''Local 58'' is a

horror Horror may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Genres *Horror fiction, a genre of fiction **Japanese horror, Japanese horror fiction ** Korean horror, Korean horror fiction *Horror film, a film genre *Horror comics, comic books focusing on ...

web series A web series (also known as a web show) is a series of scripted or non-scripted online videos, generally in episodic form, released on the Internet, which first emerged in the late 1990s and became more prominent in the early 2000s. A single in ...

created by cartoonist Kris Straub. The series is a spin-off of Straub's '' Candle Cove''

creepypasta Creepypastas are horror-related legends that have been shared around the Internet. Creepypasta has since become a catch-all term for any horror content posted onto the Internet. These Internet entries are often brief, user-generated, paranormal ...

."r/local58 - Comment by u/krisstraub on "Did they ever air Candle Cove on Local 58?""
''Reddit''. Retrieved 2020-06-11 Currently hosted on the YouTube channel LOCAL58TV, each video in the series is presented as footage of a fictional public access television channel located in

Mason County, West Virginia Mason County is a county in the U.S. state of West Virginia. As of the 2020 census, the population was 25,453. Its county seat and largest city is Point Pleasant. The county was founded in 1804 and named for George Mason, delegate to the U.S. ...

named Local 58, with the

call sign In broadcasting and radio communications, a call sign (also known as a call name or call letters—and historically as a call signal—or abbreviated as a call) is a unique identifier for a transmitter station. A call sign can be formally assig ...

WCLV-TV, created in the late 1930s, which is continuously hijacked over a period of decades with a series of ominous and surreal broadcasts. The series makes use of video and audio degradation to add to the realism and unsettling nature of each video. The series describes itself as "

analog horror Analog horror is a niche subgenre of horror fiction and an offshoot of the " found footage" film technique. Often cited as originating from early 2010s Internet videos, analog horror is characterized by low-fidelity graphics, cryptic messages, and ...

", a term that has since been used as a name for a niche subgenre of similar VHS-themed found footage web series that were either inspired by ''Local 58'' or use a similar style and techniques to the series. The series has since gained a

cult following A cult following refers to a group of fans who are highly dedicated to some person, idea, object, movement, or work, often an artist, in particular a performing artist, or an artwork in some medium. The lattermost is often called a cult classic ...

. A website called local58.tv was created in September 2021 as an extension of the main storyline. The website features a "LookBack Web Archive" similar to the web archive service

Wayback Machine The Wayback Machine is a digital archive of the World Wide Web founded by the Internet Archive, a nonprofit based in San Francisco, California. Created in 1996 and launched to the public in 2001, it allows the user to go "back in time" and s ...

, and features numerous Easter eggs and plot points for an associated

alternate reality game An alternate reality game (ARG) is an interactive networked narrative that uses the real world as a platform and employs transmedia storytelling to deliver a story that may be altered by players' ideas or actions. The form is defined by inten ...

that offers further detail on ''Local 58''s continuity.

Episodes

''Local 58'' consists of eleven episodes. The first ten range from less than 1 minute to 5 minutes in run time, while the eleventh is nearly 30 minutes long. The episodes were originally uploaded to a separate website, however, as of late 2018, all episodes are now uploaded to YouTube.

Development and themes

Straub released Local 58's first episode, ''Weather Service,'' in 2015 as an experimental standalone piece for his co-owned YouTube channel ''Chainsawsuit Original''. The piece received positive feedback, leading Straub to do two more on the same channel: ''Contingency'' and ''You Are On the Fastest Route''. The series was also hosted on the now-defunct web domain local58.info in 2015 and was later uploaded onto its own YouTube channel in 2017. Straub used

iMovie iMovie (known at times as iMovie HD) is a preinstalled video editing application developed by Apple Inc. for macOS, iOS, and iPadOS devices. It was originally released in 1999 as a Mac OS 8 application bundled with the first FireWire-en ...

to create the first two episodes of ''Local 58'' and

Final Cut Pro X Final Cut Pro is a series of non-linear video editing software programs first developed by Macromedia Inc. and later Apple Inc. The most recent version, Final Cut Pro 10.6.4, runs on Mac computers powered by macOS Big Sur 11.5.1 or later. The ...

for the other episodes. All of the assets used in the series either come from

public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly waived, or may be inapplicable. Because those rights have expired, ...

stock media (for example, the "2000's" Local 58 music, a stock track called "Entering Graciously") or created by Straub himself using Clip Studio,

Adobe Photoshop Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Inc. for Windows and macOS. It was originally created in 1988 by Thomas and John Knoll. Since then, the software has become the industry standard not only in ras ...

and

Adobe Flash Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash and FutureSplash) is a multimedia software platform used for production of animations, rich web applications, desktop applications, mobile apps, mobile games, and embedded web browser video players. Fla ...

. Straub has confirmed on

Reddit Reddit (; stylized in all lowercase as reddit) is an American social news news aggregator, aggregation, Review site#Rating site, content rating, and Internet forum, discussion website. Registered users (commonly referred to as "Redditors") subm ...

that Local 58 is the same "Channel 58" referenced in his

'' Candle Cove'', which took the form of an

Internet forum An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are often longer than one line of text, and are at least tempora ...

thread about a bizarre children's program of the same name airing on the network. The

WCLV is a reference to Candle Cove ("CLV = CandLe coVe"). Themes from other pieces of Straub's work appear in ''Local 58'', such as the animated skeleton Cadavre, who appeared initially in Straub's

webcomic Webcomics (also known as online comics or Internet comics) are comics published on a website or mobile app. While many are published exclusively on the web, others are also published in magazines, newspapers, or comic books. Webcomics can be ...

br>Broodhollow
and then in the ''Local 58'' episode "Show for Children." While the series does not appear to have a continuous plot, nearly every episode seems to include cryptic references related to looking at the

Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width ...

or at the

night sky The night sky is the nighttime appearance of celestial objects like stars, planets, and the Moon, which are visible in a clear sky between sunset and sunrise, when the Sun is below the horizon. Natural light sources in a night sky inc ...

, as well as references to the in-universe organization known as the Thought Research Initiative (TRI). Straub has identified themes of the series as "stillness, distrust of safety warnings, misuse of mass perception, parallel science that arises from unexamined bad intent, dogmatic thought."

Reception

Since its initial debut, ''Local 58'' has inspired the creation of other series with similar themes, including ''Channel 7'', ''Analog Archives'', ''Eventide Media Center'', and '' Gemini Home Entertainment''. There is some difference of opinion about whether it was truly the first within its genre or an early example of a style that was already developing. However, critics agree the series categorically defined the conventions of the genre that would carry forward. Some also speculate it has indirectly influenced feature-length films such as '' Skinamarink'' (2022) which rely heavily on analog aesthetics. As of December 2022, the ''Local 58'' YouTube channel has over 558,000 subscribers and over 20 million views. A

subreddit Reddit (; stylized in all lowercase as reddit) is an American social news news aggregator, aggregation, Review site#Rating site, content rating, and Internet forum, discussion website. Registered users (commonly referred to as "Redditors") subm ...

dedicated to the series was created on August 8, 2016, which as of December 2022 has 25,400 followers. Straub himself has answered some questions about the series on the subreddit. The emergency alert shown in ''Contingency'' has been compared to the

2018 Hawaii false missile alert On the morning of Saturday, January 13, 2018, a ballistic missile alert was accidentally issued via the Emergency Alert System and Wireless Emergency Alert, Wireless Emergency Alert System over television, radio and cellphones in the U.S. state ...

Controversy

On July 4, 2022, YouTube marked one ''Local 58'' episode, "Show for Children," as "for kids", which disables user comments to comply with the

Children's Online Privacy Protection Act The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA) is a United States federal law, located at (). The act, effective April 21, 2000, applies to the online collection of personal information by persons or entities under U.S. juri ...

. After Straub appealed YouTube's decision via in-site and other social media support avenues, it was reverted to its original settings on July 6. This has sparked renewed discussions about

Elsagate Elsagate is a neologism referring to the controversy surrounding videos on YouTube and YouTube Kids that are categorized as "child-friendly", but which contain themes that are inappropriate for children. Most videos under this classification are ...

and concerns regarding YouTube's moderation algorithms.

References

External links