Top 16 Best Camera Phones For Photography 2021

My name is Wyatt, I am 21 now, but this story happened last winter when I was still 20. I am an urban explorer and nature photographer. That is about as much detail I'll go into about myself because I don’t want anybody coming after me if they find out what I've seen. I know I will never forget what I saw, but I can’t risk telling anyone that I know. I am not currently under any immediate danger, but there are too many unknowns.
Back in early December of last year I was looking through Instagram and saw some shots from an abandoned factory in Germany. This place was so perfect, it was rusting and old, but still kept the same structure and shape as when it was in use. Some of the pictures were breathtaking, mountain views through decrepit old windows, things like that. I screenshotted and reverse image searched one of the pictures from Instagram and found a place in Germany. There was no name for the factory anywhere I looked, but I kept seeing that the town it was in was called Westschen. I looked it up on google earth and saw that it was in a mountainous region in northern Germany. As I swiped through the images on google one article stopped me. It claimed that the factory was going to be demolished in April of Next year, meaning it would be gone in just a few months.
I was feeling impulsive and excited so without thinking I googled flights to Berlin. Looking back I wish my phone would have died at that very moment, anything to stop me from looking at flights. I would do anything to go back and make me close that tab. However, I found one flight leaving from my airport that Wednesday. It was only $600 I was just about to buy the tickets when I remembered that my friend Bryce (Not his real name) was looking for somewhere to go for winter break. So I called him up and told him that there were tickets to Berlin for $600. I wish he would have talked me out of it, but instead, he was all over the idea. Later that afternoon we both bought our tickets and planned to leave on Wednesday. Adrian (Also not his real name) was also coming with us but was going to leave early on Saturday to go see his family in Poland. Me and Bryce made plans to go to Westschen on Sunday and look around there for a few hours.
So when Wednesday came I packed up all my stuff, camera lenses, sd cards, respirator, flashlights, clothes and met up with Bryce and Adrian. We took an Uber to the airport and quickly boarded the plane. Honestly, I don’t remember most of the flight, I think I slept through most of it, but finally, we arrived in Berlin. Honestly, for the next few days, it was just a normal vacation, nothing but sightseeing and doing basic tourist things. On Saturday we said our goodbyes to Adrian and he left for Poland. That night I made sure to get all my stuff ready for the next morning. We had a two-hour car ride from Berlin to Westchen, I was hoping we would get there around two in the afternoon and explore until about eight that night. Playing it back in my head I remember every little detail of that day, I remember the sound of my alarm, the excitement of waking up that day, the feeling of seeing all my stuff packed neatly on the floor next to my bed. We got up and had breakfast in the hotel lobby before walking to the car rental place. We picked out a blue chevy from the lot and the guy gave us the keys. I spent the next few hours driving through the green rolling hills of Germany until we finally got there.
I felt nothing but excitement when we finally got into the town. I remember just driving and looking around for a while until we saw it there, clear as day, the abandoned factory. It sat at the bottom of a tall hill, in the middle of a bright green field. The mountains were in the distance to the east opposite the factory. I started looking on google maps for a good place to park in order for us to walk there. There was a large parking lot next to a self-storage place that was only about a quarter-mile from the factory. I pulled into one of the spots and looked around for people. “Should be good,” I told Bryce as we got out of the car. I grabbed my camera bag, my flashlight, and my respirator out of the backseat and put it all on. For those of you who don’t know, A lot of old buildings were built with toxic materials like asbestos, so it’s just safer to not even risk it and wear the respirator. We began walking down this old cracked asphalt road that has grass and flowers growing through it. It led straight to the factory. Which I remember finally having a good view of.
It was brown and rusted, but still beautiful and majestic. It had plants growing in it like it had been retaken by nature after the people left it. After a little walking, we reached a tall chain-link fence that was locked, but there was no barbed wire on top, so I considered just jumping it, but instead, I decided to look for an easier way. After walking next to the fence I saw part of it had been knocked from the metal frame by somebody else. We pushed the metal out of the way and just crawled through it onto the other side. Now we just had to get into the factory. It was already clear to me that the main entrance wasn’t an option, it probably had motion sensors anyway. I was looking around when I spotted it, a broken window. It was only about ten feet off the ground so I asked Bryce to help me up. He hoisted me up and I grabbed onto the window sill. I pulled myself up and through the window frame, pushing aside the broken glass as I did so. I pulled Bryce up through the window and we both jumped down on the ground inside the factory. Now when I say this thing was massive, I mean massive, like probably the biggest single room I have ever seen. It had so many levels and catwalks and bridges, this place was a gold mine. I immediately got out my camera and put on my 16-35 lens and my best flash, I also put in a new sd card just in case.
We walked around the ground floor a bit, mostly just looking up at the ceiling. I took one picture of all the catwalks and bridges, leading up to a crack in the ceiling letting sunlight through. We went up one of the staircases onto the second level. There were a ton of generators and turbines all over the place, with a thick layer of dust and rubble covering them. I took some pictures on this floor but we quickly moved up to the next floor. It was more of the same stuff but still beautiful. I walked to the edge of the floor and looked over the small balcony-like platform we were on. I immediately felt dizzy looking all the way down to the ground level. I'm used to that kind of stuff, I just didn’t realize how high up we were. We climbed up the stairs to the next floor when Bryce told me to look at the mountains out the window. That was the shot from Instagram that I wanted. I adjusted my settings and snapped the shot. I checked over them just to make sure it was good because that’s pretty much the reason I came here.
Even though I’m explaining this all very quickly, we did spend hours wandering around this place and looking at every little detail. We eventually got to some sort of control room. It must have had hundreds of different switches and buttons, all labeled with German words that I couldn't read, or seemingly random numbers. It was made clear from a thick layer of dust that this stuff hadn’t been used in decades probably. That being said I know I shouldn’t have done this but I took a small silver key from the control room as a souvenir. We left the control room and saw a ladder that went up at least two stories. It led straight up onto the roof of the factory. I hesitantly decided to climb it, Bryce said he’d do it if I did it first. The ladder wobbled from side to side as I hesitantly climbed up the steel bars. Finally, I grabbed onto the roof and pulled myself up onto it. “You’ll be fine if you go slow,” I yelled down at him. Soon he joined me up on the roof and we looked out on the rest of the world.
It was just endless rolling green hills leading to the snow-capped mountains. I turned around and looked behind us. I realized that the hill behind us was taller than the factory itself. If we could get to that hill before sunset, the picture would be unbelievable. I really, really wish I had just abandoned the idea, but instead, we rushed back down the ladder and all the staircases to the ground level. We quickly lept out the window and crawled through the fence. We walked across the grassy green fields and slowly walked up that tall green hill. I won’t lie, it was tiring walking all the way up that hill, racing the sunset. When we finally got there it was totally worth it. The factory, the mountains, and the sunset all mashed together in this beautiful vista. I took out my tripod and lined up the composition. When I finally snapped the shot I took nine or ten of the exact same picture, just to make sure I got it.
It was incredible, but if I could, I would go back in time and leave that hill immediately, but unfortunately, Bryce looked behind us and pointed out another abandoned building to me. It was smaller, made of brick rather than steel. He was hesitant to go down there and check it out because it was getting late. I assured him we would be fine with the flashlights and we wouldn’t be long. We walked back down the other side of the hill and over to the dilapidated brick building. By the time we got there, it was getting pretty dark already, but we had flashlights that worked fine. The only weird thing was that when we walked up to it, the gate was unlocked, like they weren’t even trying to keep people out. I guess it was pretty hard to find, but still. We walked straight through the gate, I was scanning the area for motion sensors or alarms, but there was nothing. The same exact thing when we got to the front door, no lock, no bar, nothing. We moved open the metal door, but it was heavy, hard for either of us to even move.
We entered the building and it was dark, super dark. I immediately had to turn on my flashlight to even be able to see. The building looked more of the same, catwalks, machines, and the overall same vibe. But there was a large, circular door directly in front of us. It looked more like the entrance to a bank vault than any normal door you would find. At this point, I was stunned that we hadn’t seen a single alarm or motion sensor in this place. We were both immediately drawn to the vault door, I put my hand on it in awe, I had never seen anything like this in all the places I've explored. It was barely cracked open, not open all the way, but definitely not closed. I put my hand in between the door and the wall and tried to pry it open.
It slowly moved open showing us what was inside, there was a long circular tunnel that just lead to another room. So far this was looking like one of the best finds for me ever. I took multiple pictures looking down that long hallway, the flash lighting up the area. We slowly walked down the hallway, flashlights in hand as we advanced towards the room at the end. When we got to the end of the hallway there was another vault door that was swung all the way open. We walked through the open door into the room, it was seemingly empty, except for a small hatch leading into the ground, it was closed, but the lock and chain on it were broken. Above it, there was an arrow pointing at the hatch that said, “Projekt Nacht Wolfin.” At the time I had no idea what it meant, I didn’t even take a second to put it into google translate. Nowadays the words still send a chill down my spine, “Project Night Wolf.” A phrase that sounds like nothing, but if you had seen what I’ve seen, you wouldn’t be able to hear those words without shuddering.
I slowly opened the hatch, the hinges squeaking as I did so. I flipped it all the way over until it was on the other floor. I shined my flashlight down the hatch to reveal what looked like just a normal staircase. We began slowly descending down the stairs, as we got closer to the bottom you could hear the drops of water hitting the floor and making a quiet sound. I was going first, ahead of Bryce so I saw it first. A room that was all pitch black, with about two inches of water lining the whole floor came into my sight. What horrified me were the piles of animal skeletons and bones lying in the water, small rodents that had been mutilated, and sheep that had been torn apart. Some were just the skeletons, but others still had decaying, rotting flesh, but it looked like they had been ripped apart, some of them torn perfectly in two. I struggled to hold back my vomit as the smell hit me. I was firing off my camera flash taking pictures all around us when I spotted another door just ahead of us. I remember Bryce telling me we should just leave but I wanted to get to that last door. The room was made out of cement, stone pillars sat around the room although some of them looked like they were about to collapse. We finally got to the door and I opened it, it looked like just another control room, like the ones in the factory. The thing that was different though was there were swastikas on a lot of the equipment and walls. Not ones that had spray-painted on by some kids, but real looking ones. It was as if this place hadn’t been touched since world war two.
I looked around at some of the buttons and stuff until I saw a journal. I opened it to find that unsurprisingly it was in german. But I stuffed it in my pocket to take home. Just then I heard the sound of broken glass, not like somebody dropping a wine glass, but like an entire window was just shattered all at once. I immediately turned off my flashlight and Bryce slammed the door behind us. We both knelt down, breathing as silently as possible, not wanting to know what that sound was. Thoughts rushed through my head, possibly a bird, a mountain lion, but neither of those were even possible. We sat in that room for about a full minute until I realized that it was probably just because of how old this room was. Some structural error or rotting metal probably caused it. I worked up enough courage to go out there. Bryce said that he would go if I opened the door first. I walked over to the door, still crouched on the ground, and I turned the handle. I slowly creaked the door open and as if we were in a horror movie, my flashlight died.
I was too committed at this point to go back so I did the only thing I could think of. I grabbed my camera and started blindly firing off the flash, it could only do it about every 3 seconds but I slowly creeped further and further out into the room. And that’s when I saw it, it looked like a shadow crouched on the ground. But about ten feet away from me was this oily black, skeleton-like creature. It slowly stood up, making cracking and crunching sounds as it did so, its limbs snapped back and forth like they were breaking. When it finally got all the way up I saw its mangled set of razor-sharp teeth, lining a huge gash in its face. It was at least nine feet tall with its head almost hitting the ceiling. It was holding the body of a fox in its lanky, disguising arms. It ripped the fox in two as it let out a horrifying, ear-piercing screech. My flash stopped firing, I looked down at my camera to see the message “Sd card full.” I quickly grabbed the one in my pocket and switched them out. But when I fired the flash again the creature was gone, had I just imagined it. I felt paralyzed when suddenly it grabbed me by the neck. Its hand felt wet and sharp as it pulled me towards it. Bryce immediately ran for the door, and I don’t blame him for it. I was panicked, no rational thoughts ran through my brain except one, Survive. As I was brought closer to its face I grabbed the pocket knife from my right pocket and plunged it deep into the neck of the creature. It dropped me and let out a horrifying scream.
My camera smashed on the floor and I felt Bryce grab my arm to pull me up. We bolted for the door and slammed it behind us. We could still hear it screaming and screeching as we ran up the stairs.
When we got up the stairs and above the hatch in the floor I tied the chain around the lock, hoping to give us more time. After that, we just sprinted back to our car. It was pitch black by that point, so when we got in the car we sped off and didn’t look back for a second. It was a very silent car ride back to the airport. We got on an earlier flight back home and left that night. We didn’t talk about what happened until we got back home.
I didn’t leave my room for the rest of that winter break. If it weren’t for the journal and the pictures I would have thought that I dreamt it. But no, the pictures showed the disgusting creature exactly how I remember it. I’m actually glad I switched out Sd cards or I would have no pictures of it. I won’t post any of them here (mainly because I don’t want people finding this place and making the same mistake I did,) but I will post a section from the journal that I was able to translate, most of the journal is illegible, but I could make out this small section.
“Our tests have not been getting better, it has become even more violent, no longer eating the rabbits, but just tearing them apart. Nobody here wants to get into the cage with it anymore because of the fact that it seems to find joy in destroying the animals. Also the screaming, I will not forget the screaming until the day I die. -March 24, 1942.”

Happy end of the year everyone and I hope you all are staying safe! Here goes a final post of the year, just because.
The usual glossary for people who haven't been following this:

• Eurovision: The Gay Olympics An international music contest in which most countries in Europe and some not in Europe take part.
• EBU: European Broadcasting Union, an international body made by many national broadcasters that organizes Eurovision and sets its rules.
• TVE - Radiotelevisión Española, the Spanish national broadcasters that represents Spain at Eurovision.
• Juries: Panels of alleged music experts who vote, both in Eurovision and in national finals.
• Televote: Vote by the public, usually done by phone/SMS and in some cases by internet, both in Eurovision and in national finals.
• National final: A televised show in which a national broadcaster selects their representative, usually with vote by the public.
• Internal selection: When a national broadcaster doesn't hold a national final, an instead appoints an artist to represent them.

So, for summary, Spain had two rather controversial wins in the sixties, then kind of coasted for the next three decades, and then in the 2000's got trapped in a masochistic relation with Eurovision when their best was not good enough but their worst did rather well, and nowadays the Spanish public is convinced that Eurovision is a joke, which in turn makes them not want to see TVE put that much of an effort to do well, and the lack of effort perpetuates the bad results which in turn reinforce the attitude by the public. The only ones that want TVE to put effort and that actually want Spain to do well are the hardcore fans, who each year in the early stages hype themselves believing that this will be the year that they will return to good results, only to have their hopes dashed time and again when the results appear on the screens. But hey, hope is the last thing to die.
2012 and 2013: How you do it is just as important as what you do.
In 2011 Spain had held a national selection and placed third from the bottom. So in 2012 they decided to go for a hybrid format: They internally selected the singer, Pastora Soler, and held a televised final where the public could vote three songs: Tu Vida Es Tu Vida, Ahora o Nunca and the eventual winner Quédate Conmigo.
There was no much drama this year and things went pretty well. Pastora was one of the most experienced artists ever to represent Spain (by then she already had been performing for 18 years) and the song was perfect for her.
(Insert the standard hype of Spanish fans believing that this year they will win, but not so much because Sweden's victory was absolutely obvious for everyone that was paying attention.)
In Eurovision her staging was pretty effective and she delivered a powerful performance and while she didn't win she placed tenth, Spain's first top ten result since 2004. Remember, in 2002 placing seventh had been a disappointment, but after a decade of doing worse and worse this was perceived as a triumph.
(As a bit of trivia, there is a thing called OGAE second chance contest that is basically an officially-sanctioned competition for songs that failed to win their national finals, and Tu Vida Es Tu Vida won the 2012 edition. It's been the only time that the winner of the Second Chance Contest has taken part in Eurovision the same year)
So the next year Spain decided to do try again the same formula. For 2013, they picked El Sueño de Morfeo, a folk rock band rooted in the Celtic culture of Spain and with over a decade of experience, that rebranded themselves as ESDM for Eurovision. Again, they held a national final with three songs, Dame Tu Voz, Atrévete and the eventual winner, Contigo Hasta el Final..
There was some minor drama here when some Spanish fans insisted that the Georgian song was a copy of Pastora's song last year. The songs share the same composers and producers, so there is a lot of similarities, but that's it. No one paid attention to them, but I can imagine the Georgian fans being all puzzled as of why so many Spaniards seemed to hate their song.
On the road to Eurovision, things were shaping... not bad. (Insert the standard hype of Spanish fans believing that this year they will win.) I mean, staging was kind of secondary because the 2013 edition had the ugliest stage we've had this century and no one would actually look GOOD there. If you don't believe me, just compare the winner (Denmark) in HER national final versus in Eurovision. So the key would be the song and the performance. And they had a good song.
You get one guess at what failed.
In the big moment, the lead singer Raquel del Rosario had a bout of stage fright right when she had to perform. Just hear this.. She kind of recovered in the second half of the song, but she was so busy trying to save the song that she had no time to sell it. They had a couple of visually stunning moments, but the damage was done already. Spain placed last in both the juries and the televote, and only an artifact of how the scores were combined saved them in the overall ranking, leaving Ireland last. (Fun fact, me and my friends did our own ranking and he was our winner.)
Here goes an explanation of why that could happen, skip this paragraph unless you're interested in Eurovision theory: Under the voting system active at the time, each country had a jury and a televote that would rank the songs, and then those rankings would be combined per country to determine their points. This means that to get points from a country you had to place high enough in both its jury and its televote. Ireland got more points than Spain in both, but they got their jury points in different countries than their televote points, so in the combined scores they barely managed to scrape points. On the other hand, Spain got very few votes in both but got them all in the same countries, so they actually were getting points from there.
El Sueño de Morfeo met a lot of backlash for their poor performance and dissolved shortly afterwards. Yup. Eurovision basically killed them as a band.
This created another problem for Spain or TVE. (Which is, by the way, a problem also experienced by other countries like France or the UK): Eurovision being seen as bad for your career. If you're a novel artist or a washed out artist trying for a comeback the risk may be worth it because you have nothing to lose, but if you are a big name you will prefer to stay away from the contest because it could do more bad than good, and this is another way in which the bad results feed on themselves.
2014: Division due to dueling divas
Unsurprisingly, in 2014 Spain couldn't convince an established artist to represent them, and then they went for a national final with five acts, two of which instantly positioned themselves as frontrunners:
The first one Brequette Cassie, a former contestant of The Voice Spain, with Más (Insert the standard hype of Spanish fans believing that this year they will win. No, seriously, they were doing it since before she had even been selected).
The second one was Ruth Lorenzo, a former contestant of the X-Factor UK, with Dancing in the Rain..
Now, there is only one thing an Eurovision fan loves more than a diva, and it's looking at another fan in the eye and telling them: "My diva is better than your diva" and feeling that you're right about it.
It was inevitable that having two strong divas as frontrunners the fandom split right in the middle, with half supporting each of them. And Ruth was perceived to be the better singer but Brequette was perceived to have the better song, which only fanned the debate on what was more important to do well in the contest. The true answer, of course, is that you need both. The debate was heated, but still overall civil.
This national final played the cheesiness up to eleven: Each artist was shown clips of their family and friends putting up posters on the street to support them, during their interviews they were given a memento from a family member to make them cry on camera (when one of them didn't cry everyone knew he was not deserving to represent Spain) and each artist had to confess a fear they would promise to face if they won. For example Brequette's fear was to interact with lions and feeding them, and Ruth's fear was swimming with sharks.
Let's give a mention to the other three contestants just for the sake of completeness:

• Dama with Estrella Fugaz. Fear: Parachute jumping. Notable parts of her song: forgetting that January doesn't have thirty days.
• Jorge González with Aunque Se Acabe El Mundo. Fear: Rollercoasters. Notable parts of his song: Just look at those muscles.
• And finally, Raul with Seguir Sin Ti. Fear: Bungee jumping. Notable parts of his song: Not really.

Anyway, Brequette was rather nervous and stiff and spasmed onstage, while Ruth was a lot more reassured but quite shouty. (Some years later in an interview Brequette confessed that she couldn't stand rewatching herself in that performance.)
Brequette won the juries and placed second in the televote, while Ruth won the televote and placed second with the juries and they tied for first place, and since the tie breaker was the televote Ruth was chosen as the Spanish representative. And yes, she swam with the sharks.
Then the song went through a series of revamps with the aim to improve it for Eurovision. In your world and mine this probably would be a good thing, right? But in the world of Eurovision fans the only question was how to use it to prove that "my diva would have been better than your diva".
Things were more or less like this:

• Brequette fan (BF): See? They changed the song again. It's what, the second revamp this week?
• Ruth fan (RF): What's the problem with that? They're just trying things to see what's the best for the contest.
• BF: Not even they are convinced by the song, how are you expecting me to be convinced? We clearly should have sent Brequette.
• RF: Well, she couldn't perform and that's why Ruth won.
• BF: Yeah, and she's gonna represent us with a half-done song.
• RF: Better that than being represented by a half-done singer.
• BF (with a dangerous edge on his voice): What. Do. You. Mean?
• RF: Brequette was too green for Eurovision. Look how she cracked under pressure in a much smaller show!
• BF: But she would have much more experience in Eurovision! She would do a lot more shows in the meantime and she would be ready for Eurovision.
• RF: Well, it's not like she was given a week to prepare for the national final. Why wasn't she ready then?
• BF: Because that's not what counts. What counts it was happens in Eurovision!
• RF: Well, it counted enough for Ruth to win.
• BF: Yeah, and she's gonna represent us with a half-done song. Look, they just announced ANOTHER revamp.

(Repeat ad infinitum)
Before we say how things end, let's introduce another player here. Unlike English language, in which there is not an "official" standard on how the language works and even the best regarded dictionaries don't completely agree with each other, Spanish is more centralized, with an organization called the Real Academia Española (Spanish Royal Academy) better known by it's acronym RAE, that tries to regulate and maintain consistency in the language and has an official dictionary that only they can update.
They are perceived as very conservative, not in a political sense but in the sense that they tend to resist change in the language and usually go at least a decade behind the actually spoken Spanish and actually try to hold it back from evolving. They're also pretty Spain-centric even if only 48 of the 480 millions of native speakers of Spanish live in Spain (That's even less than in the United States, for reference).
Well, they sent a communication expressing "concern" about the song having a title and a chorus in English and calling it "shameful", and even stated that several Latin American countries had expressed the same concerns. I live in a Latin American country and I can attest that the amount of people who knew about this was minimal and the amount of people who cared about it was zero. This communication got leaked and RAE ran to do damage control and insist that it was a "private letter" that they hadn't intended to become public.
Then I found at least one Mexican newspaper reporting on the controversy, but only because RAE was making waves.
TVE and Ruth basically said that all they cared was about what would be the best version for Eurovision, whether it was all in Spanish, mixed or even all in English. (Translation: Suck it up, RAE). Eventually they added a bit more English in the verses, making the song about 70% English and 30% Spanish.
At the end, though, things worked perfectly. Ruth managed to put together probably the best staging ever by Spain in Eurovision and placed tenth, the second top place from Spain in three years and their last one to date. And actually, she tied for ninth place with host country Denmark but the tiebreaker this time didn't work in her favor. By the way, remember what I told you about 2013 having the ugliest stage ever? Go watch again the videos from 2013 and then come back here and compare with Denmark and Spain. And here's the 2014 winner Austria just to hammer the difference a bit more. 2014 was BEAUTIFUL.
Also, the way this performance and result were achieved was perceived to be more the work of Ruth and her team, instead of TVE (which is seen, at least by the fans, as worse than useless) so eventually Ruth proved herself as the right choice and became probably the most loved Spanish representative in modern times.
2015: Having all the chances to get it right and wasting them.
In 2015 TVE did an internal selection, picking Edurne, a former contestant of one of the later editions of Operación Triunfo (the ones no one cared about) who had a very successful album a decade before and had kept a middle of the road career in music and as a TV presenter and was at the moment known as the winner of Tu Cara Me Suena, the Spanish version of Your Face Sounds Familiar. There was no national final, the song Amanecer was also internally chosen and in March 2015 she released the official video that included highlights like an almost shirtless dude jumping off a cliff, Edurne reacting to a marriage proposal by morphing into a tiger, Edurne transforming her dress using fire, and multiple scenes shamelessly ripped from Lord of the Rings.
Some fans hated it and some fans loved it by all the wrong reasons, and overall it was clear that no one was taking it seriously. Then in an attempt to fix it, in late April they released a performance of Amanecer with a symphonic orchestra. And the fans loved it. This was more restrained, a lot less narmy, and in general there was the perception that they had finally nailed things for the year.
(Insert the standard hype of Spanish fans believing that this year they will win.)
So when a bit later TVE announced than in Eurovision Edurne would sing the original version of the song, you can imagine their shock. They tried to write and call and tweet TVE to pick the symphonic version and even tried to make a trending hashtag #AmanecerEsSinfonica (Translates as "Amanecer Is symphonic". I swear there were a lot more tweets about it five years ago), but TVE had already made their choice.
In the moment of truth it didn't matter because Amanecer had a staging even more chaotic than the music video, with highlights like Edurne pretending to control the stage lights with her hands, bad framing that showed her backing dancer holding her cape, revealing a dress change two seconds before it happened, bad framing that showed her backing dancer running away with her cape after she took it off, bad framing that showed her backing dancer literally crawling away from her... and just a lot of bad decisions piled on top of each other.
Edurne placed twenty-first out of twenty six countries, and while the fans may have wanted to blame this on the lack of the symphonic version, the truth is that not even the symphonic version would have been able to save this. Maybe that version plus a better thought and executed staging would have worked, but... who knows.
2016, or how you do it matters as much as what you do (Reprise)
After this, it's not so surprising that in 2016 TVE couldn't find a willing artist big enough to justify an internal selection, so they went again for a national final with six acts.
RAE jumped again right after the acts were announced. Three of the acts were entirely in English, Electric Nana with Now, and the two favorites Xuso Jones with Victorious and Barei with Say Yay.
If you want the other three acts, you had Maverick with Un Mundo Más Feliz (with the best lyrics ever, like "the cookies smile at me on the breakfast table" and "My neighbor Cruella de Vill opens the elevator for me"), María Isabel with La Vida Sólo Es Una (She had won Junior Eurovision for Spain eight years before and she absolutely tried to use this as a selling point half a dozen times during the national final) and Salvador Beltrán with Días de Alegría, all three RAE-approved with no English to offend their sense of hearing. Not that anyone cared.
This year Spain decided that along with the televote and the Spanish juries they would have an international jury. This is done by some countries to gauge the opinion of other countries that will eventually be the ones to vote at Eurovision. Salvador Beltrán won the international juries but placed dead last in both the Spanish televote and the national juries (I will never forgive Spain for this, btw), while the second place in the international juries, while Barei placed second in the international juries but won both the local juries and the televote and was selected to represent Spain.
(Insert the standard hype of Spanish fans believing that this year they will win.)
At the end Barei had a rather bad run and placed twenty second, fifth from the bottom.
(Insert the standard conspiracy theory that TVE doesn't want to deal with hosting so they will sabotage the entry to make sure they don't win.)
Yep, this is the second half of most Spanish conspiracy theories. They believe that TVE is convinced that they can win and they need to make an effort to avoid it (whether they actually can win or not is irrelevant for this conspiracy theory), so they will try to sabotage the performance of their entrants to ensure that they won't have to spend money on hosting. Some of them even believe that this comes directly from orders of the Spanish government. And in no year that will play a more important role than this year.
For context: As soon as a stage design is approved and while the construction is underway, the host country sends the specifications of the stage to all the other participating countries so they can start planning their staging. Some countries even build a mock stage to make sure their choreography can fit in the space available (I'm sure there was a video of Denmark doing it that same year but I haven't been able to find it), and then they send stage directions to the host country.
Then when the stage is finished the host country does a proof of concept with stand in artists and sends it to the contestants who review it and plan changes. I'm not sure if this process is done more than once, maybe. Anyway, the idea of this is to get the contestant as ready as possible, so when they arrive to Eurovision they already bring a solid staging plan that only needs minor tweaks in the on-site rehearsals.
Now, all what comes next has no official confirmation so take it with a grain of salt.
According to Barei in an interview after the competition, TVE didn't submit to the host TV the final PDFs with seventy pages of stage directions that she had created with a full team during three months, and when she arrived to the host city and reviewed what was done so far she found out that all the staging was half done, and in the rehearsals they had to clean up, patch and iron the staging instead of just polishing it, which led to her disaster.
Not all the years you can find the stand-in rehearsals, but in 2016 a lot of them got leaked or released (I'm not sure which one) and Spanish website Eurovision-spain uploaded some of them. Here you can see the first rehearsal with the stand-in and here you can see Barei's performance.. It certainly looks like a very rough draft of the final performance, but I'm not sure how much it is supposed to look like that.
For comparison, they also leaked the stand-in rehearsal of Armenia, so I will let you compare with the final performance.. It's a good thing that it's Armenia because that is a masterpiece of camerawork (and that comes from someone that HATES that song) so it's a good reference point of how preliminary the stand-in rehearsals are.
The fans immediately jumped on this theory and started accusing TVE of sabotaging this entry and all the others. ESDM? TVE hadn't pushed them to prepare, so Raquel wasn't ready and that's why she sang so poorly. Ruth? She had managed to prevail against TVE's machinations. Edurne? TVE had intentionally sent the worse version of the song and designed a poorly conceived show. And of course, they had intentionally sabotaged everything Barei had done. And of course, none of the artists could speak up because they had gag-orders in their contracts or they were afraid of retaliation and losing their careers.
I'm personally in favor of not attributing to malice anything that can be properly explained by incompetence, but hey, that's me. And I have to admit that TVE has sometimes been so consistently incompetent that you start to wonder...
Although there is also the fact that the song seemed to be perceived differently in the stand-in rehearsal. What Spain was seeing as fresh, youthful and playful, other countries (or at least Sweden) saw as goofy and kind of clownish, so if Barei didn't manage to overcome that perception she had not that much to do.
And by the way, Salvador Beltrán who had lost in the national final, one year after won the international song competition in Viña del Mar. Do with it what you want, I just want it to rub it in the face of the Spanish voters.
Anyway, this is all for the year. And I mean 2016 because 2017 was so messy it needs a post of its own.
And this is all for the year as well in 2020. Happy new year, everyone!

Part 2
You know this story by now, it's been common in the past year. The pandemic ravaged economies worldwide, small businesses went bankrupt in droves because of lockdowns, and I'm one of the unlucky ones that found themselves without a paycheck for next month's rent.
There's not much to say about myself, I'm an average guy. Average height, weight, build. Average low income job, average shitty apartment, average bills. Until the local fast food joint went under after a month without business.
So I did what everyone else did at that time, I started job hunting. Sending out CVs, going from interview to interview, losing my hope bit by bit with each phone call. I didn't have anything to stand out from the crowd, no skill that was in demand. I finished high school and figured I'd spend the rest of my life working minimum wage and playing video games.
My salvation from eviction came out of the blue, in a form I never expected. As a last ditch attempt, I signed up with a job agency, hoping they would succeed where I failed. I went through the usual procedure of signing contracts and they sent out my CV. Barely three days later, I got the much awaited phone call.
"It's a pretty unusual gig," the agent told me. A guy named Seb, about my age and in no better position in life than mine. "But it pays well."
"I'm game," I said without hesitation. With no savings, a quarter of a gas tank, and only loose change left of my last paycheck, I couldn't turn down anything. "When's the interview?"
"No interview," Seb told me. "They want to talk to you over the phone, but from what they told me it's pretty much an accept and you're hired deal."
"That's not at all suspicious."
"Hey man, it's up to you if you accept," Seb told me. "It’s a bit suspicious, but you said you're desperate so I bumped you up the waitlist. It probably pays under the table, but hey…" he started, but I cut over him.
"It's better than going hungry."
"Exactly," Seb said. "So stick with it, but call back. Worst case scenario, you'll only have to work there until I find you something else."
"I will," I assured him. "And thanks."
"No problem," he answered. "I'll give them your number, expect a call in the next few days."
With that, he hung up. I got busy around the apartment with chores, but didn't get three minutes deep before my phone rang again. I ran to answer it, having left it charging in the bedroom.
"Hello?" I greeted as I put it to my ear.
"Good afternoon, is this Mr. Mark?" A delicate, feminine voice asked.
"That's me," I said, stifling a giggle at hearing Mr. and my name used together.
"Perfect," the woman said. "My name is Anna, and I'm calling you on behalf of my employer. From what I understand, you are in search of a job?"
"I am," I answered.
"Awesome," Anna said with enthusiasm. Not the corny HR type either, but genuine enthusiasm, like she was happy.
"So how's this going to work, miss Anna?" I asked. "Do I come over for some aptitude test or something?"
"No, no, no," Anna said with amusement. "Nothing of that sort. Stay on the line and go to your front door," she instructed.
Her request was more than a bit concerning, but I did what she asked of me. I got to my front door, which led to the floor's corridor, and looked through the peephole. I didn't see anyone.
"So do I open it?" I asked.
"Yes," Anna answered. "There should be something on your doorstep."
This whole situation felt faker by the moment. At this point, I was expecting it to be a prank from Seb or something, maybe he actually worked for one of those prank shows and the job agency was just a facade. I opened the door, expecting a jumpscare and a nearby camera to catch all of it, but no one was there. Instead, I saw an envelope on my doormat, placed neatly in its center.
"An envelope?" I asked.
"Yep," Anna answered. "Take it inside and open it."
I picked up the dirty yellow thing, pinching it between two fingers as I walked to my kitchen. I sat down at the small table and gingerly opened it, finding a blank piece of old looking paper inside, along with an expensive looking fountain pen.
"Do you read horror stories online, Mr. Mark?" Anna asked. "Creepypastas, short stories, found footage types?"
"No, I'm not into reading," I answered. "Never was, especially horror."
"Then you'll have to do a bit of research, I'm afraid," she said, and I could tell that a bit of wind was gone from her sails.
"Do you want me to write horror stories?" I asked. "I mean, I could, but I'm no Stephen King."
"No horror stories, Mr. Mark," Anna assured me. "Your job will consist of writing sets of rules."
"Miss Anna, I'll be real with you for a moment: you lost me," I admitted, convinced I'd blown it anyway.
"Let me explain," Anna said quickly. "It'll all make sense in a minute."
"Go ahead, I'm listening."
"Your job will consist in coming up with sets of rules, like I already said. You will be given a setting, usually an unsettling one, and you'll have to build said sets of rules around that setting. No story, no characters, no events, just the rules. Do you understand, Mr. Mark?"
"Not really," I admitted.
"Read up some stories, then. Look for ones where people find rules at new jobs, or when moving to a new home or school, you're bound to find some. Read them, and use the pen and paper we have provided to write similar rules. When the list is done, place it back inside the envelope and leave it on your doorstep. You have until tomorrow at dusk, if the envelope isn't on your doorstep by then we'll assume you're not interested."
"I'll give it a shot," I said after a few moments of thinking. It wasn't like I had anything better to do with my time. "What's the setting?"
"This first one is a test," Anna said, "so make the setting whatever you want. We want to see if you offer what we're looking for. Try to make it as scary as possible," she said cheerily.
"I'll give it my best," I said, trying to fake the slightest amount of enthusiasm.
"That's the spirit, Mr. Mark!" Anna said. "We expect great things from you. I will return with another call after the list is appraised, we will discuss your salary then."
We said our goodbyes and she hung up. I made a coffee despite the hour, brought my laptop into the kitchen, and started researching. A quick google search revealed treasure troves of material, many stories like Anna had described, and just as many communities centered around these stories. Communities like this one.
I took to reading the most popular stories I found, which in all honesty was a total drag. I really don't like reading. Still, in a few hours I had a good understanding of what I was supposed to do.
Some of the stories creeped me out, I'll admit. I'm not a horror enthusiast, but I'm not a scaredy cat either. Which is all to say that it takes a bit of effort to get under my skin.
By midnight, I picked a setting and churned out the first set of rules. They weren't good or scary by any measure, so I went back on them and did them again, distilling that creepy feeling further. At the time, I thought that maybe I had a knack for writing, a hidden talent that I never picked up on up to that point. I could already see books with my name on them, earning me serious cash. But looking back on it, I realize it was just the newfound sense of purpose after almost a month without one that spurred me on.
Anyway. After multiple revisions, I was satisfied with the result. So I wrote the rules on the paper and put it back inside the envelope. Seeing that it was nearing 4 AM and I'd been awake for almost 22 hours at that point, I went to sleep.
I woke up at about two in the afternoon, and decided to leave the envelope outside as Anna instructed, but to keep on the lookout and see who'd come for it. I was still convinced it was a prank show or something like that, but I figured I'd get some cash for my effort and for the right to broadcast it.
So I waited, eye glued to the peephole. Five minutes turned to ten, then to half an hour, but no one came.
'Of course no one would come,' I thought. 'How would they even know if I don’t call them?'
As I was ready to throw in the towel and call Seb, my phone rang. I recognized the number right away.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Mark," Anna greeted me.
"Hello," I said. "The list is done, will you send someone to pick it up?" I asked.
"That's what I'm calling you for," Anna answered. "The rules have been appraised, my superiors are very...satisfied with your work. You are hired, Mr. Mark."
"How? When?" I asked dumbfounded, opening the door and finding the envelope still there.
"You start tonight at ten PM, nine hour shift including breaks. I will text you the address shortly," Anna said, ignoring my question. "We hope to see you there, Mr. Mark!"
With that cheerful remark, she hung up. I tried to call back a few times, but it never went through. A chirpy robotic voice told me that the number was no longer in use. I received a text a few minutes later that contained an address about half an hour away, but trying to call that number gave the same result.
I was creeped out before, but this sealed the deal. I didn't know what they were playing at, I just knew I wanted no part in it anymore. So I resolved to call Seb back, politely ask him what the fuck, and tell him to find me something else. But before I got to do any of that, I noticed something out of place. The envelope was placed neatly in the center of the doormat again.
I picked it up cautiously, eyeing the empty corridor for any sign of movement. The envelope felt thicker between my fingers, but ever so slightly lighter than before. Opening it, I found three hundred dollars inside, in twenty dollar bills. I know that might not sound like much, and it really isn't an exorbitant amount of money, but at that moment it was a lifesaver for me.
So, despite my better judgement, I gave it a try after all. I already got three hundred dollars out of the deal that far, so it was definitely worth my time if nothing else. I went grocery shopping to restock the fridge, filled up the car, cooked and ate a proper dinner for the first time that month, and waited for night to come.
I left home forty minutes before my shift. The phone's GPS picked up the address right away, leading me out of the city and onto some battered country roads. I passed through a few small towns on the way, but barely saw any other cars on the road. The GPS led me off of asphalt and onto beaten dirt at some point, into some dark woods. Alarm bells went off in my head, telling me how bad of an idea this was, but I ignored them. The belief that this was just a prank grew stronger, pushing back against the mounting dread and paranoia.
After ten more minutes through the woods, I saw something between the trees. A three story building with a flat rooftop, lined with dark windows. The GPS pointed me straight at it, and as I approached, a tall concrete fence topped with barbed wire came into view. Some empty parking spaces greeted me as I entered the clearing, so I pulled into one. I was close enough to the gate to see that the chain around its handles dangled freely, leaving it unlocked. I got out of my car cautiously, leaving the engine running in case I needed to make a hasty retreat.
"Guys, you can come out!" I yelled into the silent night. "I know this is a prank, ha ha, you got me good!"
No answer came, but I waited for a couple of minutes, hoping they'd give up. I was sure there were cameras in some bushes nearby, filming me, waiting for my reaction. Instead, as a handful of minutes turned to ten, nothing happened. I walked closer to the gate, to try and see if anyone was inside, and the feeling of dread that was steadily building up inside of me shot up to eleven. Next to the gate, mounted on the flat surface of the cement fence, was a metal plate.
'This can't be real, it's impossible,' I thought as I read the text on the plate.
Sunny Hills Asylum was written on it, along with the address in a smaller font. The location I imagined for my set of rules.
'They probably got access to my search history,' I thought. 'I probably saw that name somewhere in a story and I appropriated it, and they figured it out.'
I was half-satisfied with my conclusion, but it didn't make my mounting panic go away. If this was some prank show, it was awfully elaborate. I didn't know how to proceed, I was torn between returning to my car to leave or going inside to see this through. Looking back to the forest for any signs of life, I noticed movement in the darkness.
Something was there, but it was too fast to be human. It darted between the trees, hiding in their foliage, and I felt a bout of nausea when I caught sight of it again. That sealed it, I didn't want to stick around and risk getting mauled by some wild animal. I pulled out my phone as I power walked to the car, and saw the clock turn to 22:00. The car produced a stutter, and I heard its engine die.
'What the hell?' I thought with confusion. The car was a piece of crap, but it didn't have any problems I knew of besides being a bit old.
I dashed to it and threw myself in the driver's seat, reaching for the keys to try and start the car. The engine rumbled, but it failed with a pathetic sputter. A flash of movement in the clearing got my attention as I was about to give it another try, but I lost sight of whatever it was.
That was until it collided with the passenger side window, shattering it and raining bits of glass on me.
"What the fuck?!" I yelled, my panic in full swing.
Nothing was there, but I knew it could be back any moment. With shaky fingers, I reached for the keys again and tried the ignition. Nothing.
"Fuck!" I yelled, slamming my hand on the steering wheel.
My phone rang in my pocket, making me jump back in the seat. I pulled it out, dropped it between the seats, and tried to fish it out. Another impact shook the car, shattering the back window. My fingers snagged on the phone, and I pulled it out in a frenzy.
"Help!" I yelled into it the moment I answered the call.
"Mr. Mark?" Anna asked, in the same calm and sweet tone as always. "We were expecting you inside, is everything alright?"
"Fuck, I don't…" I stuttered. "Something's attacking the car, I'm trapped!"
"Listen to me, Mr. Mark," Anna said, her voice a bit more urgent. "Keep calm. Get out of the car and run inside. They won't follow you."
"How do you know?!" I asked. "What if…"
A loud bang stopped the words in my throat. Something collided with the windshield, sending a spiderweb of cracks rippling through it. I panicked harder, struggling to undo my seatbelt.
"Trust me," Anna yelled into my ear, "and run inside!"
I didn't need her to tell me a third time. The moment the seatbelt came undone, I shot out of the car. I landed on all fours and took off like that, getting to my feet after a few moments. Hasty footsteps echoed behind me, but I didn't turn around. I hauled ass to and through the gate, in a terror fuelled sprint that I'm sure broke a world record or two.
Once inside the yard, I ran to the building's door. I threw myself against it, but it opened without a hitch, so I crashed to the floor. After rolling to a stop on the thin carpet, I took a moment to catch my breath.
"Mr. Mark?" A voice called from my hands. "Are you still there? Did you make it?"
Turned out, I managed to hold onto my phone even through my frantic dash for safety. Its display was covered by an intricate fractal of cracks, the result of me running on all fours and smashing it against the pavement, but it still worked. I lifted it to my ear before I spoke.
"Yeah," I answered Anna's calls. "I made it inside, I think I'm safe."
"Great," Anna said. "Please make your way to the third floor. Your office is the third door on the right."
Click. She hung up again before I got to ask any questions. The realization that this was no prank, that I was in actual danger, finally sank in. I needed to get out on the double.
'But I can't get to my car with those things out there,' I thought.
I decided to put my phone to good use and call for help, but it was nearly impossible to navigate its menu. I couldn't see anything through the cracks. After a few minutes of fumbling around, doing my best to guess where everything was and what I was pressing, I managed to call 911. But the call didn't go through, I probably didn't have reception.
"Fucking hell!" I whined loudly.
Being between a rock and a hard place, I decided my best chance of survival was to play along. Maybe Anna would call me again and I could tell her I wanted out. I walked to the elevator, idling by its doors while I waited for it to reach me. Looking around, I noticed how empty this place was. There was a reception desk at the entrance, but no one manned it. I could see a nurse cabinet through a tall glass door, but no one was inside. Besides my own breathing, there were no other sounds in the building. It felt like I was completely alone.
The ding of the elevator shook me free from my stupor. Its doors parted, and I stepped inside cautiously, pressing the button for the third floor. The ride up was short, but not short enough, as it offered me enough time to delve into my thoughts again. The institution’s name, its layout, the creatures that attacked me after ten PM, none of it added up. I didn’t want to admit it, but I knew exactly what was going on. I was just hoping I was wrong.
But when the elevator arrived on the third floor, when I opened the third door on the right, when I found a desk sat in front of a wall full of monitors, I realized with terror that I was right. The single, yellowed piece of old paper sat neatly in the desk’s center sealed the deal: this was the setting I’d imagined. With trembling hands, I picked up the piece of paper, recognizing my own handwriting.
You must be the new guy, it read. I dreaded reading further, but I needed to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that this was what I thought it was. Sorry I couldn’t be there to train you myself, you could’ve really used my knowledge to succeed in your new duties. Here’s hope this list of rules will suffice, and help you see your first night through. If you make it until morning, I strongly suggest you never come back here. No amount of money is worth it. With my personal advice out of the way, let’s get to the rules:
Rule 1: Write your name and time of arrival in the log book at the front desk at the beginning of your shift. The guard checks the log book at 22:05 on the dot before making his rounds, and he'll use deadly force on anyone not signed in. If you forget, you have to avoid the guard for the rest of the night.
I wanted to yell out again, in frustration and anger aimed at my own stupidity. I’d already broken the first rule and, if the consequences would be what I imagined they’d be when I wrote the damn thing, I broke the most important rule of all.
I put the list down and looked at the camera feeds in front of me. Each monitor displayed one of the hospital's many corridors or rooms, but I was searching for one in particular. The reception area came into view, and through the grainy feed I saw a thick book laying open on the desk. The guard already checked it, but I couldn't see him anywhere.
That was bad news. Horrible even. You see, I didn't imagine the guard as a normal elderly man dutifully doing his rounds with a lantern and radio in hand, or even as a human for that matter. No, the best way to address the guard wasn't him, but it.
It was a tall, wide figure, striding down the corridors at night in search of anything out of place. It was a faceless entity, incapable of feeling emotions like empathy or mercy. And it was strong, maybe insanely so. Unwavering in its pursuit of ridding the property of unwanted guests. I envisioned the guard as an unlikely ally, something that could brave any adversity one might face during their shift, so long as one followed the rules. Otherwise, the guard was your worst enemy.
Scanning the other monitors, I noticed a thick metal door shaking wildly in its hinges. The monitors didn’t have any sound, but even so, I heard the metal’s rattles all the way up on the third floor. I watched with bated breath as the lock broke and the door swung open, revealing the thick darkness inside. Something walked out of that darkness slowly, its eyes lifting to peer into the camera. I felt its gaze land on me through the monitor, freezing me still in my seat.
The creature walked away slowly, and I couldn’t look away from its mangled form. It was big and bulky, with swollen muscles covered in protruding veins. I don’t doubt that any body builder would be envious of its physique, save for the creature’s deformities. One of its legs bent backward at the knee, the source of its slowness as it had to drag it along the floor. Its arms were different lengths, with its right being the longer of the two. It was completely hairless, and had a horrified expression permanently frozen on its face. Simply looking at it kept me paralyzed with fear.
After it walked outside of the camera’s view, I broke free from the spell. I brought up the paper and kept reading, although I already knew what I’d find.
Rule 2: Make your way to the monitoring room right away. You can take whatever route you want, but you have to pass by solitary confinement and say hi to Greg. If you fail to do this, Greg will break out, and we don't want that. In case you forget, you have to call the nurses to sedate him and bring him back to his cell.
I’d imagined the Sunny Hills Asylum as filled to the brim with patients, but they were all normal people. All, save for Greg, who was a bit more...special. Born to a possessed mother that was part of a cult, Greg inherited her strength and wild demeanor. But the cult hadn’t been kind to him as he grew up, putting him through rituals meant to bring out his latent powers. That resulted in a myriad of physical and mental conditions, and when the cultists finally got what they wanted, awakening Greg’s potential, he slaughtered all of them. He was found by authorities a few months later, roaming the countryside, and they took him in. But he proved to be too strong for them, so they transferred him here to live the rest of his days in confinement.
I of course know all of that because I made it up myself. Greg wasn’t a real, flesh and blood person, or at the very least he was never supposed to be. But the part that broke my heart? I imagined him as needing that tiny bit of reassurance, that fleeting sense that someone in this world cared about him, to keep him sort of sane and docile. It’s why I wrote that rule the way I did, and breaking that rule also broke my spirit. Poor Greg didn’t deserve this, none of it.
The only silver lining was that Greg wouldn’t come looking for me specifically. He’d aimlessly wander the building until he was caught. I was tempted to go out and look for him myself, to right my wrong in the slightest, but I knew that was a bad idea. I searched the drawers for a radio, and pulled it out when I found it.
“Hello, can anyone hear me?” I asked, pressing the button and holding it close to my mouth. “Greg broke containment, we need a team of nurses on it asap!”
“Copied,” a feminine voice answered. “Stay where you are, a nurse will be dispatched to recontain Greg.”
Only silence followed after that statement, but I breathed a sigh of relief. With that task taken care of, I resumed reading, both to refresh my memory and to hopefully find some explanation for this madness.
Rule 3: Once inside the monitoring room, check the camera feeds once every thirty minutes and report anything out of the ordinary to the guard. Besides the guard and nurses, anything in the corridors at night is considered out of the ordinary.
‘Good,’ I thought, ‘I’m already doing that.’
Well, I was doing half of that, to be precise. The monitoring half. I was unsure about calling the guard since I didn’t log in like I was supposed to, but I decided I’d burn that bridge when I’d get to it.
Rule 4: If the guard comes to check up on you, don't look at him. Only answer his first question, no matter what it is, and don't engage in further talking. He'll try to get you to talk more, but will leave after ten minutes.
I was sure I could ignore this one for tonight. If the guard would come for me, it wouldn’t be to ask me questions. As for the questions themselves, I didn’t have any specific ones in mind when I wrote this one. I thought of the guard asking random but deeply personal questions meant to disturb and provoke you.
What it’d do if you didn’t answer its first question, or if you answered more than one, I don’t know. I didn’t imagine that far, and that had me scared. At least with the other rules, I had a rough idea of what would happen if I broke them.
I put the paper down and switched to watching the monitors, to see Greg’s containment attempt. Checking the clock on the wall, I saw that half an hour had passed, but the night was still young.
I found the guard patrolling the corridors randomly, but I didn’t know enough about the layout of the building and the cameras to know where he was. I realized that was bad news, without that knowledge I couldn’t be sure when the guard was nearing me. Another bridge to burn later.
Soon after, I found the nurse that was sent out as well. She was a...I’m kinda’ ashamed to admit this, but it’s how I imagined it. I never expected all of this to become real, okay? She was a petite woman with curves in all the right places, and a skimpy, revealing nurse outfit that would’ve been more at home in an adult movie than a hospital. The only thing that stood out was her face, pale as a ghost and with dark lips and eyes, as well as random stitches running over her features.
I’m very basic when it comes to horror, okay? I know it, I’m not an aficionado, and I won’t pretend I am. In any case, all of the nurses looked like that, with few differences between them. No names, no numbers, no way to tell them apart from one another. They’re a hivemind with a singular purpose: contain anyone that’s not the guard. But they’re pretty dim-witted, easy to outsmart, so I didn’t worry much about them.
Anyway. This particular nurse was a big help, and not just because she’d recontain Greg. She walked past the elevator on her way, and I saw the 2 plastered above the doors. I knew her location, so I could use her to map out the building. I followed her from one monitor to the next, drawing a mental map of wherever she went, and slowly I figured out where each camera in the building was in relation to each other.
That ate away at a good portion of the night, about two hours or so. She seemed in no hurry to find Greg, or maybe I should’ve given her more details when I called earlier. I also fulfilled my other tasks, keeping an eye on all of the monitors for anomalies, and following Greg and the guard as well. My attention was stretched every which way in my attempt to keep track of everything that could kill me, so I didn’t notice when one of the monitors turned to static.
Not until that static started spreading past the screen, engulfing the plastic that encased it. By the time I saw it, it had already reached the monitors around it. I panicked, picking up the paper to see the rules again.
Rule 5: If you see a static anomaly on the monitors, call the IT department and leave the room immediately. Walk through the building for exactly fifteen minutes, the anomaly should be fixed.
That was bad news. I knew what the static would do, it would spread across the room and engulf everything. If it touched me, well, it wouldn’t be good for my health. And it wouldn’t stop at the monitoring room, it would spread outside indefinitely until the IT department stopped it.
I jumped out of the chair and grabbed the radio, making my way to the door. I stopped with my other hand on the handle, deciding to call from in here. Even with the static slowly spreading behind me, I knew this room was still safer than the corridors.
“Hello?” I asked after fumbling with the radio. “I need the IT department, it’s an emergency!”
I cried out into the radio a few more times until someone answered. A sleepy voice broke through the static, sounding very irritated at being disturbed so late into the night.
“Sup, what’s the problem?” The voice asked, a young man by the sound of it.
“The...one of the monitors went full of static,” I stammered, “and now it’s spreading across the room!”
“Ah, yes,” the IT guy said, sounding thoroughly bored. “You know the protocol for this situation?”
“Leave the room for fifteen minutes until you take care of it, right?” I asked.
“Yup,” he answered. “I’ll be right over, and I better not find you there. I can fix the monitors, but I can’t fix people.”
“Got it,” I said.
I shot the monitors one final look, finding that half of them were gone. I could still see the guard patrolling the ground floor, but I couldn’t spot the nurse or Greg anywhere on the remaining monitors.
‘Fuck!’
I left the room quietly, to not give away my position to anyone. The corridor was empty, but I couldn’t stay put. The rule wasn’t clear on if I had to be on the move for the fifteen minutes, so I decided to risk it. I wanted to find a closet somewhere and hide.
Now, from what I imagined of the place, there were closets spread through all floors but the third. This floor had the monitoring room, the breakroom for the nurses, and some other various rooms, but no storage closets.
I walked cautiously to the stairs, and went down them one step at a time, eyes and ears peeled for any sign of movement. The building was almost pitch dark at night, I was sure that the cameras had some night vision enhancements to allow me to see clearly. But out here, I was nearly blind. My eyes adapted after a while, but just barely.
I reached the second floor and found lots of doors lining it, but I didn’t know which one was the storage closet I so desperately wanted to crawl into. Most of them were rooms for the patients. But those were locked, while the closets weren’t, so I tried the doors one by one.
I was half-way down the corridor, with no luck. All of the doors were closed. As I abandoned door six and went for door seven, praying it would be the one, I saw a shadow coming from behind the corner at the corridor’s end. A small shadow, walking around with a spring in her steps, like she was skipping merrily through a meadow and not this hell hole. I couldn’t make out her features through the dark, but I knew it was one of the nurses. And I knew she saw me, seeing as my skin crawled and my hairs stood up.
“Hey,” she yelled in a cheery, high pitched voice. “You’re not supposed to be out here, let me escort you back to your room!”
Fight or flight kicked in hard. My heart went from idly beating along to drumming at a mile a minute. I turned and sprinted with all I had, not caring where I’d end up so long as it was away from her.
“Hey, stop!” She yelled after me. Her footsteps sounded from behind, mixing in with mine as she gave chase. “Don’t run through the corridors! You’ll hurt yourself!”
“Leave me alone!” I yelled as I reached the stairs and jumped down three to four at a time. “I’m not a patient!”
“But you can be!” She said. I looked back, and saw she reached the stairs as well.
She was like a cheetah on steroids. Compared to her, I was a slug on sleeping pills. She bound down the stairs with reckless abandon, closing the gap between us with terrifying speeds. I reached the landing and decided fuck it, either I’d break my legs and she’d get me, or she’d catch up to me regardless.
‘At least this way I have a chance,’ I told myself, and jumped over the next flight in a single go.
I landed with a thud and rolled as the force of the fall pushed me to my knees. Luckily, both my legs survived, so I took off running. On the next flight of stairs I did the same, really pushing my luck. I crashed onto the landing, face first against the wall, but I didn’t have enough time to assess my wounds. The nurse landed right next to me, so I took off.
She tackled me from behind as I was about to jump over the last flight of stairs. Her strength was phenomenal, it was enough to send both of us flying through the air as she latched onto me. I turned around at the last moment, and ended up landing on top of her. She broke my fall, but I got winded.
“Now, now,” she said in a sweet voice as she pushed me off. I rolled away and got on my hunches, heaving and wheezing as I uselessly gasped for air. “You went and hurt yourself, see? I told you not to run through the corridors.”
Between the tears and the fear, I looked up at her. She got to her feet, perfectly fine despite the fall, and pulled a syringe out from somewhere. I don’t know from where, and I don’t want to think about it, but let’s just say that her skimpy outfit had no pockets to speak of.
“Here,” she said, pointing the needle at me. I fell on my back and crawled away on my elbows, but I knew there was no escaping her. “This will calm you down, and then we’ll find you a nice, quiet room.”
“Fu…” I tried to say, but with no air in my lungs, my voice failed me.
She stepped on my foot to stop me, and leaned over me. Her free hand shot out and grabbed mine, with such force that I feared she’d break my wrist. She held my arm steady and aimed the syringe at my skin, but try as hard as I might, I couldn’t break free. The needle touched my skin and was ready to break through into my veins, but an animalistic scream stopped her.
We both looked down the corridor at its source, and found Greg barging towards us. Before any of us got to react, he punched the nurse away. She flew into a wall, hitting it hard enough to leave a dent.
‘Fuck!’ I thought. Greg was even stronger than I thought.
He reached down to grab me, and got a hold of my leg. I was effortlessly picked up, and he lifted me high enough to make eye contact. Hanging upside down like I did, with my lungs still burning for air, I nearly shat my pants with fear.
“H..hey...bi...big guy…” I stammered.
Greg paused. His brows creased, but it wasn’t enough to wipe the permanently terrified expression on his face. He tilted his head and stared at me, like a wild animal curious about its prey.
“Yu...fren?” He asked. His voice was deep and hoarse, breaking around the edges, but I felt warmth behind it.
“Yes,” I struggled to push out an answer. “I’m a friend. Don’t hurt me, okay?”
Greg was puzzled by my answer. He processed it ever so slowly, but made no attempt to put me down. I was afraid he couldn’t understand me, that he’d snap and, in response, snap me as well. But his lips curled into a smile.
“Fren!” He yelled with glee. “Greg hav fren!” He flailed his arms happily, waving me through the air every which way.
“Yeah, big guy!” I answered, feeling the nausea building up. “I’m a fren! Put me down slowly, okay? Don’t hurt your fren!”
“Greg hav fren, Greg hav fren!” He chanted, and lowered me to the floor a bit too fast.
I fell on my head, feeling my neck twist and my shoulders contort, but I wasn’t seriously hurt. Greg let go of my foot and I got up, wobbly from various aches and riddled with fatigue.
“Wut name, fren?” Greg asked with excitement.
It took me a moment to realize what he meant, as he slurred his words pretty badly.
“Mark,” I answered when I finally deciphered it.
“Mak!” Greg yelled back, slurring my name as well. “Fren Mak!”
“Close enough, big guy,” I said, with a dumb smile on my face to match his.
I know I should’ve been way more scared than I was, but I just couldn’t be. Despite the way he looked, Greg was a genuinely sweet person that life had treated unfairly. Sure, he could snap me like a twig, but at that moment I was one hundred percent sure he wouldn’t.
“Let pley…” Greg started, but was interrupted.
The nurse tackled me out of the blue, sending me off my feet. Now, I’ve played football in high school. I got tackled by guys bigger than me plenty of times, but let me tell you: none of those could compare. I seriously doubt that a professional player could tackle me that hard.
I landed on my side some ten feet away and skidded to a stop on the rough floor. With carpet burns added to the list of injuries I’d sustained that far, I looked up. The nurse was face to face with Greg.
“No hurt fren!” He yelled at her, loud enough to push her hair backward.
But she wasn’t fazed at all. She waited for him to finish, and brought up the syringe she wanted to use on me earlier. For her own sake, I thought, that thing better be elephant tranquilizers.
Greg tried to punch her again, but she ducked below his long arm with surprising speed and grace. She reached up and grabbed Greg’s wrist, trying to keep him steady. Greg swung his arm upwards and swatted her against the ceiling. She lost her grip on him and fell to the floor, bringing plaster and concrete raining down alongside her.
‘How strong are these freaks?’ I wondered. ‘And how resilient?’
If Greg had done that to anyone else, like me for example, I’m pretty sure it would’ve been an insta kill. But the nurse got up like nothing happened and jumped him. The two fought through the corridor, struggling against each other, but there was no clear winner. They seemed evenly matched. Realizing that they were so busy with their scrap that they forgot about me, I decided it was time for me to make my exit.
I got on all fours, but their mad brawl reached me. I took off frantically, avoiding blind kicks and punches and smashes that were strong enough to turn my bones to paste. The nurse flew into the wall next to me as I reached a corner, and looked at me as she crashed to the floor. I felt my skin tighten a size or two when she reached for me, but Greg’s arm came at her from behind me and grabbed her again.
Looking back at them wrestling like two mythical beasts, I took the corner and ran away blindly. I don’t think I got ten steps away before I collided with something and got sent on my ass. I slowly turned my head to look ahead, and my horrified gaze landed on the slender figure of the guard.
“What’s up with this commotion?” He asked, despite lacking a mouth. His voice emanated from the space around him, a low and ominous baritone that rattled my guts. “Who are you? What’s your name?”
I didn’t answer. I got up and ran, back towards Greg and the nurse.
“Halt!” The guard yelled after me and gave chase.
At least he wasn’t as fast as the nurse, but he was still on my heels. Greg’s and the nurse’s fight moved, reaching the reception area, and we found him smashing her against the thick reception desk. With each slam, the wood splintered and groaned, until it gave way.
“Identify yourself!” The guard repeated from behind me.
I decided to fuck it, all of it. I ran towards the exit, towards the outside world filled with less madness than this place. I’d start my car, drive away, and never look back. But the guard grabbed the collar of my shirt and stopped me, only steps away from the door. He pulled me back with a swift motion that cut my breath short, muttering damn hooligan under his breath.
“Mak!” Greg yelled.
As the guard spun me, ready to throw me down on my belly, I caught a glimpse of Greg. He had syringes sticking out of him at various points on his body, all with their plungers down. His moves were slower, stuttery, and his eyes were half closed.
He ran towards me and the guard, his steps wobbly, and punched it away. Like the nurse had done plenty times tonight, the guard flew face first into a wall.
“Go!” Greg yelled and grabbed one of my legs. “Fren be seif!”
With that, he threw me at a window. I crashed through it, landing outside on a carpet of grass and shards of glass.

Alright. Hear me out autists. We all know bears are gay. But with TSLA shares reaching an ATH of $816.99, it sure seems like its fundamentals are completely divorced from reality. And the media analysts have been pounding on TSLA for seemingly years now. So is this a good company to be a gay bear on? Or Nah? (edit: TSLA ATH now @ $884 lol)
 
On 7 Jan 2020, Royal Bank of Canada admitted that "There is no graceful way to put this other than to say we got TSLA's stock completely wrong" and upgraded TSLA from $339 to $700. And on 6 Jan 2020, Morgan Stanley upgraded their TSLA price target to $810 when just 18 months ago they announced their comically low price target of $10 (that's $2 post split) resulting in a massive rally. Did Morgan Stanley dive head first into WSB level 3 autism territory, or is there something that the uninitiated could be missing? Let's do a deep dive into Tesla the company and see if their stock really is in a bubble, or if there could be some substance behind the current insane rally.
 
 
The common FUD narrative among TSLAQ is that TSLA's $800+ billion market cap is now larger than the 10 largest auto manufacturers combined. (edit: Apparantly this is a common FUD talking point that is/was false. TSLA is/was nowhere near that level when it was touted around as so. Although it is undeniable that Tesla's market cap became more and more absurd throughout 2020)
 
Indeed, this is quite insane. Even without us autists doing complex calculations, a simple google search shows that they would have to sell around 65 million vehicles a year to be priced at that level. So how many vehicles did Tesla produce? Tesla announced on 2 January 2020 that they've sold a little shy of 500K vehicles for CY 2020 with plans to increase production by 50% YoY. This would ultimately bring them to 20 million vehicles produced by 2030.
 
20 mil by 2030. Although we all know the term "Elon Time", which refers to CEO Elon Musk casually announcing an estimate of a product and missing projected timelines by large margins, there seems to be some credibility to this statement. Back in 2014, Elon Musk gave an interview (2:28) where he stated "I feel comfortable that we'll be able to achieve at least half a million cars a year by 2020".
 
OK. So let's give him the benefit of the doubt. As a matter of fact, Tesla is actually building factories at breakneck speeds with construction literally running 24/7 and each of their large factories (Austin and Berlin) is said to be capable of producing up to 2 million vehicles a year. Giga Berlin which was an empty field 9 months ago is already close to finishing its outer construction layer. Obviously they plan to announce more factory constructions in the future as well. So they do seem to be on track to grow on average 50% YoY for now. But 20 million cars produced by 2030 is still massively shy of 65 million vehicles. Even with growth factored in, TSLA's stock valuation still seems insanely high. So what gives? The common explanation among the Tesla fanboys is that TSLA is a tech company, not an automotive company, so it should be valued just so.
 
So what is this mystical technology the fanboys speak of, and how is it being deployed in terms of profitability for Tesla? Well, it turns out that Tesla has three main technological advantages and two main revenue streams that might put them leaps and bounds ahead of competitors.
 

1. Autonomous Driving - Tesla is the current market leader in vehicle autonomy. It has over 3 billion miles logged as of April 2020. The next industry leader Waymo (owned by google) has approximately 20 million miles logged. One thing for sure is that no company will be able to catch Tesla in terms of pure data advantage within the next 4-5 years. And when it comes to Artificial Intelligence, data is king. This could be the bread and butter of Tesla. Tesla already charges customers $10k per vehicle to enable full self driving in which 25% of their customers choose the option. However, Tesla hasn't taken full profits on their books yet due to it still being in beta mode. Once they solve autonomy, an over-the-air (OTA) software update will be sent out just like how your iPhone updates and bam! now you have a self driving vehicle. Let's say Tesla charges $2k a year for a self driving vehicle that can also function as an autonomous uber driver which will help you pay down your vehicle or self driving subscription service. That's like selling two iPhone pros per every customer every year. And customers on their robotaxi network will also have to share 20% profits with Tesla. Think about this. The highest cost of ride hailing are for hourly wages. If no human is required to drive that vehicle, the cost of the ride hailing service will become insanely cheap. So cheap to the point that many people who live in cities will feel like they no longer need to own a vehicle and just call a robo taxi. People already do this in large cities! As this process accelerates, vehicles that don't have autonomy solved will lose market share dramatically every year. People who want cars will mainly want to buy a vehicle with an autonomous option, and people who don't care about owning a car will use robo taxis. If Tesla solves autonomy 4-5 years ahead of competitors, the entire auto industry will be disrupted by Tesla just like how the iPhone ended Blackberry and Nokia's dominance.
   
2. Vehicle Manufacturing - Tesla is an innovator when it comes to vehicle manufacturing technology, specifically robotics. Along with their insane factory automation process, they also have giga casters that mold car pieces quickly and efficiently that no other manufacturers have, and giant automated paint shops. This cuts down massively on labor and allows for quicker production while keeping margins high. Due to innovative technologies like these, it is estimated that Tesla's Shanghai Model 3 vehicles net around 30% profit margins, even after they've recently slashed their prices by 8%. Tesla recently slashed their Model Y price by 30% but still boast an astonishing 29% profit margin which is approximately 3 times the industry average. So even if robotaxi doesn't work out, they are still an industry leader by a large stretch in terms of profit margins. These margins will only increase after Giga Berlin is operational due to no longer having to ship vehicles across the Pacific to European customers.
   
3. Vertical Integration - Tesla is well known for its vertical integration. This is mainly due to having supply chain issues in the early days, but what this has enabled is agile production capability and larger profit margins. Due to this capability, Tesla improves components of their vehicles on the fly instead of the annual model release the traditional industry uses. Also, they don't have to share profits with suppliers or worry about constraints, delivery delays, or slow progress on contracts.
   
4. No Advertising & Dealerships - Elon Musk is a walking billboard. The media literally gives Tesla free advertisement every day. As production increases, Tesla might have to start advertising in the future. But for now it seems like Teslas are selling themselves. Tesla has literally sold 100% of the vehicles they've ever produced, and they have never advertised any of their vehicles. Also, they do not have to share profits with dealerships with direct-to-consumer sales. If their market dominance and technology superiority continues, it is bound to stay the industry leader just like apple did with its iPhones. And if they solve autonomy first which they seem on track to do so, what's more to say?
   
5. Regulatory Credits AKA Carbon Credits - This is one that TSLAQs love to bring up when it comes to Tesla profits. You see, a handful of US States enacted a law that requires manufacturers to sell a certain percentage of Zero Emission Vehicles (ZEV) in their state which will earn them ZEV credits. If not, they will either have to pay a massive penalty fine, or buy ZEV credits from vehicle manufacturers who have plenty to spare. And Tesla has an overflow of ZEV credits laying around. So Tesla is literally getting paid by other vehicle manufacturers to build their vehicles. TSLAQs (incorrectly) state that the only reason Tesla makes a profit is because of regulatory credits. However, Tesla's ZEV credits only make up around 5% of their revenue (page 4, row 3) and it is slowly falling. No serious vehicle manufacturer will likely produce ICE vehicles in the year 2030 so ZEV credits fazing out is to be expected. Tesla vehicles are massively profitable as mentioned in bullet #2 even without the ZEV credits.
   

 
So we went over the main revenue streams of Tesla. And if all works out well, it seems likely that Tesla has a good chance of 'winning' if they maintain their market leadership. However, the competition is coming, right? We have our favorite EV players such as Nio, XPeng, Li, Rivian, BYD etc. Also the traditional ICE manufacturers VolksWagen has their ID.4, Ford has thier Mustang Mach-E, Audi has thier etron, Porche has their Tycan, and GM has the Chevy Bolt and 30 EVs planned for the future. It seems inevitable that these industry giants with their massive resources will overtake Tesla. Or will they?
 
 

Why the Competition is NOT Coming (Tesla's Moats):

 

1. Difficulties of creating an EV vs. Mass Production: Creating a shell of an EV or a prototype is extremely easy. If anything, Nikola has showed this to be true. Rivian seems to be having the same issue Tesla had when starting up where they had to constantly push back release dates due to how difficult it is to engineer and manufacture an EV. So designing a prototype is easy. Manufacturing an EV is another thing. But mass production is a whole different beast. It took Tesla well over 16 years to perfect their technology and mass produce their model 3 despite having the best engineers in the world working for them. Ever wonder why every single vehicle manufacturer has constantly been pushing back their EV production timelines? It's because EVs are difficult. Also to note is that no vehicle manufacturer other than Tesla has been able to achieve mass production in EVs. And until then, Tesla has no competition in the near horizon.
   
2. Supercharger network: Tesla has the largest charging network in the world by orders of magnitude and they will continue to grow. VW is a low trailing second in the market due to penalties in their dieselgate scandel and as a lucky maneuver, decided to build their electrify-america charging network. BTW, due to sunk costs, VW will likely be the only traditional ICE manufacturer that stands a chance of survival in the long run. Tesla owners barely get range anxiety like they used to back in the day. This is because it is easy to find a charging station even if they are going on a long trip with their map integration. However, you cannot say the same for the other EVs.
   
3. Lidar vs. Camera: Tesla's vehicles notoriously does not use lidar technology. Instead, they almost only rely on vision (cameras). There are three main reasons for this. (I.) Cameras are extremely cheap. Lidar is not. One of Waymo's vehicles are estimated to have cost over $250k back in a 2017 estimate. Although in recent years Waymo seems to have developed lidar hardware that costs 90% less at $7.5k, it is still ridiculously expensive compared to cameras without adding much value. Here is Elon Musk's explanation, massively paraphrased: "Cameras augmented with AI can do almost all the things that lidar does chiefly depth sensing. Human vision does not require a separate depth sensor, and the entire driving infrastructure is built with human vision in mind. Lidar is a fools errand." Instead, Tesla augments its self driving technology with radar and maps. (II.) Lidar technology is usually augmented with something called HD maps. This is extreme detailed mapping (to the centimeter level) that helps lidar depth sensors with navigation. However, the issue with HD maps is that the file sizes are obviously large. And when detailed maps need to be updated due to construction or whatever which happens everywhere, every day, an OTA update needs to be sent out. And how do you update a fleet of all your vehicles when nationwide full coverage of 5G isn't a thing? So vehicles like Waymos are extremely good at driving within their geo-fenced locations, until they leave the area. And then they are absolute crap at it. OTOH, vision-based self driving vehicles are initially bad at the task until they have sufficient data and then they can drive well in almost every situation even without it being connected to the network. (III.) Vision-focused self driving AI can be augmented with additional sensors such as radalidar afterwards, but the inverse does not work. To put it short, if your lidar sensors disagree on the information they see at the moment, its entire system cannot function.
   
4. Technological Dominance: Tesla's vertical integration and engineering produced innovative solutions such as the octovalve, heat pump, leadership in battery and vehicle efficiency, custom designed AI chips and an AI supercomputer server (Tesla Dojo) specifically made for autonomous driving advancement. No other company can come close to what Tesla is currently doing.
   
5. Misdirected Competition: Remember how we talked about ZEV credits? Well most ICE vehicle manufacturers only sell their vehicles in ZEV mandated states and nowhere else. They literally lose money when they sell their vehicles, or have to massively hike up their prices to make a profit even with tax credits, unlike Teslas. For this reason, they only make enough vehicles to make up for their ZEV credits. Naturally, one can assume the limits of effort gone into such vehicles. Now, let's talk about the EV start ups. I've already mentioned the massive growing pains they will have to reach mass production. However, the Chinese EV startups have one thing to their advantage - massive 5G infrastructure within China which will undoubtedly benefit automation, especially in the case of HD maps. However, this doesn't apply outside of China. To add to this, they do not produce in-house custom AI chipsets which is a massive hinderance in processing data. Tesla did this with Nvidia for a while and ultimately decided that they had to design their own chips because of the lackluster performance.
   
6. OTA Software Updates - A minor point, but Tesla has been designing their own software for years now. Well known to the public, Teslas update very frequently and with each update gets slightly better UI and performance. Yes - a software update allows Teslas to get better efficiency out of their vehicles. One can argue that any auto manufacturer can implement OTA software updates, but Tesla is leagues ahead at the moment with top notch software developers.
   
7. Talent Pool: Guess what the #1 company engineers want to work for is? That's right. Tesla. #2 is SpaceX. Try all they want, but the best engineers aren't going to want to work with Ford or GM.
   
8. "The Competition": I already mentioned the half-assedness of traditional ICE vehicle manufacturers but I wanted to bring up another point. One thing that traditional ICE manufacturers have weighing them down are their employees. Their ICE engineers don't translate well into a totally different EV drivetrain. There are sunk costs (equipment etc) that deal with ICE manufacturing processes. Also, Ford, GM, and VW all have unions, pension funds, and stockholders. What do you think their reaction will be when they decide to ditch the currently-profitable-but-soon-to-be-shrinking ICE vehicle component and transition into resource intensive EVs? That's right. They won't like it. The only solution is to half-ass it and slowly transition into EVs while trying to keep afloat their ICE vehicle component. With massive product line diversification and lack of focus, this is not going to be an easy transition. VW CEO Herbert Diess famously stated that "My goal for the future is clear: leading the Group into a sustainable and successful future. The global transformation in the industry will take roughly ten years, with or without Volkswagen." and tried to convince board members basically stating that VW will need to transition into EVs within 10 years or go bankrupt. Ultimately, Diess wasn't successful in achieving full cooperation of the board and had to compromise in his goals to a more gradual transition. The competition is NOT coming. Oh, and as for Waymo and Uber? Well Uber recently sold off their self-driving startup, and Waymo sunk a jaw dropping $3.5 billion for their operation. LOL. They are paying drivers to monitor their expensive "autonomous vehicles" while Tesla gets this done while making a profit. As of 2020, Waymo still only has 600 vehicles and has never left the bounds of Pheonix, AZ.
   

 
OK. So I'm sure I've missed some points but I think this paints a decent picture on why Tesla is considered the one and only market leader at the moment. Now let's go into...
 
 

Tesla's Disruptive Potentials:

 

1. The $25,000 EV: In Tesla's battery day announcement, Tesla projected that their battery technology will enable them to build a $25k vehicle in the future. According to projections using Wright's law, this seems to be plausible. Most think this will happen around 2023-4. Think of the disruption this will bring. EVs are well known for having lower maintenance cost vs. ICE vehicles due to not having as many moving parts. The true cost of ownership for a $25k vehicle will be vastly superior to a $20k ICE vehicle. Once this happens, ICE vehicle demand will fall through the roof. The only ICE vehicles being sold at high volume will be used vehicles. What happens to the traditional ICE manufacturers then? Tesla vehicles are already perceived to hold their value much better than other brands because of the overall feature it comes with.
   
2. Tesla Auto Insurance: Tesla collects massive amounts of data. They can easily profile their customers' driving patterns, check if they have self driving enabled, the route they drive etc. Currently Tesla vehicles are insured at a much higher premium vs. economic ICE vehicles. Once Tesla goes fully into the insurance business, traditional insurance companies will not be able to compete with them on price or margins. This is because the insurance business is based upon data on the customer and projections.
   
3. Solar City - Tesla's other business deals with solar panels, Tesla power walls, and their Autobidder software which sells the electricity that you generated back to the grid. Tesla currently offers the lowest solar panel price in the U.S. and moreover, takes 20% of the revenue generated from their autobidder software. Renewable energy is poised to grow. More than 50% annually is the current projection. And Tesla seems to be one of the industry leaders in this market as well.
   

 
 

Risks:

1. Failing autonomous driving: definitely a major risk as the current stock price is largely betting on this single technology to materialize. However, their current progress and the rate of improvement after rewriting their autopilot code seems promising.
   
2. Failing mass battery production (battery supply issues): Although Tesla is the largest producer of batteries in the world, they will need to produce more if they want to keep up with the current pace of expansion. This will be a major bottleneck for Tesla if they cannot solve this issue. As a solution, Tesla has reduced their reliance on copper and are said to be producing batteries with little to no copper. We shall see how this pans out.
   
3. Tesla is infamous for its poor Quality Control on their vehicles and slow/poor Customer Service. We shall see if time solves this issue.
   
4. Lack of Tax Incentives: Tesla's vehicles no longer provide Federal tax incentives to U.S. customers. However, they seem to be doing fine with over 80% EV marketshare in the U.S. alone. They're stealing market share from BMW, VW, Acura... you name it.
   
5. Elon Musk Death: Elon Musk has been able to achieve amazing engineering feats. If he dies, I'm sure a lot of the company's potential will go with it.
   

 
 

Alternative Battery Technology:

 

1. Solid State Battery - Quantumscape which is currently the leader in this sector has plans to enter mass production by 2024. We shall see if their battery technology turns out to be as efficient as Tesla's. If QS's SS batteries turn out to be superior to Tesla's, they might have to start purchasing from them.
   
2. Hydrogen Fuel Cell (HFC) Battery - Likely not a good use for vehicles. Very low efficiency and wasteful vs lithium-ion batteries. Currently no infrastructure for HFC in place. Might be useful for freight shipping. Elon Musk famously stated that HFC's are "Fool Cells"
   

 
 

Tesla Future Products Lines:

1. Cybertruck: Insane profit margins, amazing performance. estimated production end of 2021 or 2022
   
2. Semi Truck: estimated production 2022 or later
   
3. Model S Refresh: Insane specs. Likely release is 2021
   
4. 2020 Roadster: Insane specs but surprise! The "2020 Roadster" renewal never happened and most are projecting 2022 or later
   
5. $25k EV: 'nuff said
   

 

TSLA Analysis:

 
TSLA Institutional Ownership: 62.85%
TSLA Insider Ownership: 5.21%
TSLA Fanboy Ownership: estimated 5%+
So there is a stable 70%+ of ownership that will not/cannot sell this stock, unlike PLTR which has only 12% institutional ownership and 63% insider ownership. This is the reason why I think the stock won't drop tremendously even when it tanks. There are plenty of people who are willing to snatch up more shares at a discount.
 
 
Why did TSLA shoot up so quickly in 2020: This is my personal opinion, but TSLA fans are known for doing deep research into the company. In the early days this was in forums such as the Tesla Motors Club where they shared their own research on revenue, projections, and potentials. Now we have YouTube and information dissemination has gotten easier. Interest in investing has skyrocketed in 2020. Stock market trading GLOBALLY has gotten easier via smartphone with apps such as Robinhood and the prosperity of the American stock market has no doubt attracted global retail investors. For years, Tesla's stock has been pushed down by FUD analysts. Paid by big oil and traditional ICE manufacturers? Or really that dumb not to do any DD and spread completely false information on a company that you are massively shorting. We might never find out. Retailers have caught onto Tesla's potential ahead of analysts this time. And as in Morgan Stanley and RBC's case, analysts have just been catching up on the future potential of Tesla to not make a further fool of themselves.
 
 
Future scenarios and Personal Opinion: Currently, Tesla holds over 18% of the global EV marketshare. As more EV players come into space, it might seem like Tesla is in danger of losing marketshare. Not everyone wants a Tesla and that is understandable. But as the overall pie is growing, Tesla, with their 50% YoY production increase plans (which is exponential growth), will likely remain a market leader sustaining their current 18% market share even in 2030 just like how the iPhone did. This is, of course, if they can keep up their growth.
 
Even if TSLA fails to develop their robo-taxi network technology, their full self driving subscription seems highly likely to materialize at the current pace albeit a lower revenue model.
 
Ultimately, do I think the current stock price is a bubble? Fuck yes I do, maybe by up to 20%. I'm not buying any more TSLA shares anywhere near this price. My FOMO was back when the stock price was $415 after doing my DD and this was with the intention to buy more shares even if the stock bottomed out. Well, it never bottomed because the S&P inclusion was announced shortly after I purchased it.
 
But if you ask my personal opinion, you gotta be a "buy high sell low" type top level autist if you're looking for short term gains and purchasing at this level. I'm looking at long term, slow moving, dead ass boring, Bitcoin HODLing, Warren Buffet style "time in market beats timing the market" boomer gains here. My next purchase will be whenever the stock price, if ever, bottoms out. However, just because I think TSLA is overpriced doesn't mean that I'm shorting this stock either.
 
Amazon was notoriously non-profitable or barely profitable until 2015 because they were reinvesting their profits into expansion. That is what Tesla is doing right now. Remember all the analysts who continuously warned investors for over a decade to stay away from AMZN because they are unprofitable? Well, I don't see any sane analysts parroting that narrative anymore. And then its stock price shot to the moon after they enabled profit mode. It's stock price nearly doubled due to the pandemic and I'm still not planning on shorting this stock even though the pandemic will likely go away in less than a year.
 
I don't know how TSLA will do in the short term. Nonetheless, I do believe that Tesla has the best chance among any auto maker out there to reach a $2-10+ trillion valuation within 10 years. So I'm just going to lean back and enjoy the show.
 
 
TL;DR: Tesla HAS NO COMPETITION. This is as if android wasn't developed until 4 years after the iPhone was released. Do NOT short or buy puts on TSLA. Although the current run seems absolutely insane, there is some substance to hold it up and possibly keep shooting up higher
 
 
Positions: TSLA shares @ $415 and a bunch more with an average price of $518. No calls because my wife's boyfriend did not permit.
 
 

Back of the Napkin Calculations

Warning: These are literally back of the napkin, pure crack fantasy calculations based on four factors:

1. Tesla will be able to increase production by 50% YoY until 2030 without fall in demand or issues scaling. As a side note, Toyota sells 10.5 million vehicles in a year so only time will tell if Tesla is able to sell 20 million vehicles a year.
   
2. ZEV credits will gradually diminish due to manufacturers switching to EVs.
   
3. Tesla will solve level 3 autonomy by 2022 and will charge customers $1k/yr. Tesla will have level 5 autonomy by 2026 and launch its robotaxi network by 2027 which it will then charge customers $2k/yr.
   
4. The robotaxi revenue is from the 20% profit sharing Tesla plans to do, but as far as the numbers go, I straight up pulled it out of my ass while referencing Uber's revenue and fudging numbers.
   

 

Year	Vehicles Produced	Vehicle Sales Revenue	ZEV Credits	Full Self Driving Revenue	Robotaxi Revenue	Total Revenue (Vehicle Related)	Notes
2019	367k	20.2 B	0.6 B	0.36 B (est)		21.6 B (est)	FSD early access (cost $8k, 1 time fee)
2020	500k	23.9 B (est)	1.5 B (est)	0.6 B (est)		26 B (est)	FSD early access (cost $10k, 1 time fee)
2021	750k	35.8 B	1.3 B	0.9 B (est)		38 B (est)	FSD at Level 2.5
2022	1.1 mil	53.7 B	1 B	1 B+		55.7 B	FSD at Level 3 (FSD subscription service - lower pricing model @ $1k/y)
2023	1.7 mil	80.6 B	0.7 B	2.7 B+		84 B
2024	2.5 mil	120 B	0.4 B	5.2 B+		125.6 B	FSD at Level 4
2025	3.8 mil	181 B	0.1 B	9 B+		190.1 B
2026	5.7 mil	272 B	-	13.7 B+		285.7 B	FSD at Level 5
2027	8.5 mil	408 B	-	30 B+	1 B	439 B	Robotaxi Launch (FSD subscription service @ 2k/y)
2028	12.8 mil	612 B	-	55 B+	5 B	672 B
2029	19 mil	918 B	-	93 B+	13 B	1 T
2030	20 mil	1 T	-	130 B+	20 B+	1.1 T

 
As you can see, I omitted R&D expenses, operating expenses etc., and haven't even attempted to calculate their net profit or factor in that Tesla's revenue might drop due to introducing cheaper variants. But this back of the napkin, crack infused revenue model shows that Tesla's potential can be gigantic. This is even without its other businesses like Solar City or Tesla insurance etc. Please... don't reference this anywhere because it is dumb math and I likely made some huge errors lol.
 
 
See also:

• ARK Invest's TSLA 2024 Price Target of $7,000 ($1500 post split) written back in Jan 2020.
  
• Ark Invest was widely mocked when they stated that their 2022 price target was $700-$4,000 ($140-$800 post split) back in 2018 after Elon Musk sent out his now infamous "funding secured" tweet. Tesla's stock was around $60 ($300 pre split) at the time.