The channel added a similar video nearly 80,000 times over the next several months -- an average of one every 20 seconds -- with names such as "tmpP vnyF" and "tmpvqA58q." Obviously, those are either English approximations of some cryptic alien tongue, or the Great Old Ones finally figured out how to work their newfangled smartphones.

We're being facetious, of course, but we're only slightly exaggerating the press reports. The videos were clearly some kind of encoded message of mysterious origin, and everyone from the BBC to The Washington Post speculated that the videos were the modern equivalent of numbers stations -- shortwave radio stations that are said to have been used for spy communications during the Cold War. But what was the message being sent by Webdriver Torso? Who was it intended for? Would we ever know?

KatarzynaBialasiewicz/iStock/Getty Images
And if the universe tells us, will it have to kill us?

The Ludicrously Simple Answer:

After weeks of investigation by enthusiasts pouring over thousands of these cryptic videos, investigators discovered that "Webdriver" might refer to automated testing software. Then Italian blogger Soggetto Ventuno uncovered the fact that the YouTube account may be associated with Google's Zurich office, and that there were other channels across the Internet with similar videos. Not long after he posted links to said videos, they were ominously deleted.

But then the Webdriver Torso pattern began to change. One video included the first verbal message to ever come from the channel -- "Matei is highly intelligent" -- before cutting to a few seconds of footage of the Eiffel Tower. Then this happened:

Google
*Play For Full Effect*

Yep, whoever was behind Webdriver Torso totally Rickrolled the conspiracy theory-spouting masses. Engadget finally closed the case once and for all when they approached Google's Zurich office for an official statement:

We're never gonna give you uploading that's slow or loses video quality, and we're never gonna let you down by playing YouTube in poor video quality. That's why we're always running tests like Webdriver Torso.

Ryan Menezes
There's still debate as to whether they told a below-average Internet joke, or an above-average Swiss one.

Google had been the source all along, running an altogether banal automated test to monitor video upload quality with a YouTube channel that was never meant to be noticed, let alone go viral. The fact that the masses immediately latched onto it, desperately trying to divine some profound message from the endless stream of meaningless nonsense, probably says something profound about humanity. At the very least, it indicates that our jobs aren't keeping us nearly busy enough.

According to press reports, he was mysteriously absent from all photographs of the incident. None of the small-town folk at the scene recognized him (which is strange, seeing as how there's only a single Catholic church in the area), and many, including Fire Chief Raymond Reed, believed he was an angel -- a word that even USA Today couldn't resist plopping front and center in their headline.

One Catholic website seriously speculated that the priest in question was Father Lukas Etlin, who was killed in a car crash in 1927. As proof, they compared the police sketch of the mystery priest to photos of Etlin, and admittedly, they do look awfully similar (if you do that thing where you rub your eyes real hard and then open them cartoonishly wide).

Randall Sands, Eman Bonnici
Death has not been kind to Father Etlin's hairline.

Since angels are notoriously difficult to track down, this looked to be as close as we might get to an answer. Until ...

The Ludicrously Simple Answer:

In a paradox that may be a miracle in and of itself, this mystery was actually solved in an article's comments section. Beneath an article in the National Catholic Register, amid a flurry of posts about ghosts and angels and miracles, Reverend Patrick Dowling quietly posted about the actual, corporal priest who was at the scene (spoiler: it was him):

I had Mass in Ewing, Mo as the regular priest was sick. As I was returning, I arrived at the scene. ... I absolved and anointed Katie and, at her request, prayed that her leg would not be hurt. Then I stepped aside to where some rescue personnel and the pilot were waiting, and prayed the rosary silently. I left when the helicopter was about to take off.

Diocese of Jefferson City
The police sketch artist was promptly given a penance of 10 Hail Marys.

As he was leaving, Father Dowling even gave his name to a highway patrolman and asked the local sheriff for the victim's name so he could visit her in the hospital. We're somewhat concerned about the state of public safety in New London, Missouri, considering the fact that the fire chief, the sheriff, the highway patrolmen, and the sketch artist are seemingly not on speaking terms.

Taking the not-so-subtle hint, the hospital staff directed the man to the chapel piano, where he proceeded to mesmerize them with his nearly superhuman classical playing ability (thus earning the nickname, "Piano Man"). The case had just transcended mere curiosity and transformed into an honest-to-goodness real-life Shine.

His story enchanted and puzzled the world's media outlets, and foreheads across the planet scrunched when hundreds of people came forward and claimed to recognize him from one place or another, giving authorities leads ranging from a Norwegian shipwreck survivor to an impossibly lost French street musician.

Scott Gries/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images
The above police image produced no leads.

The Ludicrously Simple Answer:

U.K. authorities scratched themselves off of Mulder and Scully's waiting list when Piano Man suddenly decided to start speaking again. As it turns out, he was less "musical savant" and more "depressed kid." To be more specific, he was Andreas Grassl, a recently unemployed 20-year-old from Germany who had traveled to the U.K. on an impulse.

But what about that whole "mute" thing? Well, you see, he wasn't all that crazy about the way the police had treated him when he was found, so he decided to simply not talk to them (or to anyone else, for that matter). The fact that he carried on the silent treatment for months is a testament to just how masterful Germans can be at holding a grudge.

BBC
Pictured: Grassl, using papers to hide his massive grudge.

Once he finally did open his mouth, though, the mysterious tune that the media had played about him wound down faster than a kid learning "Chopsticks" while there's an Xbox, like, right there. One debunked early report said that his voice box may have been removed, for instance. It even became unclear whether he had any psychological problems at all while in the hospital, with some speculating that he merely mimicked the behavior of other patients.

And those tales of piano skills that could cause involuntary bladder evacuation in any true music lover? Updated reports suggested that he could barely play at all, and according to the BBC "he was only able to play one note continuously." That's going to save a Hollywood producer a shitload on his film score budget when the movie rights are inevitably sold.

And speaking of mystery men ...

Lokuta's search for the man led him to photo booth historian Nakki Goranin -- who only added to the mystery when it turned out that she, too, had several photos of the same fucking guy lying around.

Nakki Goranin
Some featured his children or, according to our now-expanded aging theory, his younger clones.

Please understand that while it's common in the Selfie era for everyone to have 8,000 photos of themselves on their phone, that wasn't the case in the freaking 1930s. There were presidents at the time who weren't photographed as often as this dude. So who the hell was this guy? And why would he take so many mundane photos of himself and stash them away for some unknown future generation to stumble across? Did the photos contain some kind of encoded message to an alternate future in which the commies won? The historians were eager to find out, but were stumped when, after tracking the origin of the photos to Michigan, the trail went cold.

Viewing the images as a whole -- myriad mugshots encapsulating over three decades of a man's life -- is at once captivating and more than a little creepy. It's no surprise, then, that the collection captured the imagination of the international press and landed at the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University for the world to scratch their chins and yell "art!" at. Donna Gustafson, the museum curator, said that the mystery was a huge part of the collection's appeal: "I love the mystery, and I'm not sure I'm going to be happy to find out who he was."

The Ludicrously Simple Answer:

As sad as it makes us and the collective Internet to admit it --

via NBC News
Sweet dreams are made of this.

-- the answer is not time travel. Goddammit, the answer is never going to be time travel.

The solution, as it so often does nowadays, ultimately came from some random guy on the Internet: Nevada native Tom Trelenberg recognized his uncle after an article about the museum exhibit popped up in his news feed. Mystery Selfie Man turned out to be Franklyn Swantek, who ... drumroll please ... owned Swantek Photo Service, Michigan's self-described "largest operators and distributors of Photomatic."

Tom Trelenberg
Wow, it was just Tom's wacky uncle. In other news, there's no Santa Claus. (That's also Tom's wacky uncle.)

The guy distributed photo booths for a living. The massive selfie collection that had entranced the world was the equivalent of a fast-food restaurant manager sneaking an occasional french fry -- the main difference being that the end result of eating said french fry would only be considered art in Germany.

Creighton's camera caught Goat Man's attention, and the two froze and locked gazes until Creighton retreated behind a nearby tree, presumably wishing he'd packed extra pants for his hike because holy shit -- Salt Lake City was being stalked by either an escaped denizen of Comic-Con's dark underbelly or a character from a David Lynch dream sequence brought to life. The legend of Goat Man grew as reports of additional sightings came streaming in to local authorities. One such call came from an "agitated man" who anonymously begged authorities to "leave goat man alone," apparently after taking a course on persuasive rhetoric from YouTube.

Regardless of his origins, Goat Man immediately raised concern from the Division of Wildlife Resources, since goats are aggressively territorial and, more importantly, hunting season was just around the corner -- meaning that there were droves of fresh permit holders with corresponding droves of itchy trigger fingers. And every lazy hunter knows that the gimpiest goat is also the easiest one to pick off.

jarih/iStock/Getty Images
Goat Man initially survived by cunningly changing signs to read "Duck hunting season."

The Ludicrously Simple Answer:

Despite what Big Buck Hunter may have taught us about the killingest sport, non-video game hunters generally strive for one shot, one kill. And that means they need to get as close to their prey as conceivably possible.

After the media plastered his picture far and wide across the Internet, Goat Man came forward to identify himself (or at least as close as one can come to identifying himself without revealing his name because, again, goat suit).

via Fox13
"Just call me 'Billy.'"

The 57-year-old from California admitted to frolicking in the hills pretending to be a goat, dressed in a costume slapped together from a fleeced painter's suit and a backwards hat used to simulate a billy-goat beard. It turns out the man was a globe-trotting goat hunter, who had skewered goats everywhere from the U.S. to Mongolia. He was simply practicing his goat-stalking technique, using Utah as a training ground before a big upcoming hunt in Canada.

Actually ... you can judge for yourself whether or not that reveal makes this mystery less creepy.

For more kind of dumb mysteries, check out 5 Mysteries of Ancient Religions (Easily Explained) and 4 Creepy Mysteries With Hilariously Stupid Explanations.

Nightmarish villains with superhuman enhancements. An all-seeing social network that tracks your every move. A young woman from the trailer park and her very smelly cat. Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits, a new novel about futuristic shit, by David Wong.