Drew Linky
2nd of December
Very early in the morning, there was a flare of talk about how channel quality has fallen without the presence of Revlar. The argument was framed around two specific viewpoints: the first asserted that Revlar actively engaged in “intelligent conversations” that were provocative; the other insisted that Revlar was overly antagonistic and--no matter what the conversations may have been about--he made things worse with his overall demeanor.
I’m torn: I agree more with the second point than the first, although I do think both are true. Yet, I played at least some part in his leaving, and I’m trying to recuse myself from talking about his leaving (I’m failing spectacularly, but trying nonetheless). This all stemmed from the idea that mspa-lit has simply been #general-lite lately, with people like Tensei and Nat openly disparaging people for socializing too much.
Usually I’m able to weather such complaints, but after some growing tension I snapped a little bit tonight: I grew so fed up with this conversation that I manically vowed to mspa-ban anyone who spoke even passingly about such “general topics”, or engaged in any sort of socializing1. In a vindictive mood, it seemed clear in my head that people complaining about the channel quality would realize their foolishness if the channel was simply dead instead.
I saw in my mind’s eye a channel where discussion was indeed high quality, even though it would only be two or three people sending 20 messages a day. Or it would be Makin liveblogging things to himself ad nauseum without interruption. Yet, in just a few hours after my moodswing I calmed down and saw the futility/purposelessness of this. It was a silly idea to begin with, fueled by anger rather than reason.
I don’t really know what the answer is to fixing channel quality, but at every turn it seems I’m being forced further into ambivalence and apathy. The solution seems to be to not care at all, but without that there’s no point to being here. I guess I’m just an idiot after all2; Nat and others are no doubt laughing at me for my outburst, a thought that bothers me still more. Sometimes I wonder what the fuck everyone’s deal is, really.
Nothing more for today.
3rd of December
Today, we achieved widespread awareness of Tumblr changings its terms of service. There have been rumblings in the past week or two, with various blogs being taken down without explanation. People were already beginning to connect the dots, but there was an official post that clarified what exactly was going on: Tumblr is removing all “adult content” from their platform effective December 17th.
Tumblr has had problems with its reporting system for years. There aren’t enough humans working to respond to problems, and so all sorts of vile content remain up despite common complaints: child porn is a huge problem on Tumblr that’s been largely known about for a long time. This malpractice has finally caught up with them though, and the Tumblr app was taken off of the Google and Apple app stores for failing to clean up properly.
Almost predictably, the Tumblr administration’s response to this was an insane overreaction. Rather than simply boning up and dealing with the actual problem, they have elected to remove all adult content period. The full content of their change in terms is available in the link above, but as a brief overview: photos, videos, GIFs, and illustrations that depict sexual acts are no longer permissible. Weirdly, “female-presenting nipples” are no longer allowed either (except if involved in breastfeeding or recorded birth demonstrations??), but art such as nude statues, “artistic illustrations”, and writing are still allowed.
Within minutes of the post going up, the common consensus was that this will lead to the death of Tumblr. As mentioned before, the mass deletion of Tumblr blogs with NSFW content on them has been in progress for some days even before the official announcement. Makin recently noticed a sharp uptick in unique visits to the subreddit per day (somewhere in the realm of 100,000 apparently), and after some deliberation he decided that Tumblr being laid waste to is responsible.
If this is true, then the mass exodus is just now beginning. It’ll be interesting to see how the face of the Homestuck fandom (and indeed, fandom culture in general) changes in the wake of this development. I predict a general increase in activity for old websites dedicated to specific forms of entertainment: deviantart and the -booru realms will see an increase in use due to how easily they facilitate art-sharing; Archive of Our Own will most likely see an increase from writers.
Major content aggregators like Reddit will probably see some increase as well, but fandom politics between Tumblr, Reddit, and 4chan make it difficult to tell what will happen. My gut instinct says that 4chan will see marginal to no changes at all, while Reddit will probably be influenced at least a little bit (there is less established animosity between Reddit and Tumblr, and the nature of these websites are a lot closer than 4chan’s anonymous imageboard system).
Newgrounds is likely also going to experience some sort of revival: NSFW artists already have very few places to go and showcase their work, and Newgrounds practically built its reputation on being one of the first major websites that allowed such content. Regardless of my predictions, I’m actually curious to see what the long term ramifications of Tumblr’s downfall will be. They might limp along for some time yet, but they will almost certainly fade into obscurity over the course of the next year, at the longest.
More related to the HSD specifically, there was yet another mod altercation involving myself. At some point during rather animated discussion in mspa-lit, Makin and Nat started to rip on Putnam and Tipsy. I mostly refrained from saying anything, as I’m trying to deliver on that promise of not interfering with conversation so much. Makin stopped teasing after a bit, but Nat continued into a harangue that became offensively excessive.
After considering it for a bit and with prompting from Tera, I mspa-banned Nat for an hour or two. I didn’t expect much to come out of this, but it quickly ignited another discussion in mod chat about whether or not my action was permissible. After explaining the mod hierarchy (as elaborated at the very beginning of this document: Makin > mods > pseudo mods), Tensei interceded and claimed that there was absolutely no precedent to suggest that full mods have ban authority over pseudo mods. I rebutted that such is how it’s worked since even before I became a mod. I became rather annoyed, because even without precedent this has pretty much always been the case: full mods are specifically supposed to have purview over the actions of pseudomods.
Makin stepped in and said that my actions were acceptable in this case because he wanted to ban Nat for behaving “like an edgy 15 year old”. Then for future reference he said, “please don’t ban pseudos randomly unless I agree with it”, which unambiguously cemented Tensei’s viewpoint as the operative procedure for future situations like this.
For once, my overall aggravation didn’t really increase after this altercation. The upset of what I had assumed was standard protocol was met with not much more than mild annoyance, and that quickly gave way to apathy. Now that some time has passed and I’m not in the thick of it anymore, it’s easier to swallow the idea that I have no ground to stand on here. It’s also easier to contemplate whether or not I should actually give a shit about this in the first place.
In truth, I can’t give less than a rat’s ass about the structure of mod hierarchy. At this point I’m mostly just worried about Nat’s sporadic outbursts. I’ve lost track of how many times she’s gone off on people with little to no prompting, and it’s led to repeated reprimands. If she doesn’t reign it in soon she’s going to get dismissed during the next Reckoning, or possibly even before then. She has interesting input and I enjoy talking with her, but this aggressiveness is going to get her shitcanned if she doesn’t knock it off.
I’m not really sure if I can do anything about it; she seems to hate it when I try to help. I’m not sure if I specifically did something to piss her off or if she hates my overall attitude, but I’m largely forced to standby and worry that she’ll go too far one of these days. I sometimes think she must be under some kind of duress, but she refuses to talk about it. I say “I hope” a lot, but nothing else quite seems to fit: I hope that whatever is happening here will improve soon.
Nothing more for today.
5th of December
Yesterday, Makin had a nice joke to himself. In the middle of the day he created a new channel called #shipping and dumped it in the Homestuck channel category. There was absolutely no warning or guidance on what to do with it, and so we gradually attained awareness of it over the next ten minutes or so. Spiral picked up on it first, and the ensuing reactions were roughly what one might imagine.
There was a scramble to organize the channel, which within seconds of being created had succumbed to the worst shitposting. Exacerbating the madness were roving, confused individuals who somehow didn’t understand what the purpose of the place was from the title alone. Spiral, Ifnar, Nights, and Toast all stepped in to try and get the channel under control. I watched the madness unfold, trying to figure out what Makin was playing at.
To their credit, the aforementioned mods were doing an excellent job. Within only a few minutes they had curbed most of the shitposting and were trying to figure out working parameters for conversation. They agreed on not having any shitposting, and automatically began to reroute shipping talk from the other channels in the category. A description and rules went up, and things seemed to stabilize rather quickly.
On the other hand, their reactions were interesting: Spiral was absolutely furious at having the channel dumped on them with no warning or instruction; Toast insisted that it was a test “from makin on high”, setting to work on it since it was quickly deemed to be within his and Spiral’s responsibility. Ifnar was studiously enforcing the newly imposed rules and doing his best to maintain order; between the three of them and Nights, the channel was in working order within half an hour.
Throughout this process, Makin was wholly absent. He hadn’t said a word since before the channel went up, and Spiral was increasingly irate about his lack of direction. Then, once all the work had been put in and things had settled down, he said: “oh I just made this channel to delete it later,” and then in five seconds the channel was gone as if it had never been.
I have no doubt that he had been watching the entire time, waiting until the precise moment where the chaos had been minimized just so he could get a laugh out of it all. It was admittedly pretty funny, although I can’t remember if Spiral was also amused or just all the more pissed at being jerked around. I was also annoyed, but only from a statistical viewpoint: the channel had already experienced some 500 messages, but since it was actually deleted I have no way of verifying exactly how many had been sent and thus my count for the day was ruined3.
This aside, recently I’ve been trying to talk with a few people more often. Surprisingly I got the opportunity to talk with Tera’s SO. Historically with the name Arcane and recently gaining the nickname Aya in #general chat, she has been around for over a year and a half but only recently attained some recognition. She mentioned being self-conscious about this before, but seems to be increasingly happy with the friendships she’s forming with other #general denizens.
Aya has attempted to push into #mspa-lit in the past but found the discussions there to be kind of impenetrable. It may be that the people themselves were too brusque, because after some prompting she seems to be eager to discuss and learn many things--a running joke between us now is that I’m teaching her botany, since she seems curious to know a lot about plant science. Overall, she seems very receptive and fun to talk with.
With some effort and patience, I’m sure that she could make a fine addition to the channel. Then again, her previous excursions led to an impressive amount of flirting between her and Tera; it’s a good thing Makin wasn’t around at the time, or else there would surely have been repercussions. However, it’s also worth pointing out that his prudish tendencies have grown so prevalent lately that they’re actually becoming groan-worthy.
As mentioned in a recent post, I’ve also been taking some time to talk with Monte lately. Their aggressive tendencies have been worsening lately, and although it’s highly inadvisable I decided I want to try and help them out. Talking with them has helped me to understand exactly why they’re behaving in such a fashion, and I’m trying my best to listen and be a good guiding force. The rudeness came to a peak today after a confrontation between them and Anion.
Not to soften it too much, but there is some rather unpleasant history between Monte and Anion. I don’t know all of the details but it’s clear that Monte, in their own words, fucked up tremendously in the past. They view their own actions with embarrassment and remorse, and Anion seems to treat them with disdain. A brief spat turned into a larger fight when Anion began to openly call out Monte for history in an unrelated server.
This came across more as being deliberately spiteful than anything else, so Anion was banned for two days due to initiating witchhunts (extended to three days upon her request). I don’t know the exact extent of the history between these two, but I’m really trying to angle this towards a peaceful resolution for both parties. I can’t tell how sincere Monte is yet, and Anion seems almost gleeful when stirring this particular pot. It could be that there’s too much bad blood between them for anything positive to come out of it. I really hope I don’t get burned trying to help out again.
In the more abstract, I’ve been thinking a lot about the nature of interaction between what I will deem the cynics of the chat--including figures like Tensei, Makin, Toast, and Nat--versus those I will call naive participants, such as myself, Tera, Tipsy, Spiral, and a multitude of others. Obviously because I place myself in the latter category there is some bias involved in this, but I feel like my thoughts hold to some degree (I made both terms vaguely disparaging to discourage this bias anyway).
It feels like there is a symbiosis of sorts to be considered here. A lot of the time, it feels like the cynics derive enjoyment at the expense of the naive, taking advantage of their earnestness in order to pull off innocuous jokes in some fashion or another. This in turn tends to aggravate the naive members of the chat to varying extents (Tera and Tipsy seem to make their peace with it quickly, whereas Spiral and I get more worked up depending on the severity of the prank).
Conversely, I think that the cynics provide a good deal of contention that makes conversations more interesting. While some of their contributions are questionable, they are at their heart usually well-intentioned and genuinely thought provoking. It feels like it may border on contrarianism sometimes, but Tensei especially has a very pronounced point of view that is solidly defined. It’s critical to maintain a diverse range of opinions in order to make conversations as entertaining as possible.
However, significant problems arise from this dichotomy. Often the naive participants, especially myself, become angry when the wool gets pulled over their eyes too much. I can’t speak much for the others I listed, but increasingly often I’ve considered stepping down from my position and leaving the server when I get upset with what’s happening. Thankfully I realize this wouldn’t help soon afterwards, but this thought gets more pronounced with each subsequent incident. If this proves true for the others as well, then eventually the cynics’ shenanigans would deprive themselves of effective targets for their japery, and slow things to a crawl.
However, when the naive get too angry it can lead to overly harsh reprimanding over what are typically innocent jokes. We like to say that one shouldn’t joke about things that make people upset, but at a certain point our anger is demonstrably silly. Yet, it doesn’t stop us from yelling at the offending individuals in question, which can lead to genuinely hurt feelings. Sometimes I worry that the difference in our viewpoints will lead to friction too great to overlook.
Returning to the idea of symbiosis, what I mean to suggest with all this is that there’s a delicate balance to maintain between these two groups of people. The cynics tend to mix things up and make conversations more engaging, but the naive act as fuel for the conversations to begin in the first place. If the cynics grow too strong then it makes people leave and leads to an overall decrease in activity, and if the naive grow too strong then it leads to a hugbox and boring repetition of stale talking points. Both of these outcomes lead to a sharp decrease in entertainment value, and overall enjoyment of the channel suffers.
If I were a social engineer4, my primary focus would be on optimizing this relationship to ensure the maximum amount of entertainment for everyone. Unfortunately I don’t have that power, and I strongly suspect no one in the chat really does. That having been said, we seem to have done okay collectively so far. I’ll just have to be faithful that things can continue without destabilizing too much. At the end of the day, everyone here must be reasonable enough for that at least; why else would we be here otherwise5 ?
Nothing more for today.
6th of December
We discovered a change in the Hiveswap/Friendsim website today. It seems as if all mention of Hiveswap: Act 2 has been scrubbed from the website, which has prompted an outbreak of disbelief and mild anger. In fairness, we half expected something like this to happen anyway; the general sentiment seems to be more disappointment than anything else.
I think most of us are simply stunned that the Hiveswap situation somehow keeps getting worse. User Xoro mentioned: “hiveswap is probably the most majestic trainwreck ive ever witnessed / its still to this day keeps getting worse somehow”, to which Spiral commented: “maybe it'll get better by the time i'm in a retirement home”. Act 1’s delay over a course of nearly 4 years has already sapped the community of its patience, so it’s no surprise that more signs that the property being mishandled is growing intolerable.
This response isn’t universal though; while most people who even bother are indeed upset, others like Mines are far more reserved:
this isn't a confirmation that act 2 is dead / it's not a good SIGN but there is still a chance of it / … / what it DOES show is that they prioritize friendsim advertising over hiveswap advertising / which isn't good since friendsim was just something to tide people over initially.
The best case scenario is that both the Friendsims and Act 2 are being developed together, but grim reality suggests that the redesign means Act 2 is dead. We are all hoping beyond hope that such is not the case.
Nothing more for today.
10th of December
The end of the Friendsims is nigh. There is an increasing amount of speculation as to what comes next: will another batch of Friendsims be announced? Will there be some news about Hiveswap, positive or negative? Might there even be a rare newspost from Hussie himself? These things, especially in conjunction with the mysterious change in site design, is at the forefront of everyone’s minds.
Yet, if history is any indication, it is more likely that none of these will happen. Indeed, the most likely scenario is arguably the worst; receiving no news at all is a very distinct possibility, and one that will only serve to make an already unsatisfied fandom even more agitated. At this point, it seems that the only reprieve from boredom available to us is what we pursue ourselves.
To this end, Makin has reminded the server of the upcoming reread starting around February. This seems the most obvious and effective way to reinvigorate interest, at least temporarily.
If that weren’t enough, though, he’s promised that he will be “pulling out all the stops” for the occasion, seeing as the reread should culminate on the 10th anniversary of the comic. Among other things, he’s already resurrected the fabled “BECOME A BABY” ads on MSPFA. The mystery of who was responsible for their appearance last time remains unsolved, but Makin has openly coopted them now.
There’s no telling how much else he’ll actually be able to do to generate excitement—I would be surprised if he didn’t have some tricks up his sleeve. Even outside of his influence, the server feels like it’s hit some stride recently. Activity is consistent and, dealings with WP aside, the fanbase seems somewhat content. There are some small stirrings in the community as the year nears its close.
Nothing more for today.
11th of December
An interesting development: old user Mad Dog dropped in today. They disappeared probably about a year ago at this point, and it was rather comfy to reacquaint ourselves with each other. Mad Dog is given to a very incisive brand of shitposting that has garnered some frustration, and that behavior was quick to come out upon rejoining our fold. They are also of a more adult persuasion than most of us, turning many bents in conversation toward more mature topics than we tend to discuss. This with the shitposting is a dangerous combination; they’ll have to tread lightly or Makin will be quick and loose with the banhammer.
With the preference for explicit discussion, Mad Dog was dismayed to see the NSFW channel had been wiped out some time ago. Indeed, most of the others from that crowd had also moved on, such as Dickle. These things, once remarked on, sparked some fervent discussion of things they’ve missed out on. We also tried to remember which users exactly had come and gone in the last year, which led to a brief roundtable discussion about the reason all of us started using mspa-lit.
The wide range of people mspa-lit has accrued is interesting, especially when one considers the various ways they found their way here. Gnawms, for instance, mentioned that he started using the channel because his friends from CANMT spoke most often here (a group which is now almost completely silent, given the dry spell in content). As might be expected, most of us found our way to the server through the subreddit, although there have been an increasing number of people who have arrived from other places—an increasingly common source is the Homestuck Amino group, which is a cause for some concern.
Aside from Mad Dog’s reappearance, there was little of note. James Roach made a tweet that at first glance seemed rather aggressive, but with even the slightest examination becomes rather benign (this is a good rule of thumb for looking at posts from James Roach, in all honesty). People are wary now that the Friendsims are nearly over, and it seems more and more likely that there will be no news of what comes after. This is not surprising, but definitely disheartening. Yet, we’ve subsisted on basically no official correspondence whatsoever for a long time now. The server will be more or less patient as always, waiting for the next morsel we can get our hands on.
Nothing more for today.
12th of December
Today was rather unfortunate. The server in general was fine, but for some reason I was caught up in a terrible mood and had little urge to repress it. I snapped at Makin early in the day, who had been messing around with users in a way that I saw as harassment. I told him point blank that his casual rudeness was “pissing me off severely,” although I’m not sure if he took it seriously. He continued in the regular fashion.
After this initial vent, it only got worse. After witnessing Makin bully people out of mspa-lit for the exact same things he was doing, such as soapboxing or being an overall twat, I lost it and began a petty campaign to try and illustrate his hypocrisy. The channel is usually reserved for the shill list, or more generally “anything that doesn’t belong in a different channel.” With this in mind, I began strictly enforcing the rules.
This involved warning users once if they posted anything that could possibly belong to a different channel, such as media discussion or science. At first people thought it was an ironic gesture, although as it continued their unease grew. People began to ask if something was wrong, to which I would only reiterate that I was enforcing the rules of the channel. After half an hour, I started actually banning people and the atmosphere became rather uncomfortable.
Qweq, Multivac, Andrew, and a variety of others began to message me to see what was going on. I maintained that I was only enforcing the channel rules, and then after some more of this rigamarole they started to grow upset and called me out as disingenuous. Tera requested that I be mspa-banned until I stopped, but I ignored it and kept up my pretenses.
After going in this fashion for about an hour, Makin removed my moderator role “until Drew stops behaving like a child.” I was so frustrated that I refused to admit I had gone too far for some time, but eventually my anger caved in and I was simply tired. I stopped posting in the channel for the rest of the night. It was the first time on the server that I had negatively impacted others on purpose, and realizing that made me feel deeply ashamed.
Makin eventually remodded me later and, to my surprise and gratitude, no one has really given me a hard time about it. A few people mentioned that they were just happy I had given up the ghost; most understand the kind of agitation that I’m going through, and given how difficult it is to deal with Makin’s chicanery on a regular basis they had suspected something like this would happen sooner or later. Any further explanation would be attempts to excuse my actions, so I will end only by saying that I’m very disappointed in myself.
Nothing more for today.
14th of December
The last Friendsim came out today. Interestingly, it came out later in the evening due to delays, as there was a gamebreaking bug that the developers needed to fix immediately before releasing. As the game was delayed into the later hours of the evening, the userbase became increasingly agitated, amid fears that the game was actually cancelled.
#final-friendsim was unveiled as the place for discussion of the final route, although for some time it was nothing but a haven for some of the worst shitposting we have ever seen. It eventually became so extreme that Makin broke the seal and activated slowmode posting, putting it at the maximum time possible: 120 seconds between posts per poster.
Rather than calming people down, it only seemed to make it worse somehow. The volume of shitposts was certainly lesser after enacting slowmode, but the quality of posts plummeted even further down than it already was. In this manner the channel continued for some four to six hours, and most other users relegated the channel to “toxic waste” status.
Despite this quarantine, the mood seemed to spread a little bit and people in #general and #mspa-lit were becoming somewhat slaphappy as the night progressed. Amusingly, even WP members on Twitter such as James Roach and Trace were posting about the delay. To my delight, it was all rather lighthearted: jokes were tossed between these individuals with no real trace of animosity or blame. There was some positive engagement with the fans, and everyone seemed to be in a jovial mood despite the circumstances.
Then, around 9 or 10 PM EST, the final installment came out. It was practically torn apart by fans eager for content, and by all accounts people seemed rather pleased: without going into too much detail, there is a secret or extra ending to the Friendsim if you purchased and played the previous installments, and almost everyone I talked to found it to be beyond satisfactory. Though some of the previous episodes appeared to be completely unworthy of note, this seems to be a proper end to the year-long episodic story. By all accounts it is a good day for the fandom.
Nothing more for today.
15th of December
The general opinion of the last Friendsim appears to have soured somewhat; more critical circles have pointed out some sort of transgression or fault with one of the characters, who has been the subject of great interest ever since the Friendsim was first revealed. To my understanding, this character was written or at the very least implied to be trans, but their portrayal in the actual episode seems to have offended a number of people.
The source of the controversy is actually two-fold: this character was implied to be trans when Cohen was attached to Hiveswap and the Trollcall was freshly announced. In the present day, however, that trans status is somewhat ambiguous. The idea that they’re trans is derived from a conflict in the inherent qualities of the character itself, rather than through an overt statement to that effect. Thus, the lack of concrete representation that people expected has nettled some.
Further, the nature of the character is decidedly negative: they are painted as, in a word, a scumbag. Coupled with the expectation that this character would be trans, this sort of design shocked people and was arguably the more offensive cause of the controversy (even even though it’s predicated on an ambiguity).
If I’m not mistaken, the exact characteristics furthered the upset: apparently the character in question consists of a collection of negative stereotypes that are commonly spread arguments against trans people. However, there is some back and forth as to whether this is an accurate complaint, where the opposition claims that people are disproportionately upset that “the trans character was portrayed negatively.” I’ve firmly stayed out of the debate, as I have no real opinion on the matter.
For what it’s worth, that debate isn’t very heated on the HSD apparently. Spiral commented that the discourse has been exceptionally fierce, but mostly in places outside of the HSD. Other, smaller Discord servers, and the Tumblr/Twitter sections of the fandom are where most of this furor is happening. In these places, the character in question and the people who wrote the Friendsim episode are being lambasted.
Here, however, aside from some mild discussion there didn’t seem to be any sort of outrage. This was specifically pointed out as a good thing: in the past we have usually been a voice of discontent with all manner of developments, so the fact that we’re an island of calm in all of this uproar is a nice change of pace. We’ve made our comments, and now I assume most of our users are simply waiting to see what happens next.
Nothing more for today.
16th of December
Makin decided to make a few of the archived channels available for public viewing, “for those who want to learn more about the history of the server.” These channels are: #friendsim, #old-secret, #sbahj, #read-tnc, and #aaa. The full list of archived channels is rather extensive, so I won’t list them all here, but it consists of over 30 channels (including two copies of #general2). Although these channels basically don’t matter, I felt that it would be interesting and slightly informative to run some stats on all of the archived channels as well, though it will be much briefer than the records I’ve been keeping for the main server.
As of this entry, the server has 22,598,350 messages. The hidden channels together have 2,014,280 messages, comprising about 8.91% of the server’s total. Of these, the top five hidden channels by message count: #hangout at 815,524 (of the 2 million messages, 40.49%), #nsfw at 525,561 (26.1%), #radio at 203,703 (10.1%), #illuminati at 136,882 (6.8%), and then a near tie for fifth between #secret at 88,018 (4.4%) and #friendsim at 84,836 (4.2%).
Of these, the #nsfw channels (which I combined statistically) are not viewable publicly for obvious reasons. Less obvious is that there is a lot of compromising information of individual users in there alongside all the pornography, so keeping them hidden is as much to protect the other people involved as it is to protect the server’s status. More confusing is that #hangout is also hidden from public view--in order to take its data I had to give myself the affiliated pseudomod role. I’m not sure if this is an oversight or if Makin has elected to keep it hidden for some reason.
Ignoring these, I’m very pleased to see the overall development: anything that renders information more freely accessible is a worthwhile effort. It’s a significant move towards transparency and the dissemination of cultural knowledge, which is basically what this document is all about. Hopefully people will be emboldened to seek out information at its heart now that the channels are searchable.
Nothing more for today.
20th of December
About three days ago, on the 17th, Tumblr officially enacted its policy to remove NSFW content from their website. While it hasn’t exactly been a boom, over the last few days the usercount is definitely increasing more swiftly than normal. Between Tumblr’s policy change and the BECOME A BABY ads, the last few weeks have easily outpaced the last six months in terms of user gain.
Additionally, there does seem to have been some interest from Makin revealing the archived channels for public viewing. In mspa-lit, the topic of the NSFW channels themselves came up. While everyone present understood why they were still hidden, it was asked why we leave them on the server if they present such a problem. The most likely explanation I was able to provide by myself was that--by themselves--they comprise about half a million messages. Makin isn’t going to be okay with getting rid of that sizeable chunk, almost an entire worth’s month of messages, unless mandated by Discord proper.
In the course of this discussion, an old running joke was brought up. In the past, we’ve talked about a channel where full moderators share nude images with each other as a rite of passage. To be clear, this channel does not and has not ever existed; we’re simply fond of trotting the joke out at opportune times to throw users for a loop. I’m loathe to ruin the joke by writing about it here, but more chances to use it will appear regardless.
What usually happens is that #mod-nudes is brought up tangentially, usually by a user who is in the know. This prompts people who have never heard of it to chime in, confused or surprised. Whichever mod is present will then “confirm” the news by posting a screenshot of an appropriately titled channel name as fast as possible--after becoming a bit more savvy, I set up a fake channel in a different, private server. Before I would have to quickly come up with a manipulated image, which ruins the illusion if it takes too long.
No matter how many times it happens, at least one person is fooled by the exchange, especially newcomers. It’s been a while since the joke has come up, so this time we even managed to trick Tera into thinking that it was real. Thinking back on tonight, I don’t know if we ever actually revealed that it was a joke. We should probably inform everyone who was present that it isn’t actually real.
As it is, #mod-nudes has been a running gag for literal years now. I don’t remember exactly how it got started, it’s likely that it originated in a different place and then someone like Toast brought the idea with him. It never gets old to witness the shock from people not in on it, and in the end it’s just a harmless bit of fun. One can’t ask for a better prank.
Nothing more for today.
21st of December
Makin held another survey today. It proceeded much as usual, with the assorted teasing and making fun of responses (at one point taking the time to call out a post saying he shouldn’t make fun of responses). #survey was dragged out as is customary, and this time there appears to have been a few substantial changes.
Most notably, Makin has created two new channels: #mspa-other for discussing works like Problem Sleuth, and #writing for obvious reasons. People have wanted #writing for a very long time, but we’ve resisted the demands of the masses up until now because #mspa-lit already exists and is a close enough topical interest (at least in theory). He also reorganized the channel categories to make things a little less cluttered.
For convenience, here’s a changelog of how the server’s most used channels look:
General category now consists of #general, #altgen, #serious, and #botspam;
Homestuck category now consists of #homestuck, #hiveswap, and #mspa-other;
Creative category now consists of hs-art-cosplay, art-cosplay, #oc-hell, #writing, and #music;
Interests category now consists of #gaming, #western-media, #eastern-media, #mspa-lit, #science-math, and #coding-tech.
The inclusion of even more channels will surely agitate those who complain about “channel clutter,” but at this point most don’t care about how many channels there are as long as it’s organized properly. That having been said, #mspa-other and #writing are only here as long as they remain active; if they drop significantly in activity then Makin has sworn he’ll get rid of them. Time will tell how this arrangement works out.
Nothing more for today.
23rd of December
There’s been a brief flare up in tempers today, as the subject of mspa-lit’s quality was brought up once more. This has been discussed increasingly in the last couple of weeks, and we appear to have hit some sort of limit for how much people will tolerate the monotony of repeating the topic. It’s become a source of annoyance for most, no matter which side one happens to be on.
Andrew specifically has become more frustrated at people who initiate these discussions but then do nothing to help increase the channel quality themselves. Others, ironically, became upset with Andrew after he stated his opinion a few times unsolicited. I have to confess a growing apathy about the channel being slow, which is at least a step up from the anxiety of before.
Significant complaints involved Makin being hypocritical about policing discussion and restrictions on what could be discussed. After some back and forth on this issue, I began advocating that people move to a different channel such as #general where they won’t be handled so disparagingly. As could be expected, no one actually ended up moving, so the issue remains unresolved and unmoving.
In a way, I sympathize with Andrew: it feels as if this controversy has come up multiple times over the last four months, if not more, and absolutely nothing has been done on any side to actually fix it. Everytime it’s discussed we end up coming to an understanding or agreement on the causative agent or agents, but then no one does anything differently. It’s stagnation in its most sincere form.
Mspa-lit seems to be partially sustained by, maybe even relying overly much on, a particular unwillingness to talk in other places. There are few to no reasons why we can’t take discussions to their proper channels, except perhaps that we would crowd out discussions already in those places. Otherwise, even with Makin encouraging us to go somewhere else with certain topics, they simply resurge later. It’s not out of a directed malice that this happens either, it’s a completely organic interaction.
That having been said, “allowed topics” in mspa-lit have become somewhat predictable and increasingly boring. There are very few things on the Shills List that aren’t complete, such as Worth the Candle, and updates are rather sparing. Normally this would mean that there’s little reason to stay.
This frustration compounds with the fact that other channels are also frequently boring or flooded with people who are not fun to talk to, usually because of a lack of experience or maturity. Dap summarized all of this in one short phrase: “Outside is kids, inside is a circle jerk”. This is not to say that the server is in any sort of immediate peril or strife, it just seems that morale is approaching a low period right now. The lack of content is tearing us apart from the inside.
In sharp contrast with this prognosis about mspa-lit in particular, general and altgen both are experiencing significant spikes in activity. They’ve been surprising, with many days approaching or even surpassing 10,000 messages in each. At any point in a given day, there seems to always be at least one person talking, which is a good, basic goal to strive for with channel activity.
That having been said, I feel the need to contradict a recent entry I made regarding the culture of each channel. I mentioned that it feels like the server has begun settling down recently, but after taking a much closer look at each of them the opposite feels true. It’s difficult to pin down any sort of cultural framework.
The reason for this is because, even with the increased rate of user gain over the last few weeks, most of the users who join don’t actually talk. It seems that most accounts will say a few messages or nothing at all. Before, such users would leave after some time, but now it seems most are content to float around and lurk. All of this is to suggest that the userbase is somewhat transient right now.
This could be a huge problem in the future if we lose what userbase we have; lurkers don’t have any loyalty to a place, nor do they contribute anything themselves. If the solid group of users that post now stop or go elsewhere for some reason, then not only does activity slow down, but there isn’t really anyone to replace it. Cultivating users who are consistently active is difficult but nonetheless important as insurance against an uncertain future.
27th of December
The last few days have gone by without much fanfare. It seems many people (including myself) have been somewhat scattered due to personal obligations; we aren’t as readily available as we normally are. Despite this we have been able to do a few things to keep ourselves occupied and entertained.
Christmas itself was a quiet affair, although a number of us including Tensei, Null, Qweq, and Tera celebrated by watching Krampus together. We’ve also been meaning to start watching Seinfeld, but no real attempt has been made through a combination of laziness and forgetfulness on my part. I’ve also been trying to get people to watch Disney’s Fantasia, in the hopes that the synergy between audio and visuals would serve as some sort of inspiration for artists here. While Andrew and Qweq seem eager to watch, most others are resistant to the idea.
Nights has begun streaming Wind Waker, which we are all very pleased to watch. I have been hesitant to stream again due to criticism from Makin and others that it’s taking up too much time, which it honestly was. Having others get involved in the process is critically important: no one person should be occupying the majority of people’s time when it comes to entertainment like this, otherwise it becomes akin to a monopoly and everyone suffers.
Joyously, Niklink returned a couple days ago. The effect of his disappearance was felt within even just a few hours--he has a very peculiar way with words that no one else can quite match, and is often the source of great humor for all who are present. He mentioned briefly that he disappeared for reason related to his studies; I’m just glad that he wasn’t avoiding the HSD due to some offense on our part.
It’s a bit premature to speak precisely on the matter, but after a long six months of vague instability and lowkey agitation, it feels like the server is beginning to settle down. There’s no telling to what extent people may have consciously recognized this, but it seems that the major channels are approaching a new “normal;” the behavior of regulars in each place has become predictable once more, and thus it’s easier to understand and engage in what’s happening if you pay attention.
I mentioned this in the last entry as well, but the worst times on the server are when everything feels transient and unstable, especially when it seems there is no solid userbase. This idea has been mocked consistently: Makin for instance openly admits to forgetting who regulars are, or--possibly even worse--feigns ignorance of them entirely. It is difficult to tell which of these is more true at times, but a more cynical mind will probably have no issue deciding.
At a glance, it seems that there is a rotation system in place: new users are inculcated by users who have been around long enough to be familiar with the culture and rules of the place. Users who have been around the longest grow increasingly frustrated and bored with their channel of residence until they eventually leave. This makes room for yet more people to join and contributes to a sort of cultural drift. That drift gets more pronounced as each “generation” of user comes and goes. It is much how a plant does not seem very different from day to day, but a snapshot comparison of the beginning and end of its life reveals striking differences.
I wonder about new crops of stable users. The things I feel like asking most are how do they find this place, and what compels them to stay? It is counterintuitive that our usercount is rising substantially even now (although obviously it’s helped by Tumblr’s continual death spasms). I’m comfortable chalking up the latest growth spurt to a confluence of factors, including Tumblr’s self-immolation and Makin advertising the server more.
As for why they stay, Homestuck has been finished for nearly three years now, which renders it increasingly untenable as a source of inspiration. My preferred answer is usually that the sense of community keeps people coming back, but there is a problem with this theory: it necessitates the idea of people talking as frequently as possible, especially when they first join.
Instead, despite the total population rising continuously, we’re experiencing something of a decrease in participation from new users as time goes by. There is a disproportionate number of people who join and never speak even once; it used to be that such people left after a few days, but now they seem to be lingering. It is possible that a large number of them choose to lurk only, and others only stay for news announcements. Otherwise I’m not sure what’s responsible for the trend.
As it is, this isn’t exactly cause for concern. While new users speak less often, older users and regulars appear to be just fine. We continue to take the strong rise of the server population as a good sign, and generally attribute the lack of participation to a corresponding lack of material to discuss. If we receive any proper news next year about Homestuck as a property, I wonder what the server statistics will look like compared to now. The new year could be full of interesting developments.
Nothing more for today.
31st of December
It’s the end of the year, so I wrote an analysis of the server and channel activity that is now in the Related Materials in Appendix D under “Assessment of Server Activity”. It includes a brief explanation of where to find the information proper and how to read it, as well as some notes on important trends for 2018 and to a lesser extent from 2017. Hopefully this will be useful or at least interesting for a few people.
There have been great waves of accounts joining over the last few days, but unfortunately it seems that most of them are not genuine people. After examining it for some time, we’ve determined that most of them are actually bot accounts through commonalities in the usernames (such as a generic name followed by a string of numbers) and similar account creation dates, usually only a matter of minutes before joining the server.
Makin has been banning these accounts himself, which he is growing frustrated with due to the sheer volume. It’s been slow-going because we don’t have an easy way to ban them; Discord needs you to right click their name to ban them swiftly, which is only possible if they’ve been “mentioned” or talked in the server, which most of these accounts haven’t. Otherwise, banning them is a manual process in the server settings that can be a hassle.
Makin asked us all to help as well, although Tensei in particular has mostly refused due to the difficulty in banning the accounts (shame!). The rest of the full mods have been trying to assist if we notice something is up, especially when Makin’s not around himself. Between all of us we’ve been able to avoid any serious raids or problems. It’d be very awkward, but we’ve considered reaching out to Ceru. He could modify Aradiabot so that it automatically mentions new users when they join the server, which would expedite the process significantly.
Otherwise, a user named V joined the server and talked briefly in mspa-lit, referencing a long-dead meme that was emblematic of James Roach. V also happens to be the name of an anonymous writer for a few episodes of the Friendsims. Between the name and the use of a vaguely obscure meme that has been out of use for over a year, some of us speculate that the writer and this visitor are in fact the same person.
That having been said, we didn’t have much time to openly entertain the idea. The user commented that it was “boring” here, probably because there was no active controversy or discussion, and they left. It was a brief flurry of excitement for us all to discuss; it may not need to be stated, but we all thoroughly miss the days of involvement with content producers.
We also briefly tended towards the mystery of who V really is. I’m on the record saying that I hate it when people gremlin other users who specifically want to remain anonymous, though: I don’t like it when people do it to Makin, and I don’t like it when it’s done to random users or people associated with the fandom somehow. After a little discussion on the topic I shut it down with extreme prejudice in an effort to keep people from being insensitive.
Other than the stir from Maybe V joining and chatting, today has been a little slow. Most people are out celebrating with their family, as is to be expected. However, I’ve noticed that no matter how busy or silent they may be throughout the day, most of the regulars in #mspa-lit and even #general and #altgen will chime in “Happy New Year” when the time comes for them.
I’m glad to see people keeping this place in mind even when they’re preoccupied: I assume that it means they’ve made some friends, or even simply enjoy their time here. Even though 2018 has been rather rough in places, there’s still plenty of reason to come and spend time in the HSD. I look forward to the next year, and I earnestly hope that everyone here will be able to enjoy themselves for the holidays and all of 2019.
Happy New Year; nothing more for today.
Makin
1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sObyG9bTf5A
2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyFQVZ2h0V8
3 NEERDDDDD
4 nice try but you'll never reach the heights of an engineer, you're stuck as a failed biologist forever
5 http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20181204-how-austerity-memes-helped-the-internet-generation-cope