This will be a multi-part series as I move through my outline of notes on Sal’s warning and the fallout.
Let’s start out with the source links. Here is the Reddit thread. Here’s another long thread where I first found the link, at Above Top Secret. Below is Sal’s video warning.
* Sal’s Credibility
We begin with the man – can he be believed? That is the question.
Most people think he’s actually actor/dentist Frank Vidal, so let’s start there.
** Frank Vidal
The Frank Vidal theory has two major things going for it. #1, they look pretty similar:
The screenshots are taken from these two videos of Frank “acting” here and here.
#2, they both used the same statistically improbable phrase: “Destiny is an esoteric turd.”
The Twitter quote comes from Frank Vidal’s account here, but it’s now locked. He has responded to the internet barrage of attention with bewildered turtling. You can still see the quotation in the Google cache here. Here’s the full quote:
Destiny is an esoteric turd. –Matt Rhodes, “Turn”, 2007
8:08 AM – 5 Jul 11 » Dr. Frank Vidal.
Most people have stopped there and concluded that Frank Vidal is Salvatore Conti. Case closed. This is how the internet thinks, and what it likes. Lazy and quick, a nice shot of superiority, everyone vote and move to the next story.
Since I expect to die unpleasantly in the apocalyptic scenario Dr. Sal predicts, I would be happy to agree. But life is not so simple. These good folks are underestimating the internet’s ability to generate coincidence.
One double is great; but what if we’ve got two? Here’s the Facebook page of a Salvatore Conti, living in Italy, join date January 21, 2009. In the pictures we see a man with the same face, the same age. Seriously, go have a look.
Except, not quite exactly the same, if you look close enough. The most obvious difference is, he’s missing the mole on the left cheek. I won’t post the pictures here because he’s a private individual, but you can go and surf them yourself.
So let’s take a closer look at Frank Vidal, and see if he’s really “Dr. Salvatore Conti”.
*** Debunking Frank Vidal
**** Esoteric turd
Sal says “Destiny is an esoteric turd” is his video, and Frank said the same thing on Twitter.
The quote is actually from a play, so it’s possible both are using it independently. Granted, Frank’s Twitter is the only match Google provides for that quote, so it’s a pretty big coincidence. But it’s also a pretty big coincidence that there’s a Salvatore Conti with the same face and name and age in Italy. These things do happen, particularly if you don’t set any prior bounds on them.
To quote an internet denizen (Google has failed me so I can’t attribute):
As to the odds, i’d say the odds of both being the same man, are about equal to the odds that the Salvatore Conti that owns property at 5724 INNSBRUCK ST in Houston caught a showing of “down the road”, the play this line is from, at the Midtown Arts Center which is about 15 minutes away, or at another venue, sometime in the last 21 years (play was written in 1991); and the line stuck with him. Who knows?
**** Eye sockets
The most obvious difference to me between Frank and Sal is the eye sockets. That’s because I look at lots of them in order to evaluate forum applications. But I know there’s a learning curve, due to the way a camera messes with depth perception. Take a look and see what you think:
If the depth perception is messing with you above, take the one on the left as more accurate. It shows true depth.
I hope most people will agree at this point that Sal’s sockets LOOK deeper.
The answer I’ve heard is that aging makes the eye sockets sink inwards. But it’s actually the opposite – socket depth looks shallower in the elderly. Not that it matters; Sal doesn’t show any wrinkling; his skin is still smooth and taught.
Here’s an excellent example of the effects of age on socket depth, from Ron Paul:
You can see how the flesh is sort of sagging and puffing, filling in the once smoothly-defined socket. Or else maybe the flesh surrounding the socket is getting thinner, making the socket look shallower. Someone who knows more about aging could probably explain.
Perhaps there’s some confusion over definitions. I define socket depth as from the foremost tip of the eyeball to the foremost projection of the browline directly above it, when viewed in profile. Since skin gets thinner with age, this measurement necessarily gets shallower over time. The “sinking” effect that does occur with age is different than what I’m talking about:
As you can see, the flesh around the eyeballs is melting away, leaving the eyeball to pop out more prominently. Needless to say, Sal’s face does not show any such effect.
**** Other Facial Differences
We needn’t stop; there are plenty more differences to explore.
Firstly, you can see that Frank’s ears extend above the tops of his eyeballs while Sal’s ears do not. While the forward-back angle of the head has some impact on this, it is consistent across all three of the picture sets (created by my opponents, not me). So far, nobody has noted this.
Secondly, the angle of Frank’s lower ear is vertical to his skull, while Sal’s is closer to 45 degrees. This is circled in red. What this means is that Sal’s ears stick out more than Frank’s, whose ears are more pinned back against his head.
Below you can see someone attempting to commit visual deception. I rotated Frank’s photo so that both heads are at the same angle.
Above, Frank and Sal’s right ears now appear roughly the same. At least, they have similar angularity. But you can only see a tiny smidgen of Frank’s left ear, while you can see much of Sal’s. In order to get the angularity to match, Frank has to turn his head further than Sal, who is looking almost straight on. This is because Frank’s ears are flatter.
In both of the above photo sets, Sal’s nose bridge (UPDATE: I meant the long part from the tip to the connection with the brow) is also thicker than Frank’s. And in both, Sal’s eyebrows are bushier and less distinct.
The eyebrows, maybe the nose, maybe even the ear angle could be attributed to aging, lighting, cameras, weight change. But the ear height and the eye sockets can’t be. These are two different people.
And of course, I haven’t mentioned that damn mole.
**** “Spanish” Accent
Various people have claimed that Sal has a Spanish accent in the video. I quote (again Google has failed my attempt at attribution):
To start i must say that it’s IMHO quite normal that for every English speak native he looks kinda “Spanish”, because both pronunciations look very similar indeed. Well, i am Portuguese, quite familiar with Spanish people,They are our “neighbors”, and in my teens i used to deal with some italian guys for some time, and for me he looks exactly like a Italian man talking English!
Another writes:
Explain to me exactly what an Italian accent sounds like because I can go from Sicily to Rome to Naples and even Venice and their accent changes.
One of the biggest supposed proofs of this Spanish origin is Sal’s use of the phrase, “Que sera sera,” which people have erroneously identified as Spanish.
Someone writes:
I noticed that as well, but it’s a popular expression, even in non-spanish-speaking countries, so it’s not reliable evidence against him being Italian.
A Google search for “Que sera sera” in Italian yields 48,300 results (with quotes).
The phrase actually has a pseudo-Italian origin, but remained English until it was spread to non-English speaking countries by Doris Day. From Wikipedia:
The saying was originally coined, in Italian-as-a-foreign-language, by an English aristocrat of the 16th century (the 1st Earl of Bedford), as his family’s heraldic motto.[7][8] He merged the free relative what with the interrogative what. Soon after that, it appeared in Christopher Marlowe’s play Doctor Faustus (written ca. 1590; published 1604), whose text (Act 1, Scene 1) contains a line with the archaic Italian spelling “Che sera, sera / What will be, shall be”). From then until the 1950s, the saying appeared in print repeatedly, though not frequently, with both spellings (“Che” and “Que”), first as a motto and later as a spontaneous expression of fatalistic attitude, always in an English-speaking context. The saying has virtually no history in Spain or Italy prior to Doris Day.
Sal says “Hao ba” right before “Que sera sera,” but nobody has accused him of being Chinese.
**** “Acting” Differences
Next up, I’ll discuss the acting differences and lie detection comparative analysis between Sal’s video, a Frank video, one of my videos, and a Charles Manson video.