This is Not a Jumpscare

What it is

This is Not a Jumpscare is a near-black page with one short line of small white text in the middle. The line says the page is not a jump scare. Five seconds later a new line says it really is not. Five seconds after that, another. There is nothing else to see at first: no button, no link, just a line that changes on a timer and keeps telling you to relax.

How to play

Read, wait, read. Each line stays for five seconds and the next one replaces it, in a fixed order that is the same for everyone. Clicking does nothing, keys do nothing. The lines start as reassurance, plain statements that no frightening thing will suddenly appear and that you do not need to be on guard, and as the minutes pass the voice starts to comment on the fact that you are still here. One line invites you to open the browser's developer tools and check the code for yourself.

What makes it different

A horror page built out of the reader's expectation. Jump-scare pages train a reflex, and this one spends nine minutes talking to that reflex in a calm monospace voice, in sentences short enough to read in the five seconds they are given. The tension comes from the gap between what the page keeps saying and what you expect from a page with this address.

Why it is on Bored

Waiting through a page that keeps promising not to scare you turns out to be its own kind of entertainment, somewhere between a dare and a meditation. The page's code holds 106 lines of text, and the page needs nothing from you except nerve, or the lack of it.

Tips

• Give it more than a minute, the lines change tone as they go
• Nothing is interactive, so keep your hands off the mouse and read
• A reload starts the sequence again from the first line
• The page offers its own code for inspection, if you would rather check than trust

FAQ