Drew Linky
1st of January - Skaianet ARG
In the early hours of the morning, various users discovered a significant change: the What Pumpkin website now automatically redirects to skaianetsystems.com. Ignoring the actual content of the website, this change was met with some confusion and amusement; most assumed that WP had simply neglected to renew their ownership of the site and that it must have been taken over by a random guy for laughs.
However, the official WP Twitter account also changed, matching the name and aesthetic of the website. As more people noticed, the confusion turned to a breathless excitement. What could this change possibly mean? For a little while we were at a loss. The website consisted of little more than a countdown to the 13th of April 2029, the 20th anniversary of Homestuck. The only other thing of note is a global map with red dots that we soon realized were meant to correspond with meteor strikes (the 13th of April 2029 coincidentally also corresponds with a flyby of the meteor named Apophis).
Both of these things, while interesting, were thematically in keeping with material from Homestuck. People were curious and interested in the change, but there was little else to do with it at first. Before long though, a few began to look deeper into the website’s code and discovered hidden content deemed “cursed files." As soon as we got our hands on these, everything in the server kicked into maximum overdrive.
There are three individual sets of information that were all interesting for different reasons. The one most people noticed first was called “dark web cache” which contianed a set of images, all of them what we refer to as “shitty wizards.” These images are all titled “CRITICAL_ASSET” followed by sequential numbers, and they were created or last modified on the 8th of December. Also in the folder is a readme file, which claims:
BY ILLEGALLY HACKING INTO THE DARK_WEB_CACHE FULL OF ILLICIT_WARES WHICH HAS BEEN EXPLICITLY BLACKLISTED BY THE GOVERNMENT, AND STORING THESE CRITICAL_ASSETS ON YOUR DEVICE, YOU HAVE OFFICIALLY AGREED TO ALLOW YOUR DEVICE TO BECOME A CRITICAL NODE IN THE SKAIANET SYSTEMS BLOCKCHAIN.
This is followed by a very specific set of instructions to get rid of the files in order to have one’s computer removed from the blockchain.
The next set of information was a collection of text files called “Forbidden entries”. There are 36 individual plaintext files that collectively appear to be a set of journal entries about an esoteric online community that contain backstory to some of the more cryptic elements of Homestuck. Naturally, the community set upon this information like wolves. They get progressively stranger, including some material concerning a feud between that universe’s Einstein and Hitler.
The more interesting and informative texts aside, there is already a large number of people who find those particular excerpts in poor taste. The exact nature of the feud is complicated and I won’t discuss it in any great detail, but one interpretation from the text is that Einstein could have prevented the Holocaust in that universe. It is common anti-semitic rhetoric to claim “Jews could have prevented the Holocaust”, and those more sensitive to the issue are genuinely outraged at the insinuation in these files.
A number of people are even saying that they fear Hussie is a closeted anti-semite, preposterous though it may be in the grand scheme of things. The discourse on the HSD is bad enough, but the Twitter Homestuck has erupted into complete chaos over the entries. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out given Hussie’s history--on the one hand he tends to shut down what he views as irrational or overblown responses, but he has also capitulated to mass shock and upset before.
The last piece of information is a text document called “Coordinates.” While the map I described on the website itself has many red dots, most if not all of them are completely meaningless. The GPS locations found in the text file, though, seem to mean something. As opposed to the 100+ tagged locations on the map, the file in question has 39 individual coordinates.
In order to discuss this in a more organized and constructive fashion, we’ve taken a few steps: Makin created a new channel, #skaianetsystems, to discuss the developments. He had me create a mega thread on the subreddit for people to discuss it there, with a link to the Discord saying that we have a live channel as well. It didn’t take more than ten minutes for the thread to take off, with us calling it the “Skaianet Systems ARG” (saying it’s an ARG may be somewhat premature, but the name has stuck and we’re not sure what else to call it anyway).
Alongside the thread itself booming, the Discord server has seen an outrageous amount of activity over the proceedings. There is nothing short of a bona fide frenzy in place with people scouring the website for as much information as possible, subjecting it to various analyses, and then comparing it with what we already know from the story and author’s notes. Someone has already found retroactive explanation for the text entries in a piece of commentary from one of the books: Hussie mentioned there and a few times before that he has notes on background lore for the story.
A user named Kittenchilly has created a document to collect and theorize on all of the information and the proceedings of the event, which has been instrumental to newcomers as well as people who are actively working on the ARG; they’ve also been made the janitor of #skaianetsystems to help clean up shitposts and off-topic posting, of which there has been a lot; it’s hard not to be excited with this news.
The blaze of activity and coordination has been absolutely amazing to witness: like an ant colony that’s been disturbed, the HSD is positively swarming to find out whatever it can and make the most of this development. Makin found a chance to be smug as usual, citing the astronomical increase in users: “I predicted this yesterday / blamed the lack of content / and I was proven right once again.” Yet, for all of his posturing I believe that I detect the faintest bit of relief, too. No one in their right mind could hold it against him, though; it’s just wonderful to see the fandom active again.
Nothing more for today.
2nd of January
Following up on the Einstein/Hitler controversy from yesterday, Hussie has written an extensive apology for content in the ARG that people pointed out as offensive (the text of which, alongside all of the content from the ARG itself, has been mirrored in the Related Materials). Though this apology seems sincere, its very existence has prompted even more discussion about whether it was even needed.
There appear to be two main camps: the first believes that the lore concerning the Holocaust was completely impermissible, and while they’re grateful for the apology there is still much anger in the air over the debacle; the second camp believes that the response from fans, especially on Twitter, was completely disproportionate. Further, while most agree that the apology was a smart move, there is some pronounced indignance at the claims that Hussie is behaving anti-semitically.
As if this wasn’t enough, V themselves also posted on the matter. While not an apology, it is an extensive explanation over how and why Hussie released the text files as he did. This has also contributed towards calming people down, although it did prompt some more discussion over who V could possibly be. As I mentioned last time, however, I saw fit to completely shut down this particular avenue of discussion; I will not abide by anyone purposefully or aggressively gremlining the identity of people who would prefer to remain anonymous.
While I’m mostly keeping myself out of the discussion, I lean more towards the camp that believes the outrage is overblown. When discussing this with the rest of mspa-lit, Niklink commented: “drew you don't get it though / we're really bored.” Joke aside, it’s worth wondering whether the response would have been so huge if we had more content to tide us over in general.
Personally I’m worried that the backlash will discourage Hussie from creating more content somehow. We’ve already been so starved for information like this that we’ve been tearing through it nonstop since yesterday morning, and I don’t look forward to going back to basically nothing. Even without the upset we would probably return to that state, but the response may prompt Hussie to--at the very least--reassess how he puts information out there, and delay anything else he might have in the works.
As for the ARG itself, it seems we’ve already hit a dead end in our search. Cryptographically there doesn’t appear to be any information tucked away that we can unlock, so our options of what to do at this point are limited. My earlier comment on not calling this an ARG may be justified, as there’s been very little in the way of actual augmentation or real-world involvement.
Except, that is, for the coordinate file. A few people have tried to check out red dot locations that were near them, but with no real direction and to no avail. The GPS coordinates in the text file have been matched to real world locations, and a token few of them seem reachable. It’s remarkably unlikely that anything actually exists at these locations, so risking life and limb to get to them is unacceptable. We’re exhaustively stressing caution and that no one actually visit these places except if safe beyond reasonable doubt, but unless some enterprising fellow strikes out we’re at a standstill.
Nothing more for today.
3rd of January
In order to handle the increased amount of activity (as well as assist with problems like the constant onslaught of bots joining), Spiral was turned into a full mod today. A dousing of congratulations from people in mspa-lit followed, although I feel badly for Toast. He’s been around and recognized far longer, and being passed over for full mod in favor of the other homestuck channel pseudo must sting. To his full credit he shows no signs of envy or upset, and I must admit I’m happy to have another person who gets serious more often than not on the team.
In regards to the ARG, there was an unprecedented development today. People have been checking and rechecking each of the coordinates in the text file to find viable locations to visit in the future. As it happens, one of our users SneezeGunSatan is an active hiker living in California, and has already gone on a trail that passes right by one of the locations. After ensuring that they would be capable and safe, he went out to the trail today to see if anything was there.
Throughout the previous two days, it was mostly accepted that there wouldn’t be anything at any of the locations. What we’ve already got has been more than exciting, and WP doesn’t exactly have a bottomless treasury to work with when it comes to these silly extra projects. Imagine our surprise, then, when Sneeze reports back with a picture of a teddy bear and a giant letter E on a piece of paper smack dab in the spot we were looking at.
At the first sight of the image, #skaianetsystems practically exploded. What had already been a constant fever pitch for two days suddenly became complete pandemonium. Madness overtook the community for a glorious hour or so as people celebrated the discover. It took some time for us to regain their senses; the subversion of our sober expectations was too incredible to overlook.
BearE, as the teddy is affectionately being called, was instantaneously converted into a meme on the server and subreddit. With his discovery, people are even more ravenously scouring the locations to see which are viable candidates to explore. To counter this, we’ve stepped up our warnings not to go to any of these locations: most of the locations are in completely inhospitable places such as the Arctic tundra, in isolated deserts, or even underwater in a few spots.
It’s also not certain whether BearE was actually planted there for the ARG or if we’ve simply been “gamejacked.” There’s been no word from WP officials about BearE, so there’s no way for us to tell if his appearance was a fluke or if it was intentional. Hopefully no one will get any terrible ideas in the meantime.
Assuming that BearE is genuine, it doesn’t really clear up anything. What all of this means or is for is completely unclear, although it’s fascinating to watch it unfold in real time. Since the bear was discovered, people are coming up with all sorts of ways to still explore while avoiding danger themselves. Gnawms has brought up the idea of using drones to remotely explore designated spots, although as mentioned there is still a problem: most of them can’t even be reached by conventional travel, or they’re located on privately owned land such as farms.
Desperate for more clues, Sneeze will “conduct surgery” on the bear tomorrow to see if anything is inside it. The E is likely part of a wordpuzzle, such as when FFBF distributed the giant letters to fans that spelled out “ANDREW HUSSIE.” Though theorizing is still heavily underway, #skaianetsystems has largely been abandoned for such purposes due to the insane amount of shitposting that followed since BearE’s discovery. Instead, #skaianet-serious has been opened so that major updates can be communicated rapidly, and as a safe haven for people who are earnestly attempting to learn more.
Nothing more for today.
4th of January
As they said they would, Sneeze opened up the bear and posted a video on Youtube as proof. Unfortunately, as expected there were no further clues nestled away inside BearE. It’s to be assumed at this point that the chase is over, and we will simply have to wait for any new developments from WP directly. No one is really sure what comes next, but with luck we won’t have to wait long.
It seems that someone did end up reaching out to WP staff on Twitter about BearE. Cutting him open turned out to be unnecessary: we were basically unaware of it until today, but V commented that BearE’s presence on the California hiking trail was a complete coincidence and reiterated that WP has placed nothing at any of the described GPS coordinates.
There were a few revelations from this. Gnawms commented:
... this confirms at least one of two things / 1) wp really doesnt care enough about the safety of its fans to let makin or anyone else know not to try to go for these coordinates / 2) wp has far fewer lurkers here than we thought.
Makin and a token few others are fond of saying that WP has accounts in the HSD, but instances like this don’t really inspire confidence in that idea. I’ve always thought it was a nice idea but not really convincing. As for the first point, no one may have told us but I feel we did a fine job of taking care of people on our own. It would be nice to have some word sooner from officials on matters like this, but we’re not fledgling infants unable to make basic decisions or realizations on our own. Thankfully.
Aside from this, there hasn’t been very much to do with the ARG; it may be winding down, although four days was more than I thought we’d get from it. Instead, I’d like to describe a chance encounter between a relative newcomer and tmtmtl30 that spanned for a good hour or so. Before I can do that though, I need to describe a specific aspect of how the server works: the role color system.
Way back in the very beginning of this document, I do already mention that Discord has roles you can give to people which can have unique colors and permissions. For a long time, the way that people could gain a given color role was to request one from Aradiabot. At some point in the last year, though, the list of roles was expanded and it became impractical to expect users to know every color off the bat.
Instead, DeltaPsi worked to create a much more intuitive system where people could see all of the colors laid out together and click to choose the one they want. This is done through the 72 bot and the reaction system on Discord, and the resulting system was placed in #welcome so that newcomers would see it more easily. Every time someone clicks on a given reaction, 72 will remove their react and simultaneously give them user the corresponding color role.
This is important because each reaction has “1” next to it, which is part of Discord’s system to keep track of how many people have reacted the same way. 72 automatically removes the additional reactions to avoid abuse from people who would spam the reactions as fast as possible, ensuring that they will only ever have one color role and not bog down the system. It also doubles as aesthetically pleasing: having random numbers strewn about the page is annoying for more sensitive users.
Which brings us to today. The new user, SunLunette, reacted with a dark blue color, but 72 stuttered and they did not actually receive their role. Subsequently, the react on #welcome did not go away. It’s unknown how long it’s been there, but today tmtmtl30 for whatever reason was looking and noticed the “2”. She immediately pinged Lunette in mspa-lit, pleading with them to fix the mistake.
Lunette was understandably confused. It took several minutes to actually help them understand what the system we were describing is, and why tmtmtl30 was agitated. Instead of removing their reaction, they simply joined in on messing around with the rest of us in the channel. Tmtm’s begging grew more fervent with every refusal to fix the error, approaching lunacy before long.
It’s a rare event in mspa-lit, but occasionally everyone involved will be so whipped up by a joke that it essentially becomes a circus. Tmtm and to a lesser extent Lunette both served as great entertainment for the next hour--tmtm’s deadpan served as a particularly effective catalyst for humor. Both of them took it well though; Lunette in particular seemed to enjoy their time, and though they don’t seem at all interested in the shills I wonder if they’ll bother to come back more in the future.
Nothing more for today.
5th of January
The fandom has started properly processing the news that BearE was not part of the ARG. There is some amusement and confusion as to what we might have stumbled on, with some people expressing regret that we’ve probably disturbed someone else’s project. That having been said, an alternative explanation--and more likely depending on your perspective--is that it was planted there by a particularly motivated fan.
Some really dedicated sleuths determined that BearE was sold local to the area the trail is in, which means someone probably bought the bear and brought it to that location shortly thereafter. The E could have been included to make it more stereotypically ARG-like. Then again, this all feels less feasible to me than “we interfered with someone else’s thing entirely,” but it’s hard to tell due to the preciseness of the location. Some people have floated the idea that Sneeze, the person who found the bear, planted it himself, but there’s not much else to be said if that’s the case.
A series of unrelated notes: Makin believes that we will receive more information on the 11th due to the layout of information in the ARG. When asked why he feels this way, he pointed to the content of the READ ME file and the collection of shitty wizard images. The set of instructions says to delete one image per day at a specific time, and going from the day the website went up that should culminate on January 11th. This will almost certainly lead to nothing of substance, but it is nonetheless a small shred of hope to hang onto.
At some point, Gnawms commented that Discord has pushed out an update letting mobile users gift a subscription to others, following desktop from about two weeks ago. Users have been clamoring for this capability for some time, so the fact that it’s here is appropriately exciting for a few people. However, this discussion gradually shifted into the topic of Discord monetizing their service and turning towards profiteering.
For some time it was apparent that Discord was losing money, but it’s not unlikely that--with the newfound ability to finally gift other users Nitro--they may be turning a profit now. User5 ended up joining the discussion at some point, insisting that Discord has been making money in the same way that Facebook does: selling private information of people to various groups, especially advertisers.
This reminded me of information I’ve read recently that said it’s actually very difficult for researchers and the like to access information from Discord. This is because, in order to access any information from the service, you must already be in a server of interest to pull the data. When I said as much, User5 retorted:
how do you think they make their money / they SELL the data / ... / they realized that facebooks whole culture of like posting ur real life name and face / wards off alot of people who are emotionally-savvy about how fucked up that is / but not computer-smart enough to know that / … / discord: a whole new poster base / way more crazy stuff / since its for "gamers" / who are more partial to sort of pseudo-anonymity / than ‘normies’.
This insight may have been obvious to some, but the comparison between Discord and Facebook is vaguely fascinating. It makes sense that Discord would have taken up such a niche: it occupies a very specific spot where it appeals to people who are more familiar with the internet, but who still appreciate a significant level of accessibility and customization. For some reason I’m reminded heavily of the XKCD comic about subcultures; there is no end to the diversity of human preference.
Switching gears again, Tera has felt somewhat unsteady in its position for a while now. It’s been getting some vibes that Makin has wanted to demod it, so I suggested it ask matter-of-factly to see if such was the case. Unfortunately Makin responded ambiguously, saying at first: “there’s no one to replace you with.” The answer itself being a bit of a waffle, he clarified by saying that Tera doesn’t involve itself very often in community matters, nor does it show a pronounced interest in Homestuck or developments concerning the property, which is a problem.
Tera responded by saying that it’s just the recent developments that it’s not too interested in, and the discussion mostly petered out after that. I find the explanation somewhat insufficient since there are plenty of mods who don’t express that much interest in Homestuck anymore, but I left it alone. However, Tera seems even more stressed out after the confrontation.
I enjoy having Tera on the team and I hate to see it so worried about such things. It’s resolved to find ways to get more involved and improve, saying that being able to take care of #art-cosplay really motivates it in a lot of ways. I suggested that Tera read the rest of the shills list, since that usually mollifies Makin well enough. As long as it does even just that, I imagine it’ll be enough to prevent this from becoming a bigger problem in the future.
Nothing more for today.
7th of January
Things have quieted a bit since the ARG has cooled down, but things are still plodding along faster than they were before. Admittedly, mspa-lit has been distracted suddenly by the appearance of a major Dark Souls mod; channel discussion has mostly been given to that, and whenever mspa-lit gets its hands on something shiny there’s usually little room for other things. That having been said, everyone is still in a fairly good mood post-ARG.
The main exception was a brief altercation that happened today. Cookiefonster rejoined the server sometime in the last week or two, and has been engaging fine for the most part. Occasionally, though, he will comment on people from WP who are disseminating news about Homestuck, especially V. The comments go back at least since the beginning of the year, where he’ll chime in with a complaint almost every single time V is mentioned.
At first people were content to ignore this; Cookie has always had his moments where he becomes irascible, and is actually somewhat infamous for inane bitching. Things came to a head today, though: Griever, who of all people is generally regarded as very docile and agreeable, came out swinging: “... it's REALLY annoying that EVERY SINGLE TIME YOU COME ON THIS SERVER it's to complain about something that doesn't even make any god damn sense.” For a second, conversation stopped as people processed this outburst.
Even Tera was somewhat taken aback: “holy shit griever / idk why but i never expected to see you genuinely irritated,” with others mumbling agreement and then also joining in on criticizing Cookie for his chicanery. I also voiced my problems with his behavior, but in retrospect I feel bad about it; I never really enjoy it when one person gets ganged up on by a number of people. It can be appropriate and even satisfying depending on who it concerns, but Cookie isn’t really someone who qualifies: he’s not a menace, more just a casual moron about specific things.
On a more positive note, the Best of the Subreddit 2018 results finally came in. Each year, Reddit will contribute free awards for communities to dole out to their members that they deem worthy. The Homestuck subreddit has a small competition where users vote in certain categories, such as Best Cosplayer or Best Fan Project.
It’s been a bit hectic this year; AberrantArtificer has historically been in charge of the contest each year, and he does a quality job each time. This year he was a bit late due to sickness and business he had to take care of, but today he put up the results of the contest. It’s a wonderful tribute to the users of the community, to see their posts put up and celebrated at the end of the year. I’ve even covered a few of these things, such as The Genesis Project from 2018.
With the contest results posted, the last vestiges of 2018 are basically behind us. The ARG may be dormant for now, but if there’s even the faintest semblance of regularity to it, then it will rejuvenate us like nothing else. The first piece by itself netted us nearly 1,000 new users and increased activity nearly two-fold for the server in those first few days. I’ve said this before, but I’m looking forward to the rest of this year. Hopefully 2019 will be a good time for everyone.
Nothing more for today.
10th of January
Today was, on the whole, rather unremarkable. Yet, it felt strangely engaging at points. There were three instances of group behavior that I’d like to remark on in some detail: the first was a protracted, pleasant discussion about one of the shills called Three Worlds Collide; the second involved another extreme pile-on with Cookiefonster; and the last involved a complete degradation of the channel to shitposting.
The first instance took place a few hours into the afternoon or so. Three Worlds Collide is a short piece by Eliezer Yudkowsky that features humanity far in the future, at a point where it’s virtually unrecognizable when you look closely. It compares these future humans against two alien societies that are by themselves fully functioning, but all three factions possess some idiosyncrasy that makes them fundamentally incompatible with each other. The story explores the interaction between these cultures, with a couple different endings based on the reader’s choice at a key moment in the story.
Details of the overall story aside, Yudkowsky purposefully made humans less recognizable in order to reduce readership bias towards them. There are a number of details that serve this purpose such as the structure of leadership, the way the economy works, etc. However, one of the things that sticks out most to people who read the story is an almost errant comment that appears much later, suggesting that at some point in the distant future rape was legalized.
Understandably, as soon as people become aware of this element in the story they become very uncomfortable. The topic has come up in mspa-lit before, but not extensively to my knowledge. Today, we started discussing it after user John Smith brought it up, saying that he thought it was a tactless and ineffective way to alienate humanity of the future. This kicked off a lengthy discussion about the merits of the story, and whether or not that particular feature was acceptable and/or effective.
With a topic like rape, it’s extremely easy for people to get heated unless it’s handled fastidiously. Even serious and purposeful discussion of the topic can lead to people becoming indignant, and the atmosphere can be ruined in mere seconds. Amazingly, that did not happen today; even though John was categorically put off by the literature, he was able to discuss it in reasonable enough terms. What followed was one of the better conversations we’ve had in a long time, I feel.
The details of that conversation aren’t important (as well as being somewhat long-winded), so I won’t elaborate on it much in that regard--the end result of the discussion was also kind of anti-climactic, as neither party to it really shifted much in their position. What matters more is that we were able to talk about it for something like an hour or even longer in a serious capacity, and through even just a casual discussion we were able to help each other come to a deeper understanding of the source material.
Most of the discussion actually consisted of us trying to determine why John didn’t like it to the degree that he did. While most of us were similarly kind of uneasy about the concept, none of us thought it was in poor service to the story: John was trying to insist that it was not interesting enough to be justified over some other strange development in human culture. However, he was caught up in these words later when he said it lead to interesting discussion, so we called him out on his contradiction. I suggested that the real reason he was opposed was because it simply offended him too much, which would be a completely understandable (if not necessarily justifiable) criticism.
This is where the conversation came to a stand still, and Makin suggested we move on since it appeared that we wouldn’t make anymore headway. I was initially upset by this; it felt like we had been making some progress in understanding one another better, but ultimately I didn’t want to hold the channel hostage. Truthfully, I was pleased with the discussion already. It’s not very often that we get to truly stretch our argumentative muscles; most “debate” in mspa-lit has been less actual debating and more fiendish baiting, so this was a very nice change of pace.
After this the channel calmed down for a while. Things perked back up a couple hours later, especially after Skyplayer brought up an old Foxtrot comic with a shout out to Homestuck. After confirming it was real, Tensei poked fun by calling Foxtrot another calarts comic. This is completely standard fare, and I’m willing to bet that almost no one even outwardly recognized the comment. That is, until Cookiefonster saw it.
Cookie is on record as hating the calarts meme. This is the more polite way of saying that he appears to have some sort of compulsion to obsequiously state his dislike of the meme at every given opportunity. It has grown into a very sore spot for anyone who happens to be present, and inevitably his response came: “also calarts meme is still HORRIBLY unfunny, is making those memes how you become a hsd mod1,” and at that precise second the amiable atmosphere of the chat practically disintegrated.
I complained in a previous entry that I don’t like it when dogpiling happens; I think it’s a petty activity that usually doesn’t amount to much besides mild annoyance in all present. However, it felt somewhat deserved today, and I’ve never seen it quite this bad. Griever’s pleasant demeanor fell away again, literally asking, “can you please leave this server” which prompted a large array of agreement from other users present.
Tensei and I even discussed the possibility and ramifications of simply banning Cookie at this point. I wouldn’t even mind doing it just for Cookie’s sake, as there appears to be no good will between him and anyone else here. I’m not sure if this has always been the case with him and I didn’t see it, or if Cookie has grown more irritating as time has gone by. Either way, there isn’t a lot to be gained from keeping him here if it’ll only lead to more chafing.
My main worry is that, if we actually ban Cookie, it will be a reinforcement of the casual way in which we banned Biscuit too. Banning people isn’t a tool that should be used with such impunity, just because we happen to dislike a person a lot. It’s an unfortunate quandary that I don’t have the philosophical chops or willpower to really hash out, and I suspect none of the other mods feel like doing so either. If it gets worse, I don’t see any other realistic outcome though.
The last thing that happened today was a strange perversion of the chat that was so extreme even I noticed it with little effort. The conversation with John Smith from earlier had been polite and tidy, with little to no mockery or interference. Directly after the Cookie conversation with no prompting, Griever said: “hey drew do you want some fucking smut?” Though this didn’t have much to do with what came after, I identify it as the point the channel began descending into hell for the night.
Poorly crafted “jokes” started coming out left and right from various people, such as pinging Cookiefonster repeatedly to the point of extreme rudeness. The “holy shit guys [user] left” meme was spammed en masse for a time, and then somehow the topic switched to intraserver raiding. Apparently, back during the earlier generation of altgen, users from there would lead raids on other channels within the HSD. There was some talk about reinvigorating such activities, which I immediately shut down.
This madness then simply transformed into conspiring to get mspa-lit hidden by being as terrible as possible. Only one person, N’zoth, actually suggested this seriously as far as I can tell, but Gnawms, Reti, Tori, Soup_main, and even Tmtm to some extent were all contributing to the lunacy. It was actually something of a trial to get them all to stop, for some reason everyone was taken by the desire to act like complete jackasses.
Though this sort of thing does bother me a little bit even under ordinary circumstances, my typical response is usually ambivalence or even to join in a little bit. However, I think that my expectations had been raised by the discussion we had with John earlier in the day. I was unusually agitated by the complete bullshit playing out tonight, and on my mind were the words of Tensei, Nights, and a few others: it has been suggested a lot recently that mspa-lit’s quality has deteriorated.
Normally I would wave this off, being more concerned with the level of activity rather than the quality, but after the manic rise in shitposting from tonight I’m more inclined to agree. The balance has tipped too far in the direction of quantity, and something is going to need to be done to bring it back up to par if this continues2. I hate to say it this way, but there does appear to be a certain few key individuals who can be blamed for this. As I just said, I don’t like the idea of banning people for arbitrary and selfish reasons, but I would not be surprised if it comes to that in the future.
On a lighter note, I was lurking in #general later at night to see what people were saying and what the atmosphere was like. It was surprisingly active given the hour, although at one point N’zoth said “HSD is dying,” which anyone should know triggers a deep-seated fear in me. After remembering I literally keep track of this information on a daily basis and that his claims are basically unfounded, I calmed down and decided to hang out with the channel proper for a bit.
Makin himself came up in the discussion, and it seems that there is close to no one in #general who actually knows who he is3 or anything about his history. Even if only by waiting, it seems that Makin has largely outrun his controversial past with the general populace. It’s likely that the only people in the server who remember such things--or indeed, know Makin at all--are the ones who hang out in mspa-lit habitually. What this means for the future is unclear, if anything.
I’ve often wondered about how our community would end up, fearing that it might be ripped apart by some fierce discourse or other hostile means. It seems that my worry was misplaced, as usual: I would say that it looks like our culture will simply fade away as time passes, but in a way it looks like that’s already happened. Going back to look at my first entry, the 9th of July in 2017, it feels almost completely unrecognizable. The cultural shift across “generations of users” that I described in a previous entry has already come to pass.
This is rather sobering, but at the same time reassuring. I don’t suddenly care less about the place; as saddening as it is to realize that things just aren’t the same anymore, there is still a core of people and reasons that I spend my time here. At this point, I’m actually more curious to see how things end up than ever before. Despite all the more difficult times, I’m glad that I’ve been here to experience the good times too. I look forward to seeing what happens in the future.
Nothing more for today.
11th of January
Despite hopes to the contrary, today came and went with no apparent update to the Skaianet Systems page. We held out until the very end of the day, but at a certain point most of us had already given up the ghost. It wasn’t exactly unexpected, but it was still a little saddening; I was personally looking forward to another burst in activity, and I can tell people are starting to get a bit bored again.
The most likely scenario is that nothing was ever planned to be released today, and that we simply psyched ourselves out into thinking it would happen. This has happened enough times that it wouldn’t be surprising at all if it turned out to be true. Alternatively, there is still a modicum of fear that something was planned and then Hussie was scared off due to the response to the original batch of information. If it ever comes out that this is the case, then immense upset at the portion of the fandom responsible for the overreaction would be sure to follow.
For now, the question is what to do with the #skaianetsystems channel now that it’s essentially dead weight. Hiding it seems inadvisable for now, as people are still using it for speculation and other reasons. Makin deemed it appropriate to convert it to #alt-homestuck during inactive periods for the ARG. If the Skaianet Systems website should update it again, then the channel can be rapidly restored to its original function and all should be fine.
The exact difference in activity levels between fresh updates and stagnant periods is rather stark with all of this. Never before has the drop in participation been so pronounced as with this ARG: the server was positively aglow with energy for the span of a week, and then over the course of another week it dropped about a third to a half of what it was during the peak of the ARG.
That having been said, it’s not even cause for much concern: the level of activity we’re at right now is far more sustainable, and actually somewhat better than it was through the last few months of 2018. It’s just such a massive, obvious difference that it attracts attention. I’m not even strictly sure that it’s better when it’s more active; I also mentioned recently that a better balance between quantity and quality must be struck. That having been said, it’s impossible to deny that consistently increased activity makes the place feel more engaging. I suppose we’ll just have to keep our eyes peeled for more information.
Nothing more for today.
14th of January
The release date for the fifth Homestuck book was pushed back from June 12th to September 10th last night. The news has been received with a mix of extreme disappointment and the more carefree response “I figured this would happen.” It was only a matter of time before something like this happened, but such realization doesn’t make the reality of it any easier to stomach.
Two reasons for this change immediately came to mind: either the books aren’t doing as well as Viz wants, or Hussie is delaying the development of commentary for later acts in the story. Makin overtly commented: “I need that act 6 commentary / so he can realize he fucked up,” which most people have seriously been anticipating. There’s an increasing chance that we will simply never get to Act 6 if the books are being stunted for some reason.
In addition to this, Skyplayer reminded the chat that one of the most important Flash animations for Homestuck has been broken for some time now, with little sign that it will be fixed. Makin posits that the exact reason for the Flash breaking is mysterious and doesn’t imply malfeasance on Viz’s part. However, back in April of last year Viz also claimed it was going finish converting all of the videos into HTML so they wouldn’t rely on Youtube. However, as Sky points out: “Viz never touched the site again after April except to switch out the advertisements to the newest book.” The effort remains incomplete nearly a year later.
However, there is still a glimmer in all of this darkness. Sky comments further: “WP could have kept selling tshirts and friendsims for years still without Hussie doing anything. actively rebranding means he is working on something,” although what exactly he might be working on is completely up in the air. Makin suggests that Skaianet Systems, in tandem with the date of the book being pushed back, suggests something big4 is in the works for the tenth anniversary. We can only hope that Viz is pushing the epilogue, which would be absolutely sensible given the tenth anniversary is approaching. Realistically though, we can’t rely on any assumptions.
Nothing more for today.
19th of January
There was a strange twist of fate today. User5 abandoned all of his usual pretenses and told the group straight up that he had decided to leave. It was not out of dissatisfaction with mspa-lit or anyone in it, but rather that he had decided he had too much baggage of sorts with his current persona. He thus wants to drop the User5 label and start anew.
This was accompanied by a lot of expected and well-deserved sadness. User5’s turnaround from an unapologetic and ruthlessly ironic troll into a genuine contributor to the channel has been absolutely remarkable to witness, and has certainly been interesting to watch for the last year and then some. Practically everyone in the channel is fond of him to some degree, and the fact that he’s leaving has struck a note of genuine sorrow in everyone there.
User5 didn’t really say much about what he planned to do in the future. Of all people, he trusted me with what appeared to be a literal hash code: if anyone appeared and claimed to be him, I could request the code to verify it wasn’t “some bastard” pretending to be him. Alongside this, he departed with some interesting words of wisdom: “dont stoop to shitty peoples level to try to be cool with them / they use that shit as ammo against u / thats all / always be real u.” And then he was gone.
As a token of respect, almost everyone who was present at the time decided to abandon their own color role and adopt black, both as a symbol of mourning and since it was User5’s color. Tmt obstinately kept her white, but not even she, aloof as she is, abstained from talking about the event in sympathy. There was some reminiscing about the conditions under which User5 first arrived (Gitaxian at one point saying, “To think all this was brought about by Hell’s New World”), and the numerous shenanigans he’s been a part of since.
There are some who refuse to believe this is truly the end of his stay here, it should be pointed out. Shortly after User5 left, Toast asked me in private how long I thought it would take for User5 to show back up again as an alt or some such. Truthfully I don’t know, although the code that he gave me to ward off imposters implies to me that it won’t be long. It may be that User5 wants to lay low and will avoid outing himself if he does this, but I can’t pretend to know what the guy thinks or does. There’s only one thing I know for sure about him: if he does stay gone as he says, he will be missed here.
Nothing more for today.
21st of January
Hilariously, User5 returned today in full splendor. Without even a care for the show of leaving before, in true fashion he openly poked fun at people who “mourned his passing.” I confirmed through the code he provided that this was in fact the same individual, which made me laugh: there was a lot of pomp and circumstance surrounding his departure, and in hardly any time at all he’s come back.
As usual his reasoning was amusing, and he appended the last message on his old account:
Fuck this New Account Shit!! i dont give a fuck!! id be using this old account still if i didnt already make the new account anyway!!! Fuck this stupid bullshit, im not going 2 be a Pussy Bitch about the past!! Stupid idea
This took some of us completely off guard and yet was completely in line with what we expect from him. It was truly a return to form.
Everyone who had been aware of his leaving was suitably happy with the outcome: we weathered his jocular insults as usual, lobbing a few of our own in return. His messages are more bizarre than most others’, and yet it’s more easily understood by everyone to be his own way of being friendly. I don’t think I’ve observed anyone else who can so openly mock others without coming across as genuinely rude, certainly not in the specific way he does it. Whatever the reason for his decision, it is very nice to have him back in our fold.
A fantastic development today, CANWC finally updated after a year-long hiatus. Releasing a 13 minute long animation, it’s actually possible to see the improvement in o’s handling of animation over the course of the video. In the associated thread on Reddit, I pointed out that o managed to increase the quality while still maintaining the original spirit of his webcomic; I’m no professional critic but it was easy for myself and others to see that this update was a true return to form for o.
However, even though the vast majority of people who saw it appeared to enjoy it, it seems that there are less people who saw it than we might have expected. It seems that simply too much time has passed and that people have stopped following CANWC for the most part. This is a shame, because it appears that it will only get better over time; a few of us want to try and systematically get more people interested in the fanventure again, seeing as it’s one of the few quality works we have to enjoy now. We’ll see what the future holds for it.
Nothing more for today.
23rd of January
For a long time now, we’ve been suffering from a critical shortage of space in the pin list. Discord allows a maximum of fifty pins in any channel, and then it caps out for some reason. For over two years now, we’ve been rather selective about what we’ll pin because we hit the cap even before I arrived. Pinning something has required removing previous pins to make space, which we’re hesitant to do because we don’t want to lose any great content.
I’ve been getting increasingly annoyed at the lack of space, so today I decided to implement a system that preserves old pins and their history as thoroughly as possible and frees up room for more pins in the future. Unfortunately I don’t have the skills to automate the process, but that’s never stopped me from pursuing tedious tasks before; I’m pleased to say that my system is in place and that the pins have already been added to since I archived everything from the past.
In fact, the system is now easier to access externally: every pin from mspa-lit has been added to an Imgur album with a short description of what it is, the date, and a direct link to the affiliated post on Discord itself. This should allow for people to explore the context if necessary, and for skeptical people to verify that certain posts do in fact exist (which could either be good or bad for us depending on the exact pin, I guess). This information has also been added to the Related Materials.
Unfortunately, there is no easy way to go check for pins that we’ve already gotten rid of previously. The Discord search function does not currently filter for messages that have been pinned (or even the notifications themselves that something was pinned), meaning that one would have to manually search for such posts or rely on memory of context to find them. Effectively, unless anyone volunteers the information, pins from before this list was made are lost forever5.
Additionally, I was only willing to do this for one channel. I think most of the other channels have less pins except for general and altgen, but I’m still not willing to go through them and assemble their pin lists too. Qweq very helpfully volunteered (seemed eager, even) to do this for the pin list in #general, so that channel will be taken care of at least. Strictly speaking I’m not sure if the other channels even need it--altgen is such an enormous mess that it might not even be worth looking at, although I’m sure it would be appreciated by newcomers to the channel. I guess I would also be very interested to see some of the older memes to come out of that place.
Nothing more for today.
25th of January
There was a very unusual confrontation between Makin and long-standing user Dickle today. As a reminder, Makin’s patreon has a reward tier where anyone can host their own channel for $30 a month. Ever since the Patreon started, Dickle has had his own channel dedicated to discussing fanventures, especially Altgenstuck. It’s also loosely dedicated to discussing/sharing Neon Genesis Evangelion memes, although I can’t really tell how often it’s actually used for these purposes.
The channel has ambled along for a while in relative peace for over a year now. However, Makin was doing some math regarding the Patreon funds and noticed that he was coming up short. Without hesitation, the hunt for the malefactor began, and he arrived swiftly upon Dickle’s doorstep. It turns out that Dickle has not been paying the rent over a year, and has accumulated significant backpay.
Discussions commenced to figure out what exactly had happened: why was Dickle not paying the Patreon fees for the channel? After doing some looking into the matter, it seems ownership/responsibility was Dickle’s, but another another user named Bird is actually the person who was paying the bill. Bird eventually got banned for being racist but stayed in the server as an alt account and continued to pay for the channel, but at a certain point ghosted everyone and stopped.
It’s hard to verify this because apparently Bird was using Dickle’s account to pay for the service (itself a violation of Patreon’s TOS). Regardless, after a certain point the money stopped flowing and Makin claims that Dickle owes nearly $400 dollars, which he then cut in half “to be nice.” He firmly established that “180 dollars is the absolute minimum I'm willing to accept so dickle stays unbanned,” which seemed clear enough to everyone present, but then somehow the conversation began to spiral out of control.
Two more users, epistemicRelativist and ParcelPyxidis, jumped in and began insinuating things that hadn’t been clear in the conversation previously or were clearly false. Relativist in particular began claiming that Dickle owed exactly no money simply because Makin had not been actively checking to make sure that funds were going through. While it is easy to agree that Makin had been neglectful in making sure channels were being taken care of, it doesn’t absolve Dickle of responsibility in the matter either.
Despite this middling position, Relativist and Pyxidis continued to claim that Makin was the one at fault and that Dickle should not suffer any consequence from failure to pay. Makin appropriately called all this “twisty logic,” reaffirming that Dickle would in fact be banned until he paid what Makin determined him to still owe.
I took issue with this in particular, saying that the channel should by all means be shut down but banning people for Patreon-related matters seemed like a bad precedent. Makin countered: “if I let this slide no one will pay for their channels again.” I don’t think this is necessarily true, as the case with Dickle is clearly an irregular occurrence, but I effectively have no say over what happens at this point.
Yet, despite coming to this conclusion, the channel has been in turmoil for some hours now. I don’t know how or why, but for some reason Makin et al continue to discuss the matter with Relativist and Pyxidis. Makin has even renamed the channel to #courtroom to reflect the proceedings; additionally he set up a tier on the Patreon at $300 a month that says “Dickle will be saved. #fanventure-fiesta will stay up. Cities will fall. Hope survives.” The channel has officially descended into ultimate madness.
Newcomers to the discussion are calling Makin a “loan shark” for these policies and claiming that it’s unclear wording/no precedent to support the conclusion of channel closure from failure to pay. He responded by screenshotting the exact wording from the Patreon itself that stipulate that condition, and also highlighted a previous example of someone absconding from the server after failing to pay for two months of service. I’m stunned to be witnessing this kind of outlandish reasoning happen in real time from numerous people, it feels impossible that such leaps of logic should exist.
Finally, several hours later, the channel has actually been hidden and it is quiet. Dickle was unceremoniously banned until such a time as his fees are paid6, and the Patreon channel list is one shorter. I feel like a changed person for having witnessed such a ridiculous shitstorm. Yet, it doesn’t appear to have leaked anywhere else in the server--I would half expect numerous people to be calling for abolishment of the Patreon after this, but part of me is glad that the altercation is now over.
I’m slightly disappointed that #courtroom was removed once again, but if history is any indication it’s not a good thing in the long-term. Numerous servers have tried to implement one with varying degrees of success, often dependent on how many people are involved. #courtrooms can be very funny on smaller servers, but in bigger places they tend to draw an incredible amount of criticism: it is viewed almost as cruelty, whereas with less people it’s more of an object of amusement than anything else. I personally find it both helpful to reduce noise and entertaining in its own right, but it seems we may never be ready for the glory of a proper courtroom here.
Nothing more for today.
Makin
1 it's how you get hired by cartoon network though
2 - andrew hussie, never
3 no one cared who I was until I put on the joker makeup
4 for you
5 drew fucks up his one job as always
6 I gave him like an entire grace week to pay you nerd, I didn't just ban him instantly