Is This Tom?

John Green has created a new type of storytelling. He takes a conventionally written story and masks it behind riddles, which can be found at the isthistom YouTube channel.


The first video. I've only gotten halfway through the riddle.

The channel is run by Alexander Basalyga, the same man who created the riddle site thisisnottom.com. On YouTube, he posts a video-riddle every week. The video, like Thisisnottom.com, leads you through a series of riddles, and it finally ends with a book chapter by John Green. The YouTube riddle is an even further way to develop the riddle, because it opens up the ability to play with moving images and sounds.

John writes about a girl called YFN, or Your Faithful Narrator, since she has no idea of her identity. She is quite a messed up girl, as it seems. And her story, if it were real – which it may or may not be – is a strange one. The book is non-text-searchable, so don’t bother even trying. But there are hints and spoilers on the book forum. John gives the story behind the story.

This Is Not Tom

..........Hello?

Hello...........

..........Uhh... is this Tom?

No, I'm afraid this is not Tom...........

..........Ok, thanks. Sorry to bother you. I'll keep looking.

*click*

All across the internet, this is dialogue occurs between the curious viewers of Thisisnottom.com and their Google search results pages. Thousands of people are trying to figure out the extremely difficult riddles that are posted there. This is what appears on the first page of Thisisnottom.com.

I, myself, have only gotten through this one. It took surprisingly long, and as with any riddle, it seemed completely easy once I figured it out.

Riddles, of course, have been around for ages. But they haven't been on the internet for even just two decades. Having riddles on the internet opens up so many new options. Answers to the riddles can be hidden in hyperlinks anywhere on the site. They can be typed into URL's. They can be entered as passwords. There are many ways of submitting an answer to a riddle, and there are even more ways of finding out the answers to riddles. In the past, the only way to figure out a riddle was to use logic or otherwise your own mind. Online riddles can do this, and they can also use the internet as a massive database of knowledge, allowing for riddles that involve a little bit of trivia. Online riddles open up an entire new aspect of riddling.