I Feel Fantastic

The song you just heard is a little song called “I Feel Fantastic” by Tara, a singing Android.

It first appeared on the internet in 2004. It features the song you just heard being sung by a robot named Tara. The robot is definitely an inhabitant of Uncanny Valley. She resembles a human, and looks close enough to a human being but far away from exactly human. The result is a very creepy, eerie vibe even when she’s just standing there doing nothing. As she starts to move, it gets even weirder. The movements are very robotic, as you’d expect from an Android built by an amateur in 2004.

The music video is also quite strange. Tara is dressed in different clothes throughout it, and it cuts awkwardly between her singing and shots of fields and forests.

In 2009, the video made it’s way to YouTube, where it has collected over 11M views in it’s time there. It was uploaded by a user named Creepyblog. It remains the only video posted to his account. This user was traced back to Blogspot, where he maintained an active blog from 2008 to 2009. The topics he covers there vary widely, from Bigfoot to the recently released Obamacare to reasons by XBox sucks, methods of torture and if Hitler was a Christian.

His description of the video is as follows:

What you are about to watch is a mysterious video. It's origin is attributed variously, and almost certainly spuriously, to various abstract artists or surrealists. The truth is that what we are seeing, and what we perceive to be strange and disturbing, is actually beauty to it's creator.

To him, her toneless voice, the paleness of her skin and the comparative vibrancy of her lips may indeed be the very embodiment of a perfect woman...

Consider the mind-scape of the creator. In whose mind does this appear beautiful? In whose mind is this pure, near worshipful? Are we missing out on his perspective?

Who are we to be afraid or to judge them? He may well love her fully, perhaps more fully than any of us could ever hope to be loved. In the mind of her creator, she is a near goddess; the perfect representation, not just of femininity, but the peak of human potential. A perfectly satisfactory being.

How does that kind of unconditional love feel?

Well, how does she feel?

Fantastic.

So, what does this user, creepyblog, has to do with the video itself? Probably nothing, really. He doesn’t claim to have created the video, and even in his description alludes to the mystery of the video and its origin. The details that he attributes to it are almost certainly fantasy. Just an overactive imagination, doing the thing we all do when confronted with something we don’t thoroughly understand. We tell a story, we make up reasons why this thing exists and what its purpose is.

In this case, I think user creepyblog perpetuated the mythology behind the video, either on purpose or accidentally. Even today, rumors are spread all over the internet that Tara is dressed in the clothes of the women the creator murdered. The strange cuts to forests and fields are where the bodies are buried. There’s even rumors that Tara is not an Android, but in fact a dead woman herself, with lots of makeup to cover the decomposition. A modern version of Psycho, playing out on the internet.

These murder mystery theories are backed up by the lyrics in the song that say phrases like, “ “Please leave,” and “Run, run, run, run…”

The reality of this Internet Freakshow is, perhaps unfortunately, not quite as interesting.

The video was traced back to a website called AndroidWorld, where the Tara Android is credited to a man named John Bergeron. The website is selling a DVD called, “Android Music Videos” featuring a very amateurly-designed cover as you’d expect from an amateur-produced DVD around this time. It features 5 songs, named:

1. Electricity (metal version)

2. Brutal metal (Play with RealOne Player)

3. Please

4. Electricity

5. Brutal1

One of the samples included on the page needs to be played with RealPlayer, a reminder of the era in which these videos were made and presented to the world.

It is still available for purchase through PayPal for just $7 plus $4 shipping to US citizens, or $19 if you live outside of the US. Full disclosure, I did not buy the DVD.

A YouTube user named “Niyou77” does have copies of the other music videos, however.

In fact, he claims to be the original creator. In addition to the original, “I Feel Fantastic”, he uploaded the other songs mentioned before with their original titles. They are every bit as freaky and bizarre as I Feel Fantastic. He’s also tried to expand upon the mythology of Tara, with explanations on how her AI functioned

There’s also a clip of Tara biting the finger off her creator.

These videos are clear parodies of the original. Tara looks similar enough, but not identical to the original. The voice is also substantially different. Many of the videos are done in post-processing software, where a cutout of Tara stands against fake backgrounds. This is far and away different from the approach of the I Feel Fantastic videos and the legitimate “sister” videos from the DVD supplied by AndroidWorld.

I think it’s clear that the YouTube user is not the original creator of Tara, but has chosen this strange viral video as a platform to expand the mythology of the Android. In another video’s description, he wrote, “i could hear my android coming so i hid in my closet and filmed this video. she hasnt moved and keeps staring at the closet door. someone call the police please”. The video is just a series of shots from different angles of Tara standing there, not moving at all. This did, indeed, expand on the mythology of Tara, leading to some rumors that she became self-aware and killed her creator.

At this point, the mythology gets even more bizarre. I guess Tara did not succeed in killing her creator, so in a follow-up video entitled, “music video from space”, you see Tara flashing in front of many backgrounds. The description reads, “i sent my android to space to try and get rid of her but she returned to my front door with a video tape containing this file”.

Strangely, it gets harder and harder to suss out which are the “real” rumors and which are just people on the internet running with the joke. While believing that Tara is a dead woman with makeup on may seem like a stretch, it is certainly a much bigger stretch to think she’s travelled to outer space and made a music video while she was there. And yet, these rumors persist, either as people goofing around or actually believing at least pieces of this mythology.

So yeah, this channel is a clear parody but doesn’t really answer any of the questions from the original. I think we can rule out most possibilities of these internet rumors though, working from back to front. Tara likely never ended up in space. She didn’t try to kill her creator or bite off any fingers. She’s probably not a dead person with makeup on her. She’s probably not wearing the clothes of murdered women and the flashes of forests are probably not their final resting places. So with these rumors and mysteries out of the way, why are we even talking about this? Because, just as with most internet mysteries, the question ultimately comes down to who made the thing, and why?

AndroidWorld solves another mystery for us. According to that website, “Tara was built by John Bergeron back in 2003 and 2004. John was trying to bootstrap the android industry just as I have been trying to do. She is a bit primitive but that is to be expected given the tiny budget available to John. In 2004 John made a music video of Tara singing. Some folks think its creepy, but I think its just a little spooky. I currently have no email address for John Bergeron.”

Users have tried to find the elusive John Bergeron, but have come up short. There is an iTunes album by a man of the same name, however it doesn’t appear to be the same man unless he has practiced his musical techniques a lot in the years since I Feel Fantastic. There’s another YouTube channel by a guy name John Bergeron, which focuses mainly on hair products. That also doesn’t seem like the same guy.

Unless the original John Bergeron speaks out, we’ll never find out any more details about Tara or I Feel Fantastic. In my opinion, John Bergeron is likely a hobbyist android builder and musician. And hey, we all need hobbies, right? He made this video for fun and to promote the hobby of building robots and it caught on in ways he did not predict. I, for one, applaud John and his contribution to this freaky internet of ours, whether he meant to create a strange internet conspiracy or not. Stay real John.