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Stranger Things Season 4 Subtitles Team Trolled Fans With One Line
After becoming an internet sensation due to their oddly evocative captions, the Stranger Things subtitle team admits to deliberately trolling fans.

Stranger Things Season 4 Subtitles Team Trolled Fans With One Line

The subtitle team for season 4 of Netflix’s hit show Stranger Things has admitted to deliberately trolling fans with one of their captions. Created by Matt and Ross Duffer (known creatively as the Duffer brothers), Stranger Things is a supernatural sci-fi drama that has taken the world by storm and built a legion of fans since its streaming debut in 2016. The show follows paranormal events which take place in the fictional small town of Hawkins, Indiana that are related to top-secret government experiments conducted in the nearby Hawkins National Laboratory and an alternate reality known as the Upside Down. Set in the 1980s, the show plays heavily on the pop culture references of the era as well as pays homage to a range of works from the time, including those by Stephen King, Steven Spielberg and Wes Craven.

More recently, Netflix has released the final two feature-length episodes of its fourth and penultimate season. Aside from attracting record viewership numbers and wide critical and popular acclaim, the show’s most recent season has also attracted attention for its oddly specific and evocative subtitles. Spawning a range of internet memes, subtitled scenes for the show are becoming increasingly popular for their use of language such as “squelching wetly” in regards to Vecna and other such sound descriptors. Fans of the show are widely beginning to encourage others to watch the season with the subtitles enabled to experience them directly for themselves.

Off the back of their newfound internet popularity, the subtitle team from Stranger Things recently sat down to talk with Vulture about their work on the show and their distinctive word choices. When asked about whether they have seen their work being widely memed online, subtitle author Jeff T. admitted to “trolling a little bit” with the popular line “tentacles undulating moistly.” Check out his full response below:

Honestly, “[tentacles undulating moistly]” I’ve seen a lot. I will admit I was trolling a little bit with that. Also, in the past year or two, I’ve been watching ASMR streams to figure out which words elicit that kind of response in people, so I’ll grab them and put them in my word bank. “Moistly” pops up a lot in those ASMR streams.

Largely considered to be one of the least liked words in the English language, the word moist often conjures a wide range of negative reactions in people. Not only has the word been voted by the New Yorker to be stricken from the English language, but its effect on people has also drawn the attention of various comedians and social commentators over the years. The Stanger Things subtitle team using it precisely with the intent of triggering an emotional reaction in viewers goes to show why their work is quickly becoming an internet sensation.

While the subtitle team’s main task is to assist viewers who are deaf or hard of hearing, fans of all kinds are discovering the appeal of the most recent season’s unique captions. If Stranger Things fans have not yet sat down and watched season 4 with the subtitles on, perhaps this will encourage them to see what all the fuss is about. Whatever viewers may think of the word “moist,” a season 4 rewatch with all the ‘squelching’ captions enabled should definitely be in the cards.