And this is the key. The ghost in the metadata.
It reads like a command. A message in a bottle. “Play the symphonies, Michael.” Or “Remember the symphonies, Michael.” After digging through dead forums, cached Reddit posts, and running the string through every reverse-archiver I could find (no luck—the actual .flv is gone), I’ve landed on three possibilities.
It stopped me cold. Not because of the juvenile “Butt” in the title, but because of the structure . It’s a time capsule wrapped in a riddle. Let’s break it down. 1. -Averagejoe493 The user handle. This isn't a celebrity or a brand. “Averagejoe” with a numeric suffix suggests a forum regular—maybe YouTube, Something Awful, or a dedicated Flash portal. The 493 feels arbitrary, which ironically makes it more authentic. This wasn't a creator building a brand; this was a teenager logging in after school. And this is the key
In the early 2010s, alternate reality games (ARGs) thrived on cryptic file names. syinphonyes could be a cipher (Caesar shift? Atbash?). michael might be a username. “Sisters Butt” could be a location (a hill? a landmark in a game like Minecraft or Garry’s Mod ). If so, this file name is a clue in a puzzle that was abandoned a decade ago.
But the name syinphonyes michael haunts me. It feels like a final thought. A message to someone who might not even remember inside joke from July 14, 2012. A message in a bottle
What if “Syinphonyes” is a mangled password? And “michael” is the hint? Or vice versa. Perhaps Averagejoe493 was trying to hide the file in plain sight—naming it something crude so no one would look closely, while the real message was for Michael only. The Uncomfortable Truth We will likely never see the actual video. The .flv is probably corrupt, or it was a 12-second clip of a cat falling off a speaker. The “Sisters Butt” is likely a red herring—a shock title to keep parents or siblings from clicking.
If you grew up on the fringes of the early internet—the wilds of LiveJournal, the primordial ooze of Newgrounds, or the back alleys of Kazaa—you know the feeling. It’s that chill when you stumble upon a file name that feels less like a label and more like a confession. Not because of the juvenile “Butt” in the
And michael . Lowercase. No period. Just... Michael.
Averagejoe493 and his friend Michael were messing around in 2012. “Sisters Butt” was a private joke—maybe a dog named Sisters, or a couch cushion. The syinphonyes michael is a tagline from a game or a meme (I searched—nothing). This is just two bored kids naming a file in a way that only they would understand. We’re outsiders looking in.