Not only does my birthday fall on Petrov Day, it falls on the 10th anniversary of Petrov day. September 1993 is a very special September because September 1993 is the Eternal September.
These are the first 4 paragraphs of that linked Wikipedia page:
Eternal September or the September that never ended is Usenet slang for a period beginning in September 1993, the month that Internet service provider America Online began offering Usenet access to its many users, overwhelming the existing culture for online forums. The influx in Usenet users was also indirectly caused by the aggressive direct mailing campaign by AOL Chief Marketing Officer Jan Brandt in order to beat out CompuServe and Prodigy, which most notably involved distributing millions of floppy disks and CD-ROMs with free trials of AOL.
Before then, Usenet was largely restricted to colleges and universities. Every September, a large number of incoming freshmen would acquire access to Usenet for the first time, taking time to become accustomed to Usenet’s standards of conduct and “netiquette”. After a month or so, these new users would either learn to comply with the networks’ social norms or tire of using the service.
Whereas the regular September freshman influx would quickly settle down, the influx of new users from AOL did not end, and Usenet’s existing culture did not have the capacity to integrate the sheer number of new users following September 1993. Since then, the popularity of the Internet has brought on a constant stream of new users and thus, from the point of view of the pre-1993 Usenet users, the influx of new users in September 1993 never ended.
Dave Fischer coined the term in a January 1994 post to alt.folklore.computers: “It’s moot now. September 1993 will go down in net.history as the September that never ended.”
September 1993 is the earliest point in time at which persons online did not feel themselves beholden to the norms of a preexisting internet culture, simply because that culture was not strong enough to overpower the torrent of new memes. (meme here referring not only to captioned images, but to any unit of culture spreading online.) This effectively marked the dawn of the Age of Memes, a term I hope people start using unironically. From September 1993 onward, the internet became a place where ideas could grow and spread without the sufficiently strong culture to chaperone them that had theretofore existed.
The Internet facilitates communication between people who would not otherwise be able to communicate. Generally speaking, this is a good thing, but it also means that memes can fester on the internet that would not otherwise hold up to the memetic antibodies present in a smaller community with a more cohesive culture. Some examples of ideas that are wrong but which are held by sufficiently large groups of people who have managed to find each other online:
I appear to be a teenage girl, but I am actually a wolf.
I am better than other people because of my skin color.
The earth is flat.
(etc)
So my birthdate is very cool, falling on the tenth anniversary of the last time one guy saved the world in the midst of the birth of the internet as we know it. And so I’d like to invite anyone who shares my birthdate to join the online community I’m hoping to build around it. I like the idea that a community could form around every birthdate, because it is the characteristic of a person’s identity least correlated with region, ethnicity, status, etc. To the extent that all humans are born equal, no one is more your peer than those who were born on the same date as you, and we oughta look out for each other.
As the guy with the coolest birthdate around, I might as well be the one to start the trend. Even if I find only one other person, that will be amusing enough to have been worth the trouble.
If you know anyone else who was born on September 26 1993, please tell them to join our birthday team at /r/19930926.
So if today is also your birthday, Happy Birthday!
And if today is not your birthday, Happy Petrov Day! You too have reason to celebrate.
I’d been reading a lot of Slate Star Codex these last few months, and – as with immersion in any particular worldview – it’s had a pretty significant effect on how I think about many different moments and trends I’ve observed in my own life. But r/Place was something special- it seemed to be the perfect confluence of all these phenomena in one glorious microcosm of humanity.
To the extent that r/Place can be considered an experimental environment, I believe Scott Alexander’s insights into the nature of humanity, society, and existence in general are found to be correct. Having not been disproven under experimental conditions, these observations deserve to ascend from hypothesis to theory (pendingreplication, of course).
I thought about writing a formally structured lab report on all this, but wound up making a silly music video instead.
It was generally well received, and got about 6,000 views. Pretty good, I daresay, for having been released two weeks after the event in question, considering the internet’s collective attention span.
There’s certainly precedent for attempting to demonstrate the validity of a rationalist axiom using an unconventional experimental environment. Alexander himself referred to the board game Diplomacy as a “game theory laboratory,” using his specific experiences with some recent playthroughs to illustrate various postulates about trust, negotiation, religion, etc. A game of Diplomacy though is an environment with at most 7 agents, and it attempts to simulate international relations in a structured turn-based environment with universal predetermined win conditions. I believe that r/Place, with its hundreds of thousands of participants each with their own shifting ill-defined objectives is an even better microcosm for such geopolitical analysis, especially considering that its fundamental structure is competition over finite territory.
In Diplomacy, each player is not only the absolute dictator of their respective nation, but also has unilateral control over all its forces. In the real world, as in r/Place, leaders exert control only to the extent that they can motivate others to take action aligning with that leader’s plans. In many cases, two factions would officially agree on a proposed peaceful compromise, but remain utterly incapable of getting their volunteer rank-and-file users to cooperate.
That makes the several instances of successful cooperation all the more impressive. In one case, the Bulgarians agreed to share space with the rubiks cube enthusiasts on the condition that they change the visible faces of their cube to match the colors of Bulgaria’s flag. In another, r/Goodboye won the favor the expansionist Dutch by equipping their second doggo with a handsome set of clogs.
There was certainly no higher authority to appeal to if agreements were broken, and – just as in Diplomacy – fairweather allies quickly abandoned agreements when the opportunity arose.
Importantly, the members of these many factions support them entirely voluntarily. Any user could align with any subreddit or movement within r/Place (or indeed, several at once), and clans’ territorial expansion is indicative not only of the size of their userbase, but of those users’ relative enthusiasm for their various chosen enterprises. r/Place then is a strikingly well-realized archipelago of atomic communitarianism, as each sect accumulates adherents in proportion to their representation of those users’ priorities. In a particularly on-the-nose illustration of territorial claim based on political ideology, r/thefarleftside was formed as a coalition of groups supporting leftist politics and… redness.
“Death to the Bluegeoisie!”
The Blue Corner had enough troubles of their own, however. You’re unlikely to find a better illustration of the Motte and Bailey doctrine than their broad early expansion and subsequent retreat to more humble but defensible territory when inevitably challenged.
But there was one phenomenon in r/Place that illustrated Alexander’s core philosophy more than any other. Its story has rightfully ascended to the highest planes of r/Place’s mythology, and has most informed the narrative arc I retroactively constructed around r/Place’s multivarious dramas in the lyrics of my song.
The Void.
boo!
The Void is, of course, an avatar for that most fearsome foe introduced to us in Alexander’s opus, Moloch. It consumes tirelessly, unmaking all created things, rending all color and form into homogenous darkness. This is humanity’s ultimate adversary. Call it Moloch, Azazoth, Gnon, or simply Entropy. The ultimate fate of all things, to be overcome only by an even greater coordinating force. And, perhaps, not even then.
The crucial difference, of course, is that within r/Place, The Void was really just another faction, spreading by means of the deliberate cooperation of hundreds of individuals. Their manifesto reads “Every good needs a villain… every forest needs a fire.”
Real people, who have chosen to worship Moloch. Is anything more terrifying? Personally, I was reminded of the Dark Zealots in Doctor Strange.
Doctor… we don’t seek to rule this world. We seek to save it… to hand it over to Dormammu, who is the intent of all evolution… the why of all existence.
I’m unreasonably fond of Doctor Strange. It’s the epic story of a handsome goatee’d genius fighting to protect the world from an incomprehensible entity of unprecedented power called forth by shortsighted fanatics who foolheartedly believe they could subordinate it to their own ends, willfully ignorant of the inevitability of its extermination of humanity through sheer indifference in the singleminded execution of its own unfathomable aims.
I can’t be the only one who sees the resemblance
In the end, as merely another player in the game, the Void was wiped out through the coordinated meanness of everyone else, and its residue is barely visible on the final canvas.
But, really, what is so “final” about the image that has now become so famous?
The experiment concluded abruptly and without notice. Few groups or regions are without imperfection, and scores of disputes remain unresolved.
Behold, the Rainbow Flag and 4chan’s Flag of Kekistan, frozen forever in perfect equilibrium
I believe that the many attempts to “clean up” the final canvas are misguided; they’re all based on the assumption that every disagreement would be resolved according to the preference of whatever trend currently dominates. The grandeur of r/Place arose from its chaos, a churning kaleidoscope endlessly making and remaking itself anew.
But it was right that it should end. Had r/Place progressed indefinitely, users would have eventually lost interest and the canvas would be overrun by automation. We need not imagine what sordid future lay beyond, because a clone of the project opened shortly after the original’s closure, and the few humans who carried over were quickly overcome by unchecked scripted bonnets.
To end r/Place with dignity was the merciful choice. But we must remember that the timing was arbitrary because it was unforeseen. There is no best final image, no perfect border to be drawn between every contested region. The eventual picture is merely a snapshot in time of an ongoing project. Very like this present moment in our own world. We, in every instant, live amidst countless factions and ideologies struggling for power, each with their own goals and schemes, living and dying as they create, protect, and destroy. Our civilization wending toward but never reaching some elusive ideal cultural equilibrium.
Our world is not subject to the user apathy that would have eventually doomed r/Place, because each succeeding generation of humans has risen to the occasion to face their own unique challenges. And I do not believe the robots will win, as long as goatee’d heroes walk among us. On the whole, though human nature has changed so little in the last ten thousand years, things really are getting better.
So if r/Place is a microcosm of our own world, the evidence suggests that we will – haphazardly and imperfectly, but continuously – self-organize in favor of niceness, community and civilization.
This crucial moral- that coordination can overcome chaos, that humans can defeat Moloch by sheer dint of learning to get along, is the most important lesson r/Place can teach us, and I did my best to drive it home in decreasingly subtle terms over the course of my song:
Will we create something great, or give in to anomie
…
Collaboration is fun! On that we all can agree
…
The moral of the story is when all is said and done
Finding ways to work together is just more fun
…
Life isn’t me versus you, it’s us both against entropy
And everybody can thrive if we pursue harmony
This is the ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny.
In keeping with my status as a millennial redditor, I spend a lot of time worrying about what I’m supposed to be doing with my life. I haven’t developed an overall goal yet, but I strongly endorse this rule of thumb:
If you ever think “It sure would be cool if someone did this thing,” and no one’s going to do that thing unless you do it, then you should figure out how to do that thing.
It’s going to take me longer than I expected to finish this r/Place video.
I don’t know how to make videos
I have a video editing program, and someone will probably post a time-lapse of the whole project, and I can probably learn how to splice out clips, pan-and-scan, and adjust the speed. (edit: they did!)
I can’t record, much less compose, music.
I can use the soundtrack from another video, which has the added bonus of being an homage to another viral video, which can only help this one’s popularity (edit: I did!)
I can’t sing.
Tyler can sing, and he’s a really great guy who would probably do me the favor. (edit: he did!)
This project is also potentially compatible with another general goal of mine: to get cool people to think I’m cool
Current Plan:
Start a blog. (done!)
Make a video about a thing on Reddit that gets really popular
Use it to get Scott Alexander’s attention so he’ll read this blog
Make it a good blog so Scott thinks I’m cool and wants to be pals
We both move in to Alicorn’s Baugruppe (Nothing unusual or anything. Just one of those good old-fashioned bromance-discipleship type situations.)
MIRI saves the world, and everyone lives happily ever after.
Every year on April 1st, Reddit unveils its annual April Fools prank. It’s more of an event than a prank really. A weird new toy lobbed at the hivemind of the internet, just to see what happens.
I’ve been a user for a bit over 5 years, and a lurker for a while longer, and I’ve developed a pretty thorough understanding of how Reddit’s mind works. Most of the time, contributions are bullshit – oversimplifying a complex situation to the point of no longer adding anything to the discussion. But every now and then, Reddit does something truly incredible. Dare I say beautiful. Something that never would have been possible at any other point in history or with any other combination of people.
This Saturday, Reddit made Place.
This image is the result of 72 hours of conflict, collaboration, and random coincidence. The (absolutely fascinating) r/Place Atlas has more than 1300 entries documenting the actions and accomplishments of the various factions.
I want to share the story of this flashpoint of internet culture and draw from it some observations on human nature, or at least Reddit’s nature. But the people I’ve tried to explain it to have generally responded with nonplused indifference. Even Reddit at large doesn’t care as much as they should, outside of the various coalitions congratulating themselves on their individual accomplishments. A handful of users have documented the progression of the project, but what doesn’t exist yet is the whole story told in a maximally accessible format that would appeal to people who didn’t watch it firsthand.
I think people would appreciate this. If all goes well, I think it might be a hit.
It’s musical and people like music.
It’s under 4 minutes long. Who’s gonna watch a video longer than 4 minutes?
It’s dense, which means people might choose to re-watch it to see or hear stuff they missed, which inflates view-count. And Youtube users particularly love commenting with quotes from the thing they just watched, so I’ll include quotable quotes.
It’s about internet culture, and the internet (especially Reddit) loves mythologizing itself.
Non-redditors who are still literate in internet culture would find plenty to appreciate.
Non-internet-culture-literate people who still use the internet might watch it just to reassure themselves how weird the internet is.
Its soundtrack would be another viral video, which gives it that familiar-but-just-new-enough feeling that is currently fueling Hollywood.
It includes mention and appearance of many many niches of internet culture, and those people might be jazzed to see their thing show up.
Many thousands of people collaborated on this project, which means this song is about them. Who doesn’t like songs about themselves?
The internet loses interest in things very quickly, so I’ll have to move fast if this is going to stick. Clock’s ticking. Here goes.
Akataskeuastos 