Identity Theft Tablet Devices (Seeking Greenlight)

Summary:

Mischievous entities in touchscreen tablets

Identity Theft Tablet Devices (Seeking Greenlight)

Dr Lilyana 29 Apr 2021 02:46

Seeking Greenlights: Yes

Page Type: SCP Article

Genre (Optional): Horror(Anxiety Causing), Comedy

Page Layout (Optional): Typical SCP document layout

Elevator Pitch: Tablets with anomalous entities inside of them that can steal your information necessary to buy things with your money if you take a selfie with them. They will then order whatever they think you'll like, until you are out of money.

Central Narrative: A safe class object, discovered when various reports of people arrested for unusual purchases reach the ears of embedded Foundation operatives. Upon investigation, all the reports had the same detail of their tablet 'messing up' or 'distorting' selfies and videos before the purchases begin. (One example of these will be given) The images and videos would show the subject making various faces that are either out of character or unusual in severity. The entities inside the tablets have been ordering random things based on the subconscious desires and interests of the people in the selfies, and a list of the random items is provided, including but not limited to:

+ show block

• 1 tonne of depleted uranium rods, delivered to a zoology student from Arkansas.
• A gorilla, delivered to a housewife in California.
• 1 kg of bone supposedly taken from the first Mayor of [DATA REDACTED], delivered to an HR Specialist living in [DATA REDACTED] Missouri.
• 6472 sets of polyhedral dice used in various tabletop roleplaying games, delivered to a teacher in ████████████.
• The surgically removed [DATA EXPUNGED] of a Megachasma pelagios, commonly referred to as a Megamouth shark, delivered to an individual who runs an online store that caters to members of a subculture interested in anthropomorphic animal characters.

(not entire list, rest would be included in draft/final)

Hook/Attention-Grabber: Whilst there have been some shapeshifters and some tech related SCP's, I've not heard of anything quite like this, and this was inspired by a tablet interacting poorly with low light levels. The picture I have to accompany it is definitely creepy enough to grab attention, or so I've been told by others who have helped me prepare for presenting this idea.

Additional Notes: First attempt at getting something greenlit, so happy to provide more details if that is desired. I was attempting to be concise whilst still providing the important notes for the objects. I will be making a Sandbox asap now that I have been invited, should that be requested.

Caught something that's messing with my head so going to wait till I can think better before doing more with this. Best foot forward and all.

Feedback Notes:

• Make the items less random more personal
  • think items that actually reveal deep dark secrets
• Give examples of the thoughts that the entities based the purchases off of. (Oh, this person likes dice, buy them ALL THE DICE)
• Test log that shows the internal logic used for making purchases

Last edited on 03 May 2021 04:00 by Dr Lilyana Show more

Forum Criticism Team - Captain Post

Zyn 01 May 2021 07:01

Since this thread was on page 6 of the forum listing with no feedback yet, this is a quick reminder from staff for the author. Please remember to contact reviewers directly to request feedback as needed, if you haven't done so already.

This thread has information on reaching out to reviewers: http://www.scp-wiki.net/forum/t-13282692/how-to-get-more-reviews

If you have already contacted multiple reviewers and received no reply, feel free to ask a staff member for assistance finding a reviewer.

Re: Forum Criticism Team - Captain Post

Dr Lilyana 01 May 2021 08:20

Thank you, I posted this when I had struggled through not feeling well, so I was waiting till my head was more together to reach out to reviewers. I am doing moderately better now, so I am going to send out some messages to contact individuals tonight hopefully.

Thank you so much for your help, I really appreciate it!

Re: Forum Criticism Team - Captain Post

Zyn 02 May 2021 07:47

You're welcome; best of luck! And please don't ever feel like you need to push yourself to post when you're not feeling well. The SCP wiki should be first and foremost a hobby—take care of your wellbeing first!

Re: Identity Theft Tablet Devices (Seeking Greenlight)

cybersqyd 03 May 2021 07:54

I think my central concern is just that a list of things this orders isn't a very fun way to take this article: like, I like the idea of the anomaly and it having some kinda, weird internal logic and the kinda creepy pictures it takes that are subverted sort of by it being kinda good natured (even if it does spend all your money). But just a list of weird things it got feels… hard to nail well. Like, you gotta get the escalation in there, you've gotta keep a reader hooked in reading more weird things, and you've gotta figure out a way to end the list with a single item that feels satisfying for a reader and not like it's just kinda an arbitrary point to end.

I think kinda, exploring the interplay between it like, trying to do a good thing and it spending all your money and basically not being very good at doing good things could be pretty fun; either from the perspective of the SCP itself being forced to confront this, or from the perspective of a single person who is affected by it and like, the SCP getting increasingly desperate and buying ever weirder things.

Re: Identity Theft Tablet Devices (Seeking Greenlight)

Dr Lilyana 03 May 2021 08:51

I've gotten some similar feedback from the irc, regarding the list, and one of the solutions that I'm going to work on is coming up with a test log of Foundation personnel having hooked up a tablet to a computer and reading the internal logic used to make purchase.

So, for example, showing an internal log of:

Instance: XXXX-1: Item Ordered: Gorilla Logic: Well this human thought that this gorilla character from their recreational activies would give good hugs, therefore I shall order them a gorilla to hug!" Trigger Thought: "Man, I bet Winston would give great hugs."

Instance: XXXX-2: Item Ordered: 6472 sets of dice. Logic: This human likes dice, therefore, I'll order them *all* of the dice. Trigger Thought: "Oh wow, those dice are pretty!"

One thought I had, regarding the buying increasingly weird things, was having the last item on one of the logs be something implying that someone totally not inspired by my own thoughts with upcoming grad school projects had a thought of "Man I wish the world would end so I don't have to do this project," and then the last bit of the log saying something along the lines of "Attempting to order one black hole generator. Order Status: Searching for vendor…"

I hadn't intended for the entities to be sentient, I was thinking of them as more along the lines of AI. One way I summed them was 'fey AI.' Mischievous and not entirely understanding of human logic, hence is why they don't fully realize that they're not really helping.

The thought is interesting of a log showing the items purchased by one tablet and it being similar to the table-top figurine that messes with luck because it just wanted to help those in possession of it, but ends up just causing trouble. I just worry about that being seen as borrowing too much from that scip.

Thank you so much for your time, I really appreciate it. 🥺