Blurring Images & Captain D

My take on different types of AI is coming soon, I swear, I’m just having a hard time putting into words how horrific LLM’s assuming the roles of “Characters” can be. I just wanted to write this because it made me genuinely uncomfortable.

Also, this is going to hit a lot of the same point’s as Patricia Taxxon’s “what is captain disillusion getting at, here?” video post, and you’ll see why quickly.

One More thing, I’d recommend you watch both Emnerson’s “Unblurring Passwords” & Captain Disillusion’s “CD / Blur” videos, in this order, before reading, as I will be bringing up both videos, and maybe dip into Taxxon’s video as well for some background information, though, I won’t be focusing on that too much.

A while back, Captain Disillusion posted this challenge on Twitter. It was a simple challenge, but one that genuinely piqued people’s interest.

I keep hearing this, but is it really true? Can someone un-blur these center digits?

(AE's basic "Fast Box Blur" set to 20, font: Arial Narrow Bold.)

Captain Disillusion (@CDisillusion) on November 1st, 2024 at 10:57 AM (EST)

See original Post

A relatively easy task, if you know what you’re doing. Figure out the numbers at the center of the image, and post back. Emnerson quickly solved the code in around 20 Minutes, just 2 hours later.

took me about 20 minutes. did i get it? @CDisillusion

Emnerson (@emnersonn) on November 1st, 2024 at 12:08 PM (EST)

See original Post

Now, Emnerson made a great video about the challenge and the surrounding situation (and use-case) surrounding it, explaining in depth, how they accomplished it, and in the end brings up something actually the audience watching may want to consider.

What I want to focus on though, is the thought process, and more specifically, an example Emnerson gave about Christopher Paul Neil. While on the run, Paul used photo-editing software to effectively swirl their face out, in an attempt to taunt the police, with the Police De-Swirling it using similar software. I swear this will become important to my argument a bit later.

On May 22nd, 2025 (The Day I am writing this), Captain Disillusion published a new video in their CD / Series, which is basically basic Video / Film Concepts explained in about 10 Minutes or so. Seriously, CD / Color (Colour) & CD / Resolution are both informative and funny, if you do want to learn a bit about this stuff.

CD / Blur However… It feels off. The Premise is simple. It explains how blurring works, but except this time, you are hit with an immediate feeling of… unwillingness? I get that CD / is supposed to be the basics, but CD / The Horrors of the Alpha Channel tackles most of the same beats, without deciding to- objectively, give up and let others handle the rest.

As the video progresses, it starts feeling more and more like Captain D isn’t making CD / Blur because they want to do it, and more out of obligation. At around 3:15 I feel like they are trying to talk about Big O notation (or something similar, though the visuals and examples shown really feel akin to sorting algorithms), but then just fizzle out and burst out about leaving it to others.

It feels like it picks back up once “Reality” is supposed to hit us, explaining why we can’t just unblur an image easily, but almost immediately after Captain D backs into a wall and basically talks down to the viewer, in a condescending tone.

Captain D quickly goes over how Emnerson solved the puzzle, but then- in my personal opinion, belittles them in a way by explaining how they gave all the information needed & just completely throws them under the bus because of that.

Now, about Paul? In My Opinion, Captain Disillusion’s Challenge to get the blurred numbers feels like how Paul Swirled their face, only this time Captain Disillusion had given information that assisted in the solution being found.

Coming Back to Emnerson’s video, they briefly touched on how blur- when done to an excessive degree, can be destructive, and irrecoverable. Captain D’s Rhetorical “Compromising” Photo is a part of said destructive blurring. However, the twitter challenge was not as destructive, and frankly, didn’t even require Captain Disillusion to provide all the details, as Emnerson stated in their video.

Like the Police did with Paul, Emnerson took steps to figure out how the blurring was done, and worked towards reversing those changes, even if it did mean they had to make the whole thing over again. I feel like Captain Disillusion is missing the point with how Emnerson got the solution.

Why? Because this Challenge they posted isn’t specific. It’s something that could be used as a way to uncover information that is supposed to be hidden when people are not destructive enough with their editing. Captain D seems so caught up with the Math Side of all this that they completely overlooked the cryptography side of blurring, which was the whole point of the post that kicked this whole saga off.

I always worry when I see blur because technically speaking, blur IS usually non-destructive

Hackerdude (@Hackerdude_) on November 1st, 2024 at 4:24 AM (EST)

See original Post

The more I thought about this whole… video, the more I felt like Patricia Taxxon with their video about Captain Disillusion’s video on the Dancing Phantoms, however this time, it was less contradictory, and more them just entirely ignoring the entire thought process Emnerson went through to even solve this puzzle.

But what really erks me are these two things.

• Captain Disillusion Never needed to give a shoutout in the first place,
• And they Never gave anyone else who wasn't a "Math's Genius" a jumping off point to go explore more of this topic.

Over the course of the last 3 or 4 Minutes Captain D just sounds so fucking hateful, disgusted even. The entire section can be boiled down to “Ugh, There is so many smart people in the world, and yet I have to shout out them?”, when nowhere on the original post did they ever even suggested that they would give a shoutout to someone in the first place, like how they did in the beginning of CD / Blur.

Captain Disillusion, you never promised a video shoutout in the first place. Don’t change the narrative to make it look like you did.

Also, No Links were ever put in the description to send people to places where they would actually learn more about Blur and other things like it, not even putting Emnerson in the description of the video. You show the faces of all these people, and yet you only link the channel of guest cameo Ami Yamato in the description?

I can think of plenty of creators you could have suggested people check out if you wanted to actually introduce this topic to people and get them genuinely interested about blurring, at least on a surface level and deeper, if people so chose. Hell, Acerola was literally on the table, as they have 2 amazing videos on The Kuwahara Filter & Gaussian Blur respectively, Hell, even one about Depth of Field, something that could be considered more tied towards VFX, as Acerola usually focuses on applying this stuff to Video Games, and most of that can also be applied to Blender, which is a tool most (if not all) VFX Artists also make use of.

In the end, there is no way they can make a addendum to this to magically fix the video. They would need to rewrite CD / Blur to a extent if they wanted to right these wrongs.

Thanks for Reading.

NetSpace Comments