Dark Medic

**WARNING: THE VISUAL AND VERBAL DATA BELOW AIM TO DEMONSTRATE THE EFFECTS OF THE "DARK MEDIC" PHENOMENON ON SOCIAL MEDIA MEDIC IMAGERY. PLEASE DUPLICATE AND STORE ALL PERSONAL MEDIC MEDIA UNTIL THE SITUATION IS RESOLVED OR A WORKAROUND IS DISCOVERED.**

## Overview

"Dark Medic", "The Dark Medic Effect", or "Dark Medic Syndrome" is the name of an internet anomaly that results in the irreversible degradation of online images. The means for which these pictures are selected is unknown, but so far only pictures of "Medic" (Ludwig Humboldt) from the game Team Fortress 2 have been affected. Any picture of the Team Fortress 2 Medic is at risk for contamination, resulting in a universal increase in contrast and decrease in brightness. Other effects have been noted (and archived) in images left to transform for significant amounts of time.

The phenomenon is very similar to Dessicated Bart, however Dark Medic Syndrome can only affect existing images. It does not generate new content, duplicate existing content, or create text. It may however, spread from one contaminated image of the TF2 medic to another.

## History

Dark Medic was first discovered on 7/29/2020 during an NAPD raid on Stephen's house. When seized, his computer was found to contain 1.2 terabytes of severely altered Medic images. The subsequent retrieval and analysis of these images revealed a class 2 anomalous hazard, which is thought to have spread through the internet several years prior. Stephen has not been found for questioning or execution.

## Powers and Personality

Dark Medic is thought to be an entirely automatic phenomenon, lacking any sort consciousness or intellect. It has no recorded instance of harming other lifeforms, nor does it "express" anything resembling a desire to do so. It is possible that sufficiently aged, infected images could warp into something that gains dangerous aspects, but all images are or will be removed and denatured by the NAPD before such a hypothetical point can come to pass.

## Trivia

* The NAPD has partnered up with multiple minor institutions in an attempt to quarantine and eliminate Dark Medic Syndrome.
* Many images afflicted with Dark Medic Syndrome are removed and immediately replaced to avoid public confusion.
* Images of Dark Medic cannot jump from online to offline media or vice versa, however a downloaded Dark Medic image can infect other offline media and an uploaded photo of Dark Medic can re-infect other online images. For this reason Dark medic may never be entirely eliminated.

## Gallery

Each of these images have been denatured and no longer exhibit anomalous properties. They are included here to demonstrate the effects of Dark Medic Syndrome and warn both content providers and content users alike.

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This image was found on the abandoned subrreddit "r/uiyigaeiyarmaha". The recentness of the post suggests the user uploaded a corrupted image intentionally, rather than a stock image that fell to ruin. It has since been taken down by the NAPD and replaced with a harmless version. u/darksack100 account is currently under scrutiny.

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Found on a 4chan thread between anonymous site members. The discussion centered around online-only games and the types of players found in them. One user posted a link to an image of smiling medic with the greentext:

>Be Me

>Be Battle Medic.

The image has since transformed over many months of inactivity.

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A contaminated image sent from one email account to another, both of which turned out to be poorly programmed phishing accounts. The accompanying email text read "Men can't stand this 13 secret tricks:" and featured a dangerous link. The bot accounts proceeded to duplicate and send the same image to each other multiple times before their accounts were deactivated.

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One of two "reaction memes" used heavily by a deleted imgur account in early 2011. The original linked image has become heavily corrupted over an indeterminate time of infection, as has its sister image. The account has not been accessed since late 2013 and was deactivated on July 30th as a preventative measure.

Rate of change in both images seems nearly identical.

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The other "reaction image" often accompanying the first. It is less visually corrupt than its counterpart, which may imply it is slightly newer. It features a cosmetic called "The Team Captain", which was not implemented in TF2 at the time of its upload.

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An exceptionally old photo of the Medic thought to be contaminated for nearly a decade. This image was found on an active user's facebook account, where it was posted in celebration of TF2's release. The caption read "Introducing the 7th class! The Medic! Really excited for this game." Over a decade of contamination has rendered the image nearly unrecognizable. The image was archived and replaced with an unaltered version without the user's knowledge.

It is interesting to note the presence of a relatively untouched and dynamic background. It is possible that Dark Medic Syndrome manifests new aesthetic details after significant age. Tentative research is currently being conducted.

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Sent via steam chat from user "THEMENDEAVOR" to several other steam users before the account's deactivation. THEMENDEAVOR joined steam on 7/13/2020 and immediately began friending alphabetically, spamming this image to anyone who would accept the requests. Metadata reveals the photo was created in 2020 but shows an intense level of corruption for its age. It is possible user THEMENDEAVOR found a way to artificially augment the speed of corruption before sending the image to others. The user is thought to be a member of Them, as this is clearly "Them" behavior.

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    One of the oldest known Dark Medic photos. This was taken directly from Stephen's desktop and shows levels of corruption well past any other image listed on this site. The typical signs of infection are now gone; an entirely new aesthetic design has developed beyond the deep frying barrier. This was originally thought to be a mutation, but other aged photos show similar edits, including the one retrieved from facebook. Now the new transformations are hypothesized to be a second stage for all infected images. The final stage, if one should exist, is unknown.

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A video supposedly featuring Dark Medic, archived here for posterity. Unlike all other examples, this one has no contamination ability. It cannot spread to other videos or even other images, and will not transform over time. Note that content which *appears* to include The Dark Medic effect or even duplicates of infected photos may be completely free from it.