The 2020 and 2021 VISION YouTube Channels took the internet by storm after accurately guessing popular celebrities’ deaths. It all started with the “‘2020 VISION’” YouTube channel releasing videos of the dates that a handful of celebrities would pass away. Each of the videos on the ‘2020 Vision’ channel were posted 3 years ago. Well known people like Kobe Bryant, Chadwick Boseman, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, as well as 45 others were displayed on the channel. With the recent release of the 2021 predictions, people are left wondering if these predictions are real, or if it was set up to look that way.
Each individual video features the name of the celebrity with the corresponding date of their supposed death. All videos posted on the “2020 VISION’’ channel have proven to be completely accurate.
Jake Carlini, a YouTuber, made a couple of videos shedding light on the truth of the channel after seeing them trending on TikTok.
“I found out about the channel ‘2020 VISION’ when I was on TikTok. I saw someone freaking out about it not knowing how it was done,” Carlini said. “I wasn’t as scared or weirded out as everyone else was because when I saw the videos for myself I knew exactly how it was done.”
On the other side of the screen, Amaya Dhanraj, a student at Edison, was not as calm. “I initially learned about the channels when they came up on my Tik Tok ‘For You’ page,” Dhanraj said. “Shortly after, I went on a rampage and started investigating the channels myself and watched all the videos of the names that I recognized.”
The new 2021 VISION channel has countless videos, each 6 seconds long. This years’ predictions include notable celebrities such as Kim Kardashian, Jennifer Lopez, Micheal Jordan, Eminem, and even Donald Trump. The videos also predict if the celebrities’ cause of death is related to COVID by including a germ emoji (🦠) next to the video title. “Seeing them predicting COVID-19 in videos posted 3 years ago definitely made me believe the creator was some sort of psychic,” Dhanraj said.
Despite their accuracy in the past, both channels have been debunked. As more and more TikTokers have made videos about the channels, understandably freaked out by the numerous accurate predictions, users have taken to the comments to explain the many ways the videos could have been manipulated to look like they were created and published earlier than they actually were, which is something that Carlini explained in his series of videos.“The only way I believe they could have done this is by using the YouTube Editor feature. This feature is available to YouTube creators.”
He goes on to explain how YouTube creators, like himself, have access to features that allow you to make such changes to a preexisting video. “It allows you to take an existing video from your channel and edit the elements such as muting audio, cutting sections out of the videos, and blurring things out.”
Cartilini then elaborated on how the creators of both channels produced such content. “So I think what they did was, they made a very long video for each celebrity. The long videos consist of the eye opening and closing revealing the celebrities name, then every day, 1-31, then every month, then the year. So then when a celebrity passes away they would use the YouTuber editor to edit all the sections that don’t apply out, leaving only the correct day. Since these long videos were made in 2017 when they edit them the date on the video will still show 2017.” Carlini held a live stream on YouTube titled, “How 2020 VISION/ 2021 VISION Was Made”, in which he goes into detail about how the channels came about.
