My first reaction when watching the new Frank Vidal video was, “Ah shit, I blew it.” Then I started trying to figure out how it happened, and came up with a theory that made sense. Fired up Emacs and drafted this admission of defeat:
Frank Vidal got me. There’s no apocalypse 2016.
I can catch Charles Manson and Russell from Survivor lying, but not this guy.
It’s true he’s a terrible actor, in the sense of having range to play characters different than himself. However:
1. The Dr. Sal character was basically a version of himself, so it came across as congruent.
2. He honestly thought he was just creating entertainment, not lying or offending, so he had no internal shame or dissonance.
3. He really got into it, including a large amount of research matching his true beliefs.
That’s how he did what I thought was impossible:
The only thing I don’t like about his apology video is the number of breaks: 10 in a 1:46 video.
As you can see I didn’t quite finish. 10 breaks in 106 seconds is an awful lot. I was still sure I was wrong, but I started checking more deeply.
Why do breaks matter? Because body language reading is a continuous exercise. It’s about comparing the baseline to the aberrations. It’s possible to squeeze out a 10 second lie with the deception tell chopped off at second 11. It’s much harder to sit there for 30 minutes without revealing.
Frank’s new video doesn’t have any glaring deception tells. But you only get a direct denial at the beginning, which is edited very harshly, and a more suspicious one at the end. Throughout the clip the edits are heavy handed; this isn’t a continuous monologue with little pauses and bobbles taken out like Sal’s, but a disjointed string of 10 second intervals that may not even be in the same order.
If Frank’s admission is false, this is a very professional disinfo job. I’ve never used the word disinfo before, so this is uncomfortable territory for me. I want to emphasize that my confidence level isn’t at 100% anymore. I got rocked, and I’m still rocked. The ambiguity is uncomfortable. Am I going to die, or am I an idiot? What a great dilemma.
But I have to say it: Sal’s video still blows me away, and Frank’s video smells fishy.
I’m going to start listing the things I noticed. This post will grow over time.
1. The eyes don’t match. Sal’s are not brown, but a dark gray-green. What you’d expect from a non-Chinese high IQ datanaut.
2. Sal’s upper teeth are constantly on display when he speaks. Frank’s only show two or three times in the video the briefest flash of the very tip, whereas you’re constantly seeing large amounts of Sal’s. Maybe it’s an accent feature. Seems difficult to fake that. Sal’s resting lip state appears to display the bottoms of the two front teeth, while Frank’s is flat and doesn’t. Frank looks Mexican and Sal looks Italian at the mouth.
3. Sal’s eyes constantly look bigger than Frank’s in the video. Sure you can find stills where they look the same size, but the overall impression from the videos is quite different.
4. Frank does not seem that smart. Sal seems smart.
5. There’s actually another mole on the top right of Sal’s head that you only see briefly.
6. The distinctive misshapen nostrils look identical now, although I couldn’t ID this in Frank’s previous videos. Makeup?
7. Frank’s ears are clearly flat whereas Sal’s are wide. Makeup?
8. Sal’s ears are still lower than Frank’s, when compared to the eyeline. Makeup again?
9. The mannerisms are quite different. I see no evidence of mannerism chameleonicity in Frank’s previous videos. At the end of Frank’s new vid it seems as if he’s trying to mimic Sal’s big face zoom in, and it feels off. If he’d gone into character for a second, it’d be a different matter. But he never does.
Alright, enough of this scattered nonsense. The point is, when I watched Frank’s video the first time, I thought for sure I was toast. But the more closely I compare the two, and watch them together, the more sure I grow that this is disinfo.
Yeah, I just rewatched the segment around minute 6 of Sal’s vid, where he covers a burp/hiccup with a very Italian gesture. And the micro grin at 5:20 on his face before he describes ionospheric radio communications as geek rapture. Sal is clearly much smarter, and a different person. Flipped over to Frank’s and watched deception microtells in his admission. The way he’s mostly looking into the camera directly, little shoulder shrugs of insecurity that quickly cut out before you see anything bigger.
I don’t know what the fuck I’m getting into here. I’m in way over my head. I’ll do a detailed body language analysis of the two videos later, probably.
Either I’m being an even bigger idiot, or I’m pissing off a competent coverup operation, neither of which is positive.