You know, as much as I find the “Jon puts his whole heart into the statement and then calls it fake” posts funny. I feel like everyone forgets that there are, in fact, a lot of fake statements.
When Martin yells at Jon for “Pushing the sceptic thing so hard” we’re inclined to agree with him, but that’s only because we only hear the real statements. Martin would likely be hearing Jon record all the statements, and for most of them, Jon’s gonna be right, cause they are fake.
“I still think most of the statements down here aren’t real. Of the hundreds I’ve recorded, we’ve had maybe… thirty, forty that are… that go on tape. Now, those, I believe, at least for the most part.”
Hundreds. Jon has recorded hundreds of statements between, at least, January 13th (Naomi Herne’s statement) to July 29th (the infestation) and only 38 of them were real. (33, that were written statements already in the archives)
Actually, there were 25 real Statements between Naomi Herne’s statement and the infestation, and 4 of them were live statements, so it was actually only 21 real statements actually in the archives.
For fun, here’s some math:
I averaged the length of all the statements in season one, which is 23 minutes 55 seconds average statement length.
I’m going to round that up to 24 minutes, and assuming they have an 8 hour work day, that’s 20 statements per day. (This would be if Jon only recorded statements all day, which I doubt he does, but I also don’t think he only works 8 hours. So I’m going to just say it evens out.)
And 100 statements a week. (Again, if he were only recording statements, and assuming he doesn’t work weekends, although I kinda assume he does, so we’re just going to say it evens out again.)
There were 142 work days between January 13th and July 29th in 2016,(counting those two days) so that would be 2,840 statements. And only 21 (not counting the live statements) of them were real.
That would be, approximately, 1 real statement in every 135. (1 in 113, counting live statements.)
Using that, there would be 81 work days between MAG 1 and MAG 13, meaning Jon would have started recording statements around September 22, 2015.
Although that is likely incorrect, because Gertrude died in spring, and I don’t think Elias waited that long before making Jon Head Archivist. Also because the live show is canon, Jon already had 2 of the 12 real statements before he started using the tapes.
However, based on Jon’s comments in MAG 1 and Tim and Sasha’s conversation in MAG 162, it does seem that Jon was Head Archivist for at least a little while before MAG 1, so I suppose you could argue that he started using the tapes in September.
If that were the case, let’s say Jon became Head Archivist on June 1st, 2015, that’s another 81 work days before he starts using the tapes, that would mean he got through roughly 1,620 statements before finding a real statement and needing the tapes.
In this, almost definitely inaccurate, scenario, Jon would have read 6,080 statements between him getting the job and the infestation, and only 33 (not counting live statements, 38 with them) of them were real. Which would be 1 real statement in every 184. (1 in 160, counting live statements)