever.

The SCP Foundation’s history and creation are just as fascinating as the wiki itself, so I’ve got two videos for you that might help demystify the whole thing: First, one from YouTuber Fredrik Knudsen that focuses on the origins and evolution of the wiki as an open source, community-driven writing project; then, a “Modern Introduction” to the the SCP Foundation as read by YouTuber TheVolgun. Knudsen’s video tracks the wiki from its very beginnings — a 4chan post that became SCP-173, which you may already be familiar with, especially if you’ve played SCP: Containment Breach — all the way up through its current incarnation, while TheVolgun’s, which is based off of this Reddit post, walks viewers through the nitty-gritty of the wiki’s fictional reality.

If you’ve been wanting to look into the SCP Foundation, but have hitherto found the prospect a little daunting — this should help. (And if you’d rather read something about the Foundation instead of watch something about it, I’ll point you toward this piece by Erica Stratton published over at The Toast in 2014.)

Have fun, kids.

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[Photo via MichaelGaida/Pixabay]