Kayla: If it walks like a yeti and it talks like a yeti, then it's probably a yeti.
Chris: Mm. Not just, like, a random thing you see in the snow?
Kayla: A Betty is Betty Yeti's girlfriend.
Chris: We started recording, by the way.
Kayla: Yeah, I know. I was still having a conversation.
Chris: Betty is not yet his girlfriend. This is the worst banter.
Kayla: You always say it's the worst banter. You come up with some banter.
Chris: Welcome to cult are just weird.
Kayla: That's not banter. I'm Chris, and I'm bantering.
Chris: And this is Kayla.
Kayla: I don't know what you want from me. I was trying to do banter. You said Betty is not Yeti's girlfriend. So then, honestly, what's the point?
Chris: Okay, fine. Betty is Yeti.
Kayla: Yeti's not a name.
Chris: Yeti is a species.
Kayla: No, Yeti is the boy and Betty is the girl.
Chris: Are you high?
Kayla: No, it's just 1130, and we decided to record.
Chris: What's this? Wii.
Kayla: Do you actually want to banter, or do we want to?
Chris: This is what we're doing.
Kayla: Or do we want to?
Chris: This is our shitty, terrible banter.
Kayla: Get into it.
Chris: I'll just say that I'm excited for this.
Kayla: I am, too.
Chris: You're excited because you're forcing us to record at 1130. Cause you're like, oh, my God, I cannot wait to tell you about this thing.
Kayla: Just so our listeners are aware, we are recording this at 1130 at night on Friday, Juneteenth. So we have some celebrations happening outside. We have some fireworks going. So if you hear any pops in the background, it's just our neighborhood being excited for this holiday.
Chris: Yeah. We are not looking at fireworks for you, dear listeners.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: I hope you appreciate it, you ungrateful audience. Jeez.
Kayla: That's not the way you get people to come.
Chris: It's not good.
Kayla: No, we're talking about my topic. I have finally. I finally have a topic.
Chris: By the way, I'm excited about my next topic, too. Cause my next topic is fucking batshit. Yeah, I got it from a listener you keep.
Kayla: And looking at your computer with big eyes.
Chris: Yeah, it's definitely one of those ones where you start going into it a little bit and you're just like, oh, is this even good for the show? This is too culty. But then we've done other stuff like that, so I'm, you know, whatever.
Kayla: Well, I've got a perfect one today.
Chris: Oh, good. That mine's perfect, Mac. In the gray area. Like a little gray bullseye. Okay.
Kayla: Yeah. Mm, mm. Mm. I'm very excited to do this one. So I guess if we're ready to start our episode.
Chris: Well, you never said what your name was.
Kayla: My name's Kayla's.
Chris: Too busy talking about Betty or whatever.
Kayla: My name's Betty now, and I'm Yeti's girlfriend.
Chris: It's like Kung Pao. Did you ever watch Kung Pao?
Kayla: You made me watch Kung Pao.
Chris: And the villain said he just arbitrarily decided that his name was Betty. Like in the first five minutes of the movie.
Kayla: Don't remember a single scene.
Chris: That is you from that. Kung Pao is an excellent comedy.
Kayla: Not saying it's not, I just don't remember it.
Chris: It's cinema.
Kayla: It's one of the few dvd's we own.
Chris: Yeah, that's right.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: Who owns dvd's now anyway?
Kayla: You've owned. That DVD has followed you, I think, from Orlando probably. I think it followed you from Orlando to your multiple apartments in Los Angeles to Orange county, to our apartments together in Los Angeles.
Chris: It's an important artifact. Okay. All right. Tell me what your topic is, Betty.
Kayla: Well, I'm going to open. I'm going to open this in the tradition of you. I'm gonna ask you a question, okay.
Chris: Actually open this can of worms, this topic.
Kayla: I'm actually gonna ask you a few questions.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: So.
Chris: All right, Chris, I'm ready.
Kayla: Have you ever wanted to escape?
Chris: Like right now? Cause I kinda want to right now.
Kayla: Just ever torture doing it. You ever wanted to escape?
Chris: It's hard for me to answer that without more context. But depending on the context, there are contexts in which I have wanted to escape. Yes. Such as rooms. Such as right now, other things. This marriage.
Kayla: So let me ask you a second question.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: Have you ever continued on a possibly fruitless journey because you were compelled by faith?
Chris: I definitely continue on a lot of fruitless journeys.
Kayla: Whether possibly fruitless journeys.
Chris: Oh, I continue on explicitly fruitless. You know I'm an achievement whore in gaming.
Kayla: That's true.
Chris: I do. I play a lot of games longer than I should. I watch tv shows longer than I should.
Kayla: Yeah, I know.
Chris: Well, you're the other way. You won't give something ten minutes without saying this is garbage and turning it off, but I will. I am the other way. And I keep watching things long after it's been valuable. Just because I'm a completionist now, is completionism a form of faith? I don't know.
Kayla: I can give you an example of a time you continued on a possibly fruitless journey because you were compelled by faith.
Chris: Oh, my God. Okay.
Kayla: It was when you try. It was when you were trying to date me.
Chris: Jeez. Okay. Yeah.
Kayla: I mean, that's what it was, baby.
Chris: Yeah. It turned out it was indeed fruitless.
Kayla: Yep. Let me ask you my third question.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: Have you ever wanted to follow a mystical mentor in the pursuit of enlightenment?
Chris: What are you about to talk about?
Kayla: Just to answer the question. I mean, the answer is yes.
Chris: I like Yoda just as much as the next guy. Yeah.
Kayla: So, I mean, me too. My answer to all of these was yes.
Chris: I think, honestly, there's some universality to some of these questions. Maybe not all aspects of them, but wanting to experience mentorship, wanting to be. To feel like you were being taken care of in educational sense.
Kayla: Oh, we're talking about some universal things today.
Chris: Great.
Kayla: I'm actually talking about. All three of those questions are about the topic, and I actually did this topic.
Chris: You did this topic?
Kayla: I did this topic. This is yet another cult that I've been in.
Chris: Oh, geez, Kayla, we can't have a podcast where we talk about the dangers of cults and you keep joining them.
Kayla: Well, this is from a long time ago, so that's no excuse. At least it was a past me. At least it was a past Betty and not a current Betty.
Chris: Not a current Betty.
Kayla: I wanted to pick a topic this week that was a little bit escapist and not because I think we should be turning away from what's happening right now. I think we should all be doing our very best to face it head on every day. We've kind of taken the stance in this podcast that we're a little bit of a respite. We're a little bit of an escape from what's happening in the reality of the world. But I. You know, when we're talking about racial injustice and the uprisings, like black people and people of color have been. Have been facing this every day for a very long time, and white people standing in solidarity have joined along the way. More are joining now. So things like fighting racial injustice, dismantling and rebuilding oppressive systems, and taking steps to be actively anti racist is hard work.
Kayla: It's a struggle. And in order to do good, hard work, you need to rest sometimes.
Chris: Yeah. You can't be a good knight unless you polish your armor sometimes.
Kayla: There you go. The analogy that was given to me, I think it was in a white people for black lives meeting went like. The way a choir is able to sustain impossibly long notes as a group is because individuals can take turns dropping out to take a breath and then dive back in.
Chris: I did not know that.
Kayla: Yeah, everyone gets a chance to breathe, and the note continues on without skipping a beat.
Chris: Fascinating.
Kayla: And that is activism. Everyone needs to roll up their sleeves and do the work, and then we need to take turns dropping out for a moment to breathe. So let's take this moment to breathe. And good job. Proud of you.
Chris: Usually the people that I listen to on YouTube give me a countdown, like a breathe in for 3 seconds. Whatever.
Kayla: Well, I'm just gonna. We're all see, that's the thing. No one's counting down for the choir. They're just there intuitively knowing.
Chris: It's just like an organic.
Kayla: Yes, it's at your own pace.
Chris: Emergent behavior. I love emergence is my favorite thing, by the way.
Kayla: Then you are into this topic today.
Chris: Seriously, I'm not even joking when I say emergence. It's my literal favorite thing.
Kayla: You're very into this topic then.
Chris: Excellent.
Kayla: So let's take this moment to breathe and escape into a world that is beautiful and weird and maybe a cult. I don't know. We'll see at the end of the episode. We can kind of touch back on some of the issues we're facing today, some concrete ways to get involved, just, you know, if that's something that you need right now. But for now, let's go to the topic.
Chris: It's an activism sandwich. Let's talk about activism, then a breather, then activism again.
Kayla: There you go. So you heard my questions up top about a spiritual journey of faith. Do you have any ideas?
Chris: I have no idea. There's so many weird things around right now. It could be. You could be talking about the thing that I. That I'm gonna be talking about next week. I don't even know.
Kayla: I hope not. No, I'm definitely not. Okay, let me. Let me read you a quote from someone who has experienced today's topic and see if that kind of helps you guess what this is.
Chris: Okay, quote.
Kayla: This experience has been remarkable. One of the most remarkable experiences I've had on the Internet and in life as a whole. Utterly pointless. But I feel like I learned something about myself and other human beings today. Not exactly sure what, though. All I know is that I cried after reading the original message. Any thoughts?
Chris: Well, that quote's awesome.
Kayla: Oh, it's gonna get so much more awesome.
Chris: It doesn't really clue me in on what it is, though.
Kayla: Okay, what about this quote? We are all travelers on a path. We are all the same. There is no point in dwelling on petty differences. Everything we do has an effect. We may never know what that effect may be, but it is there, and it is important. Always think about this. Never let it leave your brain. Always do the best you can to help your fellow man. Life is the most valuable, worthless thing in the universe. Treasure it. You have one life to live. Never let anything hold you back. Do everything you can to make the world a better place to live.
Chris: Life is the most valuable, worthless thing in the universe. Nice. Yeah, it's actually. I actually dig that. Even though this person may be a weirdo, and I may be saying that I dig something that some crazy person said.
Kayla: So what do you think you're talking about today? Do you think it's like.
Chris: No.
Kayla: Do you think we're talking about a religion, a philosophy?
Chris: This, I think what I'm picturing undertaking. Yeah, no, I'm picturing, like, a teal swan type situation here where it's like an online pseudo religion with some person at the head of it, and there's, like, maybe a commune in South America.
Kayla: You couldn't be more wrong. Okay, we're not talking about a religion or a philosophy or a commune or a coven. No. Today we are going to talk about the line.
Chris: What's the line?
Kayla: You don't remember me telling you about the line?
Chris: Is this like, when I stood in line for Star wars for a day and a half when I was.
Kayla: No, no. Maybe I never did. Did I never tell you about the line? Do you remember now?
Chris: I love the line. I love it so much.
Kayla: It's like, oh, you're gonna love it so much more after that.
Chris: It is absolutely spiritual.
Kayla: Yeah. Well, don't react too much to it yet. Cause we need to go through. We need to get our listeners up to speed. I'm glad that you remember me talking about it now.
Chris: I do now.
Kayla: And hold onto your butts.
Chris: You know, the other thing that was called the line is that there was the line at the college that I went to, University of Pennsylvania had the line every year when they were selling basketball tickets because it was like a big. We're a big basketball school. So you would, like, go into the palestro, which is like our, like, famous, really old basketball gym that the team played at, and you'd all get your sleeping bags and spend the night.
Kayla: It's like Comic Con, but for college basketball.
Chris: Yeah. And I think a lot of schools do this, actually. This is not just that does this, but.
Kayla: Yeah, it's not what the line is.
Chris: That's not the line? No, it's not waiting in line for tickets?
Kayla: No.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: No, sorry.
Chris: All right.
Kayla: Sounds fun, but different. The line is one of the most sublime Internet experiences I've ever had, and I am not alone in that assertion. But before we talk about exactly what the line is, we gotta get some background and we gotta get all of the background because I can't do anything halfway. In 2009, a web developer named Andrew Botter announced his new website, your world of text. It's a communal website that consists of an infinite blank space that stretches in every direction and anyone can edit any and all of it. Basically, it's a giant communal word processor that scrolls in every direction with no grids or parameters. Anyone can type anything anywhere or delete anything anywhere in this infinite space.
Chris: So all I have to do is go to this website and then I can type something, I can delete something, whatever. Okay. Does it exist right now or is that.
Kayla: We get to that. We'll get to that.
Chris: Okay. So, like, I could go. Oh man. Okay, yeah, go ahead.
Kayla: The world is now you. Yeah, the world. Yes, you should. The world is navigated via scrolling or using the arrow keys. And location is measured via coordinates along like an x y axis system.
Chris: Got it. So it's like a gigantic notepad.
Kayla: Yes.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: Oh, also there are infinite rooms, or worlds. Basically, anyone can create their own your world of text by typing yourworldoftext.com something. So there's an infinite, there's your world of text and then there's an infinite number offshoots, infinitely large space and.
Chris: An arbitrary number of those things.
Kayla: Yes. But since it's been around for a decade, a lot of the cool names are already taken. So you can kind of just type in your world of text.com and type in something random and see if it already exists, which is a fun thing to do.
Chris: Tempting.
Kayla: Some worlds can also be made private, but where's the fun in that? And I should also point out here that the way to travel through the world via scrolling is not fast or easy. It is time consuming and it requires vigilance so that you don't accidentally hit the wrong button, mess up all your progress. Like scrolling? Yes, scrolling progress. Yes. Yes. Because if you, like, accidentally refresh or if you swipe the wrong way and it goes back to the previous page, you lose your space. You lose where you were.
Chris: So do you have to scroll as you would like, just in a regular text document?
Kayla: Yes.
Chris: So why does it take so long?
Kayla: Because it's huge. I can what? You should. We'll get to that I can show you. Hold on. Let me demonstrate to you how long it takes to scroll. Like, okay, so right now.
Chris: Cause it's infinite, right? Like, you could never scroll to the end of it. It's just.
Kayla: No. Okay, so right now I'm at X zero. Y zero.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: All right, I'm scrolling. How far do you think I am right now?
Chris: I don't know.
Kayla: I'm only at x two. That's how long it takes. X three.
Chris: Okay, just in case, we cut out a bunch of dead space there that took about, what, like, five to 10 seconds?
Kayla: Yeah, it takes a long time. There is an option where you can auto scroll by typing in specific coordinates, but it doesn't, like, teleport you there. It just auto scrolls you in real time. And often, like, that's not fun to do because you miss discoveries along the way because it follows such a narrow path. So it really is an investment to travel around your world of tech's world. And it almost feels like a physical act because of how, like, it's time consuming how to physically scroll through.
Chris: It's like in World of Warcraft, before they had looking for dungeon, you actually had to run to the dungeon through the world. And a lot of people think that when they added the teleport stuff, it actually took something away because it didn't force you to actually do that sort of meditative act of traveling slowly.
Kayla: Yeah. That's why there's some people who like Skyrim is a game where it's a huge map, and once you discover a location, you can do instant travel. But there's some people who are like, no, I only travel in real time to really feel like I'm in the game.
Chris: Right. To capture that sort of immersiveness. Interesting. So, but here, you're just literally still.
Kayla: Just to be clear, you're just in white space.
Chris: We're just talking about, like, a notepad.
Kayla: Yes.
Chris: But online.
Kayla: Yes.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: As humans do when given the smallest creative kernel, users of your world of text have also discovered or created a seemingly endless variety of ways to interact with the site and to interact with each other on the site, because that's maybe the coolest thing about your world of text, is the interaction with others while using it. Like, it's entirely anonymous. You don't have an avatar or an account or anything like that. You just type along with everyone else, and it works in real time. So if two people are using your world of text at the same time, they can theoretically have a real time conversation, but also the text like, stays there. So you could have a conversation with somebody years apart or, like, see somebody's conversation from years ago or, like, jump.
Chris: Into somebody else's conversation from years ago.
Kayla: The only way to identify yourself is by, like, typing out your name or your handle and, like, you know, ascribing it to whatever words you're writing down at the moment. But even that's not a clear identifier because, again, anyone can write anything, and it all just looks like the same text. So if, you know, if you go on there, like, Brian was here, somebody else can be like, and Brian was here, too, and you'll never.
Chris: Like an online graffiti wall.
Kayla: Yeah. Yeah.
Chris: Huh.
Kayla: It's like a lot of things. It's like goddess, and the text stays where you put it until someone else decides to erase it. So one trend I've seen is people adding dates to their messages to kind of, like, ground it in that, like, whole time and space thing were just talking about. Like, Brian was here.
Chris: Got it.
Kayla: It's another thing that makes your world of text so special. You're basically communicating across time, across space, with other anonymous users that you can't see or interact with outside of your keyboard. It's like reaching out to the void and finding that it reaches back to you periodically. I'm sorry if I start waxing philosophic, but this topic is worthy of it.
Chris: Yeah, I believe it is.
Kayla: Words are not the only way your world of text users have found to interact with each other or to build out this barren, empty environment. One of the most obvious ways is with ASCII art. You know what ASCII art is?
Chris: I know what ASCII art.
Kayla: Yeah, but I'll explain. ASCII art is actually ASCII. I did not know this until right now, but that's actually a. It's a more standardized, technical term than what we mean here. But, like, when we say ASCII art, right now, we're colloquially referring to it as visual art that is text based. So, pictures that you draw using just the. The characters on your keyboard, it's kind.
Chris: Of like pointillism or like those. Those art pieces that are just composed of tiny album covers to make it look like it's Bob Marley or something, it's like that, but with text.
Kayla: So, yeah, certainly using letters, but you're also using the characters like slashes and signs and punctuation, all that good stuff. So ASCII art is used to create visual landmarks in your world of text. So this is things like roads, towns, shops, houses, outposts and it. And on and on. And it gets, like, little.
Chris: Little text based art of, like, shops.
Kayla: And houses and towns and, like. Like, towns have emerged from this. Like. Like a geography has emerged from this.
Chris: Well, yeah. I mean, you said it has an x and Y coordinates, so that's basically like latitude and longitude.
Kayla: Yes, it's coordinates. And these creative endeavors get prolific. I do want to note here that when I'm talking generally about your world of text, I'm pretty much always talking about the main page, which, as you mentioned, is just yourworldoftext.com, comma, no slash? No.
Chris: Okay. I thought you were talking about, like, a whole bunch of different pages right now.
Kayla: I'm just talking about your world of text. All of this applies to all of the worlds, but I'm going to talk specifically about main, your world of text. And we can get into a tangential world a little bit more, a little bit later. Thankfully, there is an entire year world of text wiki, which documents some of the more well known or prominent landmarks created by users.
Chris: So it's a collaborative text page to describe the collaborative text page. Is that right? Yes.
Kayla: Yes.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: Yes.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: Just checking this page. So, like, it points out the landmarks, and it also helps give us some of the terminology, the language, the jargon, the roles that are used to describe the culture of your world of text that's kind of organically emerged over the years. Emerged? Emerged. Because it's emerging.
Chris: Oh, it's emerged. I see what you're saying with the emergent thing. Okay. Yeah. This is hella emergence.
Kayla: Yes. Let's dig into some of that jargon. I'm, like, kind of all over the place with this because I have another note. Let's also note that in 2015, something called the wipe happened.
Chris: Oh, no.
Kayla: In which the world was reset, and many of these landmarks had to be rebuilt. So some of the things we're talking about no longer exist in reality, but are a part of the general culture, understanding, and mythology of your world of text. And that's part of the beauty of this, is that it is ephemeral. Things are always changing, and you can never count something to be there.
Chris: What year did you say?
Kayla: Sorry, the wipe happened? Yeah, 2015. Okay, so first, let's talk about the map. The map of the main. Your world of text world starts at coordinates x zero, y zero. Like we mentioned, this is a very.
Chris: Good place to start. Let's cut that.
Kayla: Why? No. So this area that you start at is called spam central, and it's the first thing you see when you arrive, it's often very crowded, which means it's full of words and text and ascii art. Instead of opening up to a bunch of blank space, you're opening up to a bunch of text.
Chris: That makes sense since, I mean, if that's where everybody lands.
Kayla: Right. It's the starting location. So that's where people write their first little messages. It's also a very ephemeral place in and of itself because it often gets wiped by trolls or by website maintenance. Yeah.
Chris: The easier it is to get to the place, the more likely it is you're gonna have more people that'll just do whatever they want. Right.
Kayla: And trolls often visit your world of text and they either destroy landmarks and messages by erasing them or they spam an area with racial slurs and epithets. So there's a little bit of a back and forth between trolls destroying things and builders building them back up.
Chris: It's like a microcosm of the real world.
Kayla: Yeah, yeah, it sucks. Yeah. I wish the trolls wouldn't do it, but it's also kind of like. It's almost like a natural disaster that happens in this world and you kind of have to, like, how do you bounce back? And, like, we can talk more about these roles later. But, like, I've seen on, like, discussion boards or on the wikia, like, you know, trolls took over this area. Like, we gotta go clean it up and people will band together to go.
Chris: So fascinating.
Kayla: Yeah, yeah.
Chris: That's so interesting. It's like marauding bands.
Kayla: Yes. So starting from spam Central, you can take the north road, which is often littered with more spam. And it extends generally as far as x 1000. And it crosses through towns like hundreds crossing. And it ends at the sky city, which is at 1000.
Chris: Okay, so when you saying the north road, x 1000, is it y zero, is it.
Kayla: Oh, wait, which y 1000? Sorry. Oh, it's a y 1000. Because it's going north.
Chris: Because it's going north.
Kayla: Yeah. Okay, so yeah, it's going straight up.
Chris: On the screen for 1000 units of text.
Kayla: Yes. And that will take you to the sky city.
Chris: Is each, by the way, is each unit of text, like, is x one, y one, just one character?
Kayla: No.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: Each, like, each. Really? You're just gonna have to see it. I'm gonna show you some pictures.
Chris: So the unit of measure isn't a character. Isn't a text character. It's like some larger unit.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: Yeah, it's kind of. Yeah, it's hard to describe. Unless you've seen it.
Chris: We'll post instagram.
Kayla: Oh, there's a lot of pictures on this one. So this one ends at the sky city, and that's not the end of your journey north. Many people continue traveling beyond this point, and there's actually a lot of activity until you reach what's called the nirvana at x zero y 10,000.
Chris: Oh, that's. That's significantly farther.
Kayla: Yes. You want to see a picture of Sky City?
Chris: Definitely.
Kayla: So that's Sky City.
Chris: Jesus fucking Christ. What? So you see where that is definitely more complex than I was imagining.
Kayla: Like, there's a road. That's the north road. And this is all, like, houses and. Yeah, it's all tax. All ascii art.
Chris: Is the road going along the Y axis?
Kayla: It's going up. Yeah.
Chris: Okay, so to the left of the road we have negative x, and to the right of the road, we have positive x. Is that right?
Kayla: I think it's the other way, but I'm not 100% sure.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: Actually, no. It's the way you said. It's the way you said.
Chris: Wow. Wow.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: Okay. All right. Text. That's all text. Okay.
Kayla: So that's Sky City. Like, there's, like, neighborhoods. There's, like, little roads. It's like a building. Yeah. And people's messages. Like, it's a whole thing. Yeah.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: And so you see when you scroll, it's like one scroll would probably take you halfway through this kind of thing.
Chris: Okay. Okay. So that's the speed you're scrolling at. Okay.
Kayla: Okay. I'm gonna show you a lot of pictures.
Chris: I like that. Somebody wrote text art of a thousand, so you know where you are.
Kayla: Oh, yeah. There's a lot of, like, signposting, especially when you hit, like, those landmarks or those milestones of, like, a 1000. Whatever. People like to commemorate it.
Chris: Those arbitrary milestones based on our decimal system because we have ten fingers.
Kayla: So I mentioned that you can reach an area called the nirvana. What's the nirvana, you might ask?
Chris: It's a band that Gen Xers really like.
Kayla: It's a structure in the shape of a large black diamond, and it includes a list of all the people who have made it that far.
Chris: Wow.
Kayla: Yeah. Because it's far. Like, getting to 10,000 is a lot. So this is what the nirvana looks like.
Chris: Holy shit. Look at that visitors list. That is. That is. That's. Wow. Lol. That was actually easy. Easy?
Kayla: It wasn't.
Chris: Derek v. Thinks that it was easy.
Kayla: You're wrong. Oh, I like how? The one in the middle, Michael, says, meet me at 100,000. Just keep going.
Chris: Ambitious, Michael.
Kayla: There is something that's at the opposite end of the nirvana, which is Omega City or hell. And that exists.
Chris: I'm assuming this is negative.
Kayla: That exists at x zero, Y 10,000, and you just take to the south y, negative 10,000, and you just take the south road to get there.
Chris: Naturally.
Kayla: This is a screenshot of just a little piece of Omega city.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: See, it's a bunch of omega.
Chris: They just spelled omega with smaller letters making up the. Okay.
Kayla: Yeah. It's not as cool as nirvana.
Chris: No, wait, so that's negative 10,000. So that.
Kayla: Yes.
Chris: Is there a counterpart to the. Is there a negative 1000? Is there a counterpart to Sky City?
Kayla: Probably. Okay, well, let me show you the south road. Oh, the south road looks cool because, like, a lot of times people, like, build complimentary roads or, like, roads that go alongside it. So, like, this is what many of this. Like, this is what a bunch of south roads look like together.
Chris: How are they? Okay, I see it. I see. Okay. Okay.
Kayla: It's labor intensive, especially if these things go on for 10,000 pixels or whatever the fuck. Let me reiterate. Just because some of these structures mark the ends of various roads or whatever, they don't mark any sort of end of the world. One can continue scrolling on forever and ever. And some people do. So that's north and south. What about east and west?
Chris: Well, I was wondering that exact thing.
Kayla: You can take the west road, which is a larger road here. This will tell you. This will help ground you. This is a larger road that Lee leads to. X negative 1000 at least.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: And it may extend further. Who knows? Right now it's built as two thick roads, one on top, one on bottom, and after a while, it connects to another road that passes through various buildings and texts. One of these things was a galaxy which was this huge, like, swath of black Unicode characters where people were encouraged to add a star each time they passed. You could, like, make a little AscII star.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: There were also teahouses, strip clubs, magic shops, ASCII strip clubs, the Eiffel Tower, the space needle, and several McDonald's, which were vandalized.
Chris: In text.
Kayla: Yes.
Chris: Sorry, I keep having to ask that question. Okay.
Kayla: And West Road, of course, leads us to west city, which is a city in the west.
Chris: Wow. Okay. That was really complicated.
Kayla: Here's just a. Here's what west road looks like.
Chris: It just looks like a regular s road.
Kayla: Yeah. Did you even see it?
Chris: Yes.
Kayla: And then, of course, you have the east road.
Chris: Okay, that makes sense. East road, because you had already said north, south, and west.
Kayla: Now we got east.
Chris: I'm smart.
Kayla: East road was the first road that was built by an unknown creator.
Chris: Oh.
Kayla: It goes through the exclamation mark, forest and desert, self explanatory. And then it becomes a dirt path. I believe there's.
Chris: Wait, what does dirt mean?
Kayla: Dirt path. It'll look different in the ASCIi art.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: I believe there is no east city. I could be wrong, especially now. But the east is considered to be more of, like, a wasteland. A little bit more, like, barren. Yeah. See here you can see the road, and then you can see some spam and some, like, racial epithets in there. Some of the like. And it's not always trolls. It is just. Sometimes people are just rude and use it for inappropriate things, and they shouldn't.
Chris: I didn't see the epithets until the end.
Kayla: Yeah, they're. They're in your face. Okay. Other notable. So those are the cardinal directions. Other notable landmarks throughout the world. I'm not going to show you pictures of these, but we can put them on our instagram. Other notable landmarks throughout the world are Homer Simpson Road, a road made of pixel art Homer Simpsons that follows South Road, the soda machine, and the pizza box, which. The soda machine is a rectangle with asCii art soda cans. And underneath, there's a message telling the user to take a soda can, which means delete it or restock the soda machine if it's empty. And then there's also a pizza box, which is the same thing.
Chris: Oh, my God.
Kayla: We have the world of Satan, which is built by an unknown at x 6666. Y 6666. There's the ocean, which is an ocean created using little tilde as waves, and it's dotted with ships and boats, and it even connects to a port that branches off of the west road like it's a whole thing.
Chris: What?
Kayla: There's something called. There's something called the black wall, which is a large black wall with a glowing black cross above it, and it's claimed to be held by the quote unquote Crusader faction. I don't know what that is. What? There is something called I'm quitting my.
Chris: Job because I can never make a game that's as amazing as this is. Just this.
Kayla: No.
Chris: Blanken.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: Collaborative canvas.
Kayla: Yeah. It's one of the greatest things.
Chris: It really is.
Kayla: Yeah, I know. I know. And we'll get. Just wait. There's something called the one k outpost, which is at 1000. It's north, but it's more difficult to get to than Sky City because you must journey diagonally. So you can't just hold down an arrow key for this.
Chris: Right.
Kayla: You have to physically scroll diagonally. Remember that it's important.
Chris: So you can't just, like, scroll to the right and then all. And then scroll up after.
Kayla: You can do that, but you want to travel along the road. That's why the road is there. Oh, or you want to travel along. You want to travel on the path that other people have traveled. Like, yeah, you can scroll to the right and scroll out. You can also. But, like, you want to physically do it.
Chris: Travel the road. I see, I see.
Kayla: So something that you said earlier was that, like, the easier something is to get to, the more likely it is to get, like, trolled or spammed or have a lot of people there.
Chris: Right.
Kayla: So cities are landmarks that can. That are in the cardinal directions. Do tend to be hit more by trolls or spammers because they're easy to get to. You hold down the thing, but things that are diagonal tend to escape that a little bit or a little bit more. There's something called Shabbytown, and it's one of the larger cities in your world of text. It also is diagonal. It runs southeast of spam Central. It has a population counter that's set at 142. There are three main streets that branch out from the road. How many people have reached it?
Chris: Oh, okay. Okay.
Kayla: There's many houses. There's stores. It's a very well known landmark. And then there is something.
Chris: What does stores mean?
Kayla: Well, stores.
Chris: Can I buy things there?
Kayla: Yeah, you delete it.
Chris: Oh, my God.
Kayla: Last but not least, we have the Highlands, which is located at x 10,000 in y zero. So remember how I said traveling east was kind of like a barren wasteland? Well, following this path far enough will bring you out of the barrens into the Highlands, where there is a McDonald's, a large block of repeating word art splatoon, a train station, various messages from the few users who have traveled this far, and a big 10,000 sign to celebrate the milestone. And remember, these are just celebrating. These are just the landmarks in the main, your world of text world. There are infinite worlds with who knows how many landmarks. It kind of gets mind boggling if you think about it too hard.
Chris: Oh, not kind of.
Kayla: Yeah, it's mind boggling. Now, I mentioned before that there's also jargon for roles in this world. So you've got builders who rebuild things that are destroyed by trolls and spammers or things that are destroyed accidentally by like, dummies coming through and being like, I don't like this. Creators are the first to create something. There's a group of users who are dedicated to conserving the world called STT, or save the text, which goes in and fixes up destroyed cities and landmarks. Like kind of what I mentioned where people are, you know, get online and like, we gotta save this area. I'm particularly interested in the people who fight back against spam and trolls. And I've even heard stories about groups of your world of text users, like physically getting into it with spammers in real time and out spamming.
Chris: What do you mean physically?
Kayla: So if the spammer is there, like typing a whole bunch of stuff or destroying stuff.
Chris: Okay, still in world of text.
Kayla: In world of text, not in real life. The spammer will be in there spamming and then these groups will go in and out spam. The spammers like rebuild faster than they can destroy.
Chris: Fascinating.
Kayla: Yes.
Chris: I love that there's vocab too, because that definitely dovetails with a lot of things we've talked about on the show before with ritual. There's a lot of groups we've talked about, actually just our last episode about mlms. Mlms have their own, they have their own jargon. Yeah.
Kayla: The coolest people in my opinion, though, are the explorers, and explorers are most of the users. I think explorers are the people who scroll around looking for cool things or trying to reach cool coordinates. They're the people that can spend endless hours scrolling because it does take hours. And these are people that scroll to further and further depth, sometimes leaving little messages or breadcrumbs along the way to bond and interact with other explorers. Some of them get documented on the wikia with their names and the dates. There are whole communities of explorers on Reddit and discord shout out to text world explorers on Reddit for being my go to. And the fact that this is still a thriving thing ten years after your world of text launched is just so lovely to me that it still in.
Chris: Use and only in five years since the last wipe. I don't know if that's significant. I don't know why I said it.
Kayla: Well, you said it. Reddit is actually how I first discovered your world of text. And I think this was about eight years ago. I was on a real, or somewhere within the last eight years. I think it was eight years ago. I was on a real Reddit kick, I was looking to discover more and more Internet ephemera and Internet specific experiences. So it was around the time that I got involved with like Cicada 3301 and the dark web and Silk Road, and that was of real interest to me. And I got into all of these weird little niche things.
Chris: I remember that.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: And this is already reminding me of the Cicada episode.
Kayla: Yeah. I remember being on a Reddit thread where users were sharing hidden Internet treasures and I came upon a comment that was so compelling, I still remember exactly how special it felt to read it to this day. So I'm going to go ahead and read this comment in its entirety. I reached out to the original poster for permission and I didn't hear back, so I hope that's okay. So this comment was made by user protruded demand on an askreddit post titled, hey Reddit, what's the best hidden thing you have ever found on the interwebs? And this was the comment, okay, this is going to get buried, but I have to tell the story to someone. I was one of those world of tech sites late one night. I had nothing better to do. Pathetic, I know.
Kayla: Well, after scrolling around, I found a line that someone drew. I decided to follow it. The line went on and on. There were comments from other people leaving their marks of the journey on the line. You'd scroll by someone who left something like, Simsie was here on 620 eleven. Just a random date. I can't remember it. It was haunting in a beautiful sort of way. All of those people traveling down the same line alone, yet together. It had been about 30 minutes of traveling down the line and the comments started to get more scarce. More and more comments could be seen saying something like, I give up or it will never end. Still, I had nothing better to do with my life, and it was a good way to distract myself from everything else in the world. So I kept going.
Kayla: After about 30 more minutes, there were only a few commenters left. It was nice though. I formed a sort of bond with each of them, all of us traveling down a line, determined to stick it through to the end. The comments they left were getting further and further apartheid. It would be ten minutes of scrolling just down the line before you see a comment by someone. Just a friendly reminder that they are still there. Just when you begin to doubt that anyone else had made it that far, they would show up. The line consumed even them. Eventually, 20 minutes went by without seeing a comment by anyone. My mind started filling with doubt. Will the line ever end? Was it made by a bot or some madman with even less of a life than me? Where had all of my fellow travelers gone?
Kayla: And then a message of hope. I saw another comment. It honestly made me tear up a bit. It was the same thing as always. Zach was here and shared a random date that I cannot remember. It gave me the strength to keep going. I kept following the line for another hour, determined to reach the end, no matter how long it may take. By now, I had spent the whole night following this line. The sun was rising, and I was nearly asleep. Still, I wouldn't give up until I reached the end. After all of the work I had put into it, I knew I had to. There had to be something at the end. And suddenly, it stopped. There it was, the end of the line. There was a message written by the creator of the line.
Kayla: I don't remember exactly what it said, but it was the most inspiring thing I have ever read. I remember it was about four paragraphs long. Each sentence was a work of literary genius. I hate myself to this day for not writing it all down. I guess it's better this way, though. It was one of those rare moments where everything stops and the world makes sense. The core message of the speech was that we are all travelers on a path. We are all the same. There is no point on dwelling on petty differences. Everything we do has an effect. We may never know what the effect may be, but it is there, and it is important. Always think about this. Never let it leave your brain. Always do the best you can to help your fellow man.
Kayla: Life is the most valuable, worthless thing in the universe. Treasure it. You have one life to live. Never let anything hold you back. Do everything you can to make the world a better place to live. I know it may be hard to grasp that so much meaning was packed into only four paragraphs. I can never explain it. I'm not the master wordsmith that the creator of the line is. That line has probably had the biggest impact on my life than anything else. All those hours leading up to the end, the explosion of meaning. Once I was there, it honestly changed me. It made me want to learn and grow more. It made me a more caring person. Whoever it was that made the line, I can honestly say that you are my hero. Teal, dear spent hours following a line. Life forever changed.
Chris: Holy shit.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: That's. That's an incredible experience. I know, and it's. It's just so incredible. And also, it's in its simplicity, you know, like, just. Just the act of scrolling and it's like. It's like this magical combination of, like, simplicity, infinity and togetherness.
Kayla: Yeah. And I think there's also faith there because you have to. You start to doubt, like, are they on this with me? And then they are, and you start to doubt, like, is there an end to this? Is there not? Like. But you keep going because you're like, something has to be here. Something has to be at the end.
Chris: Right. But you don't know, like, you could, like, he could have. He could still be scrolling today.
Kayla: He could still be scrolling today. Or he could just suddenly stop and there's nothing. Which I guess would also be its own experience. But I think having that, like, message there at the end, that was life changing for this person just, I mean, you can imagine. I read this comment and I was like, holy fuck.
Chris: Yeah, well, and I think that there's a few things, too about the message at the end was one. I'm sure that the words were very meaningful and wonderful, but certainly the experience of scrolling through the line that he went through prior to reading them is a key component, clearly is a key component of the meaning that he derived from the words themselves.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: I mean, probably even more important than the words themselves. And for that reason, I actually think that I actually like that he didn't write it down or didn't copy it because it. And I haven't read them and I haven't done the line. So this is just me speculating, but it definitely feels like just reading those words without having gone through the experience would render them inert.
Kayla: Yeah, I think I agree. We can talk about the message a little bit more, a little bit later, but yeah, as of right now, I agree with you.
Chris: Wow. Geez.
Kayla: So I saw that and I was like, I gotta do this.
Chris: Good lord.
Kayla: So there's some debate over where the line is. There should not be any debate because protruded demand has linked to protruded demand. Who is the person who wrote that comment?
Chris: Oh, that's their username.
Kayla: Has linked to the specific. Your world of text world that this is on. It's not on the main. Your world of text world. Instead, he's talking about a line. They're talking about a line that was found@yourworldoftext.com. Slash msernst. Miss Ernst.
Chris: Miss Ernst.
Kayla: Miss Ernst.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: It's important to know that there is another line in the main world that leads down to and through Shabbytown and also goes a long way. It's referred to as the true diagonal on the Wikia and in fact, lines like the line have popped up in a number of your world of text worlds. Like, they go on for certain lengths. There's, there's dozens of them in, like, ever since this happened, there's lines everywhere. This is the line that we're talking about. This is, to me, the line, because the line at Miss Ernst is much, much longer than any of the other lines. And because it was that initial comment that kind of spurred this whole interest in your world of text on Reddit, I regard this line as the real the line. So that's what we're talking about.
Chris: Yeah, there are many lines, but this is the line I est line.
Kayla: This is the line iest line.
Chris: So again, this is just a line of text. This is just text being written on a single line. And it just goes to the right.
Kayla: Very, very far in a diagonal.
Chris: Oh, in a diagonal.
Kayla: It's a diagonal. You have to scroll.
Chris: Oh, I didn't realize I was picturing it.
Kayla: We'll keep talking about it horizontal.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: We'll keep talking about it. So. Because we're gonna talk about my experience with it right now.
Chris: Yeah. So you went there.
Kayla: I did the line.
Chris: You did the line. I did the line.
Kayla: I have traveled the line.
Chris: Did the, you know, that's. Did you do a line in order to be able to do the whole line?
Kayla: No, the line. No, you wouldn't. It would definitely not hurt. So I read this incredible description, and I felt obligated to experience this for myself.
Chris: Yeah, I imagine so.
Kayla: And, I mean, it's everything that protruded demand described and more, in my opinion. I don't remember how long I followed the line, as in, like, how many hours it was, but it was hours. And I think it spanned days. I think it was, yeah.
Chris: I was gonna ask if it was continuous hours or multiple sessions.
Kayla: I think you can do it in one sitting, but I think for me, I think I slept in between.
Chris: Did you eat?
Kayla: I think it was line. Sleep line, but, like a couple hours. Like it was. It's really hard. Okay.
Chris: The line is food for the soul, though, so that makes sense.
Kayla: Once you start going, it's really hard to stop. It's really hard to stop.
Chris: I get it, man. I fucking scroll Twitter all the time. It's horrible.
Kayla: And this is like, it's so much better than Twitter. And yes, it goes at a diagonal.
Chris: It's a low bar.
Kayla: Well, yeah, you're forced to actively follow the line by physically scrolling. You can't just press a key. And this is, again, yeah, you could go down to the right of. But then you're missing the journey that's intended, and you're missing that communion with all the other people that have followed this road or this path or this line. It takes on a lot of different forms. So it goes vertical and then horizontal and then fully diagonal.
Chris: Okay, so it's not always diagonal.
Kayla: It's always trending in the diagonal. But sometimes it'll be, like this way and then this, like stairs, and then it'll go, like, true diagonal. And then it'll kind of go like this and then this.
Chris: And all our listeners can definitely tell what you mean when you say this and this.
Kayla: They are going to have to picture it. It's made up of thick swaths of black slashes down to a line of commas and everything in between. And as mentioned along the way, people leave messages for each other, either noting who they are and when they were there, to leaving fun little musings to confessional stuff like deeply personal, intimate thoughts, inspirational or spiritual messages. We'll kind of come back to the spiritual. I really can't describe fully the experience of traveling along the length of that line, especially because it breaks sometimes. Or you lose it and you find yourself.
Chris: Oh, shit.
Kayla: Yeah. You find yourself scrolling in blank white space. You're wondering if you're lost. You're wondering if you reach the end, wondering if you're alone out there only to find the line, pick back up suddenly or to come across another message from someone who'd been on the journey years before.
Chris: That's the most spiritual thing I've ever heard.
Kayla: I know.
Chris: I'm, like, moved right now.
Kayla: I know. You should do the line.
Chris: I think I'm gonna, like, literally, I.
Kayla: Could cry over this topic. I love it.
Chris: Incredible.
Kayla: Yeah. I found myself traveling with a group through time, the same people leaving little breadcrumbs for each other again across time and space. All along, this singular purpose and, like, protruded demand said sometimes 20 minutes would go by or more without coming across anything. And I tell myself that for sure, this is it. I was alone now only to have that be false. And then the flood of relief and wonder of coming across another message that stayed with me. I stayed up for hours doing this. I mean, I definitely did not get good sleep. I'm not sure I was obsessed. I couldn't stop. It was just too compelling. And the entire time, the original creator of the line had also left encouraging messages along the way, urging you to keep going. Or was it the original creator yeah.
Chris: I was gonna ask. Yeah.
Kayla: You don't know if there's a message of encouragement. You have no idea who it's from. But it became clear very early on that this small act of scrolling along a line in a text based site was a spiritual journey of faith.
Chris: Absolutely.
Kayla: I really believe that.
Chris: Yeah, absolutely. Did it make a difference to you regarding faith versus trust? Let's say the fact that you had read this Reddit post already, like, did, like, because he. Presumably he or she, I don't know, presumably, maybe didn't have, like, didn't have that context. Right. They were. They were just scrolling through the line.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: And they had no idea if it was going to end, or at least you would.
Kayla: That comment protruded in man was able to see, you know, people being like, I was here in 2011. So, like, presumably there are other people that had been. Other people that had followed this, that.
Chris: Had been that far.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: But once you get that far.
Kayla: Oh, no. Protruded demand is like a.
Chris: Then it is. It is faith, because at that point, you don't know if it's gonna end where at least you read the thing. And in so reading, you determined that there was an end, so you knew there was an end to be found.
Kayla: Yeah. I think protruded demand had a more spiritual experience than any of the. Any of the rest of us followers. I do. So I remember reaching the end. I can't remember if there was four paragraphs of enlightenment waiting for me, but I do remember feeling a singular sense of accomplishment over it, especially when I was there with that little group of friends that I had picked up. Someone wrote a message thanking the others for going on this journey, saying that they were going to continue scrolling on into the infinite emptiness and silence with no more messages or communicating, just knowing that we'd be scrolling along with each other for a while longer. And I did scroll along for a while longer knowing that nothing was out there and that I wasn't gonna be talking to anybody, but that were all doing it together.
Kayla: And it was just. It was meditative and beautiful, and I think it is my most sublime Internet experience ever.
Chris: Maybe one of your most sublime experiences ever. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I'm speechless, actually.
Kayla: I wish I remember how long it took me. I don't. I have seen numerous explorers on Reddit claiming that it takes about 10 hours to travel the line from top to tail. It could be more like, it could be. Maybe you could get there less if you got a real fast scroll finger. I don't know. Explorers on Reddit talk a lot about this line. Like, obviously there are other landmarks on your world of text and other quests and other puzzles. Like, there are little other games and journeys to go on and all manner of things. But to me, the line is singular and specific and I want to get into some more of those specifics. The research for this topic was hard because you can't just log into your world of text and get info like stuff.
Kayla: There is constantly changing and shifting and getting deleted and rebuilt. So it's not a great record of itself. And it's really, as far as I can tell, only really talked about on Reddit with a few hundred other explorers or on the wikia, which is only, like, there's constantly people updating it. But because there's not like, because it's not Wikipedia, there's broken links and there's things that are outdated and the updates.
Chris: You know, it's shabby Wikipedia.
Kayla: But like, the line, while the research was hard, it was also fun and engaging to dive into. So as I started doing my research on this topic, reliving my experiences, revisiting your world of text, and even traveling down the line a little bit again, it got me thinking, who is behind this? Who made the line and why? And more importantly, who made this site and why? Are they the same person? Spoiler alert. No, it turns out that the creator of the line is totally unknown. I hope it stays that way forever.
Chris: Maybe it's. What's his name? Satoshi Nakamoto.
Kayla: Oh, yeah.
Chris: Maybe it's him.
Kayla: Maybe it's him. So I don't know who made the line.
Chris: He's the alleged creator of bitcoin, by the way. For those that don't.
Kayla: I don't know who made the line, but I did manage to track down the original developer of the site on Twitter and he agreed to sit down with me for a chat about his beautiful creation.
Chris: The guy that made world of text talk to you? Yes, dude.
Kayla: Yes.
Chris: On record.
Kayla: Yeah, we have an interview. We can listen to that conversation now.
Chris: Oh my God, that's amazing.
Kayla: Yeah, I don't think I properly, I didn't want to fangirl out too hard.
Chris: Yeah. Yeah.
Kayla: I don't think I definitely gushed, but I don't think I gushed enough about how like, amazing this product is.
Chris: Yeah. Like, thanks for like, guiding this thing into existence, dude. Oh, man. That's okay. Yes, please.
Kayla: So let's listen.
Chris: Press play.
Kayla: So do you want to introduce yourself to our listeners?
Andrew Badr: My name is Andrew Botter. I am mostly a software developer I also studied creative writing, and I grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, and then lived in the Bay area for a while. Now I'm in New York, which has been great because there's a community of people making cool tech art. There's even an event that's focused on technology art that has to do with text and language.
Kayla: Oh, really?
Andrew Badr: Yeah. Extremely specific to my interests, which is a great thing about New York.
Kayla: So was your world of text kind of your first foray into, like, text art, tech based stuff, or I guess. How did your world of text come about for you?
Andrew Badr: Yeah, I mean, it wasn't my first creative tech project. It was definitely the one that got the most attention and still is. But I was on the web in the really early days and always trying to figure out how to make stuff and kind of experiment with the limits of web browsers. So I'd done a couple cool things before that. But your world of text. I had been working at a tech startup in the Bay Area for a while, and I was just in the process of leaving my job, and I feel like I had some kind of. I'd learned a lot about how to build more complex websites at that job than I had before.
Andrew Badr: So I think that kind of was percolating in my brain, and then I, you know, there wasn't, like, a deliberate process of, like, I'm going to invent this. It was just sort of this amorphous idea in my head that I kept looking at over the course of a few weeks as it took shape. And one of my inspirations, I believe, was Google Maps. You can just scroll anywhere on Google Maps. There was also, I don't know if you remember the original Facebook wall.
Kayla: Yeah, yeah.
Andrew Badr: Whereas, like, this text area that anybody could edit, that wasn't 2d in the same way, but it had sort of a similar vibe. And then I think the idea of it being infinite came from the universe, just like, how you can keep going and it keeps going. And so I don't like to get to the exact concept of how it works was just sort of a few weeks of musing and letting it develop subconsciously, I think.
Kayla: Yeah, that makes sense. I feel like some of our best work is always done, like, when your brain's not even paying attention.
Andrew Badr: Yeah. And I do remember trying to explain to people what I was thinking about and not really being able to get it across.
Kayla: Sure.
Andrew Badr: And I remember one variation that I considered Washington. Like, should I have some kind of structure on the space? Like. Like, should there be axes or something that. That you can see or some other kind of shape that you can work around, but that obviously didn't end up happening.
Kayla: Do you feel like that it's good that didn't end up happening? Do you feel like that kind of let the world be what it is now?
Andrew Badr: Yeah, I like the simplicity of it. And when I was developing it, I just remember, like, it had been this idea in my head that I couldn't quite convey to people. And the initial thing that I built wasn't scrollable, it wasn't infinite. It was just kind of this one square, this one box. You can click anywhere and type on it. And I just remember feeling like it was weird, like, which was a good thing. It was like, oh, this is different. And it feels kind of magic in a way. And so then I knew I was on to something.
Kayla: I mean, definitely, like, magic is the way to describe it. Like, it's. I don't want to wax too philosophical here, but I'm probably going to. But it's just, yeah, your world of text does feel like one of those magic places on the Internet. And, like, did you, like, what did you picture people using this for? Like, did you kind of just put it out in the world going, you know, let's see what happens. Did you think it would take on the life that it's taken on? Like, what did you, what was your intent with it?
Andrew Badr: I did not have any intentions about people using it for anything in particular that was practical. I was excited about it, and I didn't really have a plan of how to get it out there, except to post it on this one forum, Hacker News, where some techie people hang out. And I hoped people there would think it was cool. And it just kind of took off from there. And it was just, it was really exciting because it spread really quickly across a number of different communities, and it was clear that it just, like, people got it. Like, this thing that I was into also clicked with other people, and I thought people would have fun with it. I didn't imagine a lot of the things people have used it for. I mean, there's obviously a lot of, like, creative expression on that.
Andrew Badr: On the main page, where people are drawing things or making puzzles or adventures for other people, there's confessional stuff, people are writing anonymously. There are people who have private worlds that they use with their schools. One Cool one that I didn't expect is that I've heard from several couples who have a world of text for their relationship where they write to each other.
Kayla: Oh, my Gosh. That's such a good idea.
Andrew Badr: Yeah.
Kayla: Wow.
Andrew Badr: I heard from one Woman a couple of years ago who felt like your World of Text was a big part of her RelationshIp with her Now Fiance. And so she asked for my help in printing a Poster version of the world they'd made Together.
Kayla: Oh, my Gosh.
Andrew Badr: That she gifted to him.
Kayla: That's like, I'd never thought about that. Using it in a coupledom. That's like, again, that's so beautiful. That's so magical. That's just like, that's what your World of Text is. To me, like, I found out about world of text because of the line. Like, back on Reddit, I think eight years ago, somebody had posted this story about, like, one of the hidden treasures of the Internet. And it was the story of the line, and it was the way this poster talked about. It was like, oh, this mystical, spiritual journey. And I was like, it's a line on a text thing. Okay, cool. But then actually going and following it, like, yeah, that is a mystical, spiritual journey of faith on, like, an Internet text based website. What's your experience with the line? Like, what do you think about that?
Andrew Badr: I think I know the Reddit comment you're talking about. If it's the one I'm thinking of, they were like, this saved my life.
Kayla: Yeah, yeah.
Andrew Badr: You know, I, like, I saw it when it was just, like, in the early days of the line, I want to say, and I never really followed the whole thing. I don't know. I have this kind of, I don't go on there that much. And I think it's partially a desire to leave it alone in a way. Like, it's not my space somehow. But I was really happy when I read this Reddit comment.
Kayla: Right. I mean, yeah, I've read a lot of comments about, specifically about the line, but also about, you know, your world of text in general. And there's so much, so many comments are like, this is life changing. This taught me something about myself. This, you know, I've never had an experience like this. It's just, it's amazing to see. So I can imagine, like, having created that, to see people interact with your work in that way, it must be really fulfilling. But then I like that kind of deist approach of, like, I created it and hands off now, and let's see what you do with it.
Andrew Badr: Deist is a funny word for it. I won't disapprove. Yeah, I mean, it is really gratifying. And, you know, when I made it, I didn't expect it to have such a long lifespan, you know, like, I wouldn't have been surprised if people thought it was really cool and then played with it for a few days and then it trickled out. There's just really no way to know. So to find something like that years later, it changed my perspective on art. I think whatever you put into the world, you don't know how it's gonna affect people. And I very easily could not have come across that comment. I don't even remember how I came across it. But it's. I think whatever you put out there, people are going to respond to in ways that are 100 times bigger than you'll ever possibly be aware of.
Andrew Badr: So it gave me more faith in art to find that comment, not just in my own, but in everybody's.
Kayla: Why do you think it has the staying power that it has? It's been like, what, a decade since you created it?
Andrew Badr: Yeah, a little bit over. And I think it's different than what's out there. I think it offers people something that, in retrospect, I wasn't thinking about this at the time, but there's a lot of talk about the feeling of the web in the old days when it was more personal and chaotic and creative. And I would be really happy if one of the consequences of your world of text is to keep that feeling alive somehow and show people who grew up with Facebook that another way is possible. So one reason it might have lasted this long is, optimistically, if it does convey that feeling and if there's not too many other things out there that do that right now, do you think.
Kayla: It'S possible we'll ever be able to get back to that kind of early days of the Internet? Or do you think we're ruined by Facebook and Google?
Andrew Badr: I think it's possible. I think it would take the right product and it would take the right steward. I think one reason that these platforms get so controlled is that it makes things easier for advertisers, makes thing. It makes it easier to create a large company of the kind that your investors might want to see if you take an investment. But I think there are a lot of new kinds of interactions left to explore, and I think there are people who grew up with, like, I mean, I think despite the fact that the web is less chaotic now, there's something about growing up on it that might give people, like, a deeper understanding of it when they do see it. And there's still weird spaces.
Andrew Badr: I mean, I think Tumblr was probably the last big weird space and it seems to be in decline, but people are gonna want it and so it can arise again.
Kayla: I'm gonna hold on to that. Was there ever any, like, did you ever get approached for like, advertising on your world of text? Was that ever a thing? Did anyone ever try to facebook you?
Andrew Badr: No one ever tried to advertise on there? Somebody made a knockoff version where they were trying to do the, like the million dollar homepage, except with text. Are you familiar with this project?
Kayla: No, no.
Andrew Badr: It was like, I think in the nineties or like 2001 or something, this person made a website with, I guess, I think it was like 1000 by 1000 pixel homepage and sold every pixel of it for advertising. And it just sort of became this news trend item, the million dollar homepage. And it worked because it was novel and got the attention, so people wanted to buy the space and somebody tried to do a year old of text knockoff where they were selling each square as a link to a different site. It was still text. Yeah, like nothing really commercial has come to work, I think. Because I think it'd be tough to advertise on there for most brands, just because there is a lot of chaos on the homepage, especially in the middle.
Andrew Badr: People are vulgar and spanning and there's just inappropriate stuff that people just not want to be seen next to. I've thought about trying to. I think. I think your world of text was the first infinite plane on the web. I'm sticking with that until I hear otherwise. Now there are more. I think one great product is figma. It's like a design tool. There are a lot of these kind of design canvases where you can scroll around, but I wonder about the potential of the infinite plane that you can move around for more mainstream purposes. I think why it's so powerful is that it taps into instincts around space and geography that most software doesn't. You can feel like you're in a place when you're there in a way that you don't when you're scrolling Twitter.
Andrew Badr: So someone could potentially do something cool with video chat on a plane. I thought about what if it was a blank canvas, but instead of text you can kind of put down, I don't know, like furniture or like stickers of whatever kind, and it's kind of like design a space with your friends and move your avatars around and video chat that way or something for more practical purposes. If you could zoom in and out, that would help. I haven't really added features like that on a roll detect, because I like what it is artistically. I like that it takes a long time to get somewhere. I wouldn't mind letting people teleport around on their private worlds, but at least on the homepage, I like that it's hard to get somewhere.
Kayla: That's like, the whole point I was going to ask is the, because the scrolling, as you scroll through or as you try and travel the world, it's a slow process. It's not, you know, it takes. It takes a while to get to some of these coordinates. Was that intentional or was that just kind of the way it was designed and happened to really fit with themes of what the place ended up being?
Andrew Badr: The original design was mostly just intuitive. So it's not like I thought, I'm not going to add a zooming because it would compromise the sense of space and the work that people put into it. It was more of a happy outcome.
Kayla: I mean, a very happy outcome.
Andrew Badr: Thank you.
Kayla: Like, even with. Even with the feature where you can type in coordinates and, like, have it auto scroll, it still takes such a long time. And that's. That's part, again, that's part of the magic. That's something that I have really liked seeing the conversations about the line in particular or other landmarks, you know, folks talking about it on Reddit, someone will ask, like, what are the, you know, what are the end coordinates for the line? And other people will be like, hey, no, that's defeats the purpose. So, no, you're not going to get it. Like, I don't know if the end coordinates for the line are accessible anywhere online. I think it's been kind of kept pretty sacred, which is just, that's unheard of for the Internet.
Kayla: Like, the way I feel, like the way people interact with your world of text is just obviously there are trolls and obviously there are spammers, and, you know, that's fortunate or unfortunate, but the way that people interact with it doesn't exist elsewhere, especially on the mainstream Internet. Like, it does have that magic. And I like that you brought up how it kind of recaptures some of that early web chaos. I'd never really thought I'd never put those together, but, yeah, it does kind of feel like the Wild west of what the Internet used to be and that I think some of us are trying to recapture sometimes.
Andrew Badr: Yeah, I'm really happy to hear that. Yeah, I'm curious, where are these conversations on Reddit?
Kayla: There's one called text world explorers, and that's a big one. That's the one, that's the one that I would go to. There's so many, I have like way too many tabs open right now of people talking about their experience with, I'm focusing a lot on the line because that was my first experience with your world of text. So there's a lot of people talking about it there. But yeah, if you dip your toe in there, you'll see what, you'll see what folks are doing. And also, there's also, I don't know if you noticed, but there's a, like, there's a wikia for your world of text that users have put together. Yeah, there's like a whole wikia and I mean, people are constantly updating it.
Kayla: Like there are updates from, you know, today, there's, I checked it this morning and there was an update from yesterday. Like folks are of still very active in it. Like the staying power again. That really hits me. I'm sure it hits you even more being the creator, but it feels almost akin to like, I don't know, like Telnet Muds and like text adventure games and that kind of thing. But folks using this space to create that for each other, it just feels so special.
Andrew Badr: It makes me very happy.
Kayla: I mean, I think that's all of my questions. Is there anything else you want to say about your world of text or other projects you're working on that you want to talk about?
Andrew Badr: Well, first I wanted to ask you if there's anything you think should change or fix about the site.
Kayla: No, I really don't. I mean, I think even the things that are quote unquote unfortunate about the site, like spammers and trollers and people coming through and I deleting things that are important to the community, I feel like that's an important part of it. Like it's fantastic that there are structures that exist on your world of text that have existed for a long time and it's also important that they remain ephemeral. It's important that they can go away at any moment. Yeah, no, I feel like it's perfect.
Andrew Badr: Okay.
Kayla: Yeah. If I think of anything, if I think of any criticisms, I'll twitter dm you.
Andrew Badr: Yeah, well, sometimes I'm, sometimes I wonder if I should have kept speaking, improving it or something, but probably it's fine how it is.
Kayla: It serves such a niche purpose and I think one of the more interesting things about it is seeing the ways users, what they do with it, how people figure out how to use it. In a way that is unique to them or useful for them.
Andrew Badr: Yeah. I want to make more weird Internet things. I don't know what they are yet. I have ideas. But right now, what I'm spending most of my time on is creating a tool for event hosting, like an alternative to Facebook events and eventbrite.
Kayla: Oh, we need that, please. I just finally got off Facebook, and.
Andrew Badr: I'm like, oh, nice.
Kayla: How do I do things now? How do I having to kind of. I feel like I'm a little bit in that wild west of the Internet again, which is a good place to be, where I'm having to, like, piece together everything that I had on Facebook in other places.
Andrew Badr: Yeah. So, cast out of walled garden.
Kayla: Yeah, yeah. So what's the name of this project? Is it up and running? Can I use it?
Andrew Badr: You can use it. It's called mixily mixil dash.com.
Kayla: Awesome. I am definitely going to use that because I am, as much as I hate Facebook, I am bereft without it.
Andrew Badr: Yeah. So Facebook is great because everyone is on there, and it just sort of has everything in one place, like groups and messages and events. I'm building a useful thing for organizing events and starting there, and maybe it can grow if it picks up.
Kayla: Nice.
Andrew Badr: Check it out. If you check it out, give me your feedback, reports, suggestions, etcetera.
Kayla: Awesome. Will do. Yeah. I just really want to say thank you for talking with me. It was such a, like, last minute thing, and I'm so glad that you were available on Twitter.
Andrew Badr: Yeah, I'm so glad you reached out because I haven't had this kind of conversation before. I've done a couple presentations about your world of text, but the fact that I made this thing that resonates with people in this way is really important to me, and it's like something I'm happy I've done.
Chris: So, Kayla, how does it feel to be able to say thank you to God and have him tell you that makes him feel good?
Kayla: Pretty good. Feels pretty good.
Chris: Geez.
Kayla: Yeah. Like, it was such a good conversation, and I don't know what to say about it.
Chris: I mean, I have a few things to say. I don't mean to be flipped with the God statement, but it's just picturing the experience you had with a piece of art and how spiritual that experience was. Seeking out the creator, talking to them, and having them express appreciation for having done so is like itself, I'm assuming, a spiritual experience.
Kayla: It's like following the line, but in life.
Chris: Yeah, you're right. It's following the line in meat space.
Kayla: I mean, the line, I don't want to get. I don't want to get weird, but the line is life, man.
Chris: It totally. That's why it's spiritual, because it is life. It's. It's. We all are on the line of some sort. We all lose it sometimes. We all don't know if it's gonna have an end or not. What's at the end. There's a bunch of people that are in the same boat as us. That's why it's so fucking spiritual.
Kayla: Yeah. So it was. Yeah, it was. It was really cool to talk to the creator of the canvas that the line exists on to see, like, to learn more about, you know, what was the intent with your world of text? Like, why.
Chris: Yeah, yeah.
Kayla: Why was it put out into the world? And I love the fact that it was an idea. And then users kind of generated a variety of different ways to interact with it.
Chris: His answer was perfect. Honestly, like, if he had said, like, well, I really wanted it to be like this.
Kayla: I wanted someone to draw a line that you follow.
Chris: But the fact that the answer was just kind of, like, it kind of came to me and then I made.
Kayla: A camera, I made art, and there it is.
Chris: And there it was. Like, it's so perfect because it's just like, anything other than I didn't know what was gonna happen with this thing would have felt inauthentic to me.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: It's so fascinating. The other things that I wanna react to. There are when he asked you if there's any change or anything that you would make to it, as sycophantic as it sounded. Maybe a little bit, but I totally agree.
Kayla: Oh, I said it was perfect.
Chris: Yeah, but he said it's perfect.
Kayla: It is perfect.
Chris: No, but I. But I do agree. Right. Like, it's. And it kind of harkens back to slightly before that in the interview as well, when he was talking about, like, you know, other infinite scrolling planes that deal with elements other than text, like, you know, videos or, you know, he's talking about furniture or whatever. Cool ideas, for sure. Like, I don't want to, you know, belittle them or anything, but I do think that there's something about the text. I think that, like, you know, when you catch lightning in a bottle, it's because there's elements that come together and, like, work in a way that if any of them were different, you wouldn't have the lightning in a bottle. It wouldn't be what it is.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: And I think all the elements we've talked about really contribute to that. And that includes the difficulty of scrolling. That includes the infiniteness, that includes the collaboration.
Kayla: It includes the fact that it's on a white space. Like, if this were a different color, I feel like it would be blue and yellow.
Chris: It would be different. Yeah. And I think that the basicness of the fact that it's just text is another key ingredient in that formula.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: So, yeah, when you say it's perfect, it is one of those things where just it perfectly comes together. And even improving an element would actually degrade the experience as a whole.
Kayla: Yeah, I agree. I love your world of text, and I think it's. I think some of our best ideas are the ones that we have, and then they take on these, and this was said in the interview, but they take on total lives of their own. And that's the ultimate creative act that's giving birth. You're creating an entity and you might have your hopes and dreams for it, and then it surpasses your wildest imagination. Like, you could never predict, if you created your world of text that something like the line would happen or even something like the ocean, or just the ways that people, the various ways people have figured out how to interact mathematically.
Chris: Chaotic. That's literally. I mean, emergence is chaotic. Right. It's like DNA. It is a small piece of information that when you scale, it takes on wild and fundamentally unpredictable properties.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: And I think, like, all art is conversation. Right? That's the thing. Like, and that's what's so cool about this is, you know, it's like watching a tv show. The creator brings something to it, but you also bring something to it. And sometimes it skews more one way or the other. I mean, even when you walk through a museum and look at a piece of art hanging, like you, the creator created it for some reason and had some aesthetic in mind, had some feelings that they were feeling, and then you, as the viewer, also bring something to it.
Kayla: Right?
Chris: And this is like a very, this is a very, like, powerful example of that.
Kayla: Right. It's. It makes me go back and think about the anonymous creator of the line and what they imagined for the. I mean, they also engaged in an act of faith. Like, they also engaged in, I'm creating this. That's a lot of work to create the line and to create it, as long as they created it and then just hope that somebody would follow it. Even one person hoped that person would follow it all the way. To the end, they created it.
Chris: They put it out in the world and had no idea if anybody would ever see it, ever.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: And it's not even on the main page.
Kayla: Yeah, it's on Mizrnst.
Chris: Yeah. It's an act of faith on the creator's part, too, for sure.
Kayla: And just going back to that, like, it's a conversation, like, by going and doing the line, like, you get to keep having that conversation with that original creator. And then, like, we're having the conversation with Andrew just by going onto your world of text and then the fact that the way you, like, your world of text is conversation, text based conversation as an art. Like, it's conversations. Yeah. It's got a motif going here.
Chris: Yeah. This is a conversation about conversations. About conversations that are a conversation. How many more times can we say that word? Do we get paid or something?
Kayla: Conversation paid by the word. Okay, before we move into the end game here on this topic, before we.
Chris: Get to the end of the line.
Kayla: Before we get to the end of the line, I want to address the fact that we've been talking about a lot of things, couched spirituality and spiritual Language. We've talked about journeys and faith and magic and sublimeness. And, you know, you and I have been like, woo. And we're not the only ones that speak this way about this. I've noticed that people who talk about the line tend to adopt all kinds of mystical language that paints the line as a kind of pilgrimage. And this kind of Language is also reflected in the messages of encouragement left along the line as you travel it. So I'm going to read some quotes from explorers on Reddit, as well as some messages directly from your world of text to help illustrate more precisely how religious of an experience it can be.
Kayla: I guess I should talk about my sources here. The main brunt of my sources here are text world explorers on Reddit. And then there's a few other your world of text subreddits. Like there's YWot, there's your world of text, and then there's other subreddits that are about Internet ephemera. Like, Internet is beautiful. So this was mostly going on Reddit, and then also the, your world of text Wikia, where I really couldn't find any other information out there about this. So it's kind of, it's even trying to, like, learn about it is elusive. Like, even trying to, wait, hold on.
Chris: There wasn't, let me get this straight. You don't have vice or forbes as a source in this episode don't.
Kayla: And maybe there's, maybe they have articles, but it's really hard to google the line.
Chris: Oh, yeah, that's a good point.
Kayla: But I don't know if they've, it's.
Chris: Like calling something, and I feel like.
Kayla: This might be an undiscovered thing.
Chris: Are we reporting on this first? Are we, I don't know. What do we call this? Hot off the press?
Kayla: I did, you know, we got the scoop.
Chris: Is that what it's called?
Kayla: Andrew did tell me that this was his first podcast interview.
Chris: Really?
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: Oh my God.
Kayla: And he's never had a conversation like this with anyone.
Chris: You know, that would, we're like the first people to the line.
Kayla: Oh my God.
Chris: We're on a comment and you say first?
Kayla: Yeah, we're the first. We're the protruded demand of talking about.
Chris: The line on podcasts.
Kayla: On podcasts. So, okay, let's get to these quotes. Let's get to these Reddit comments. This one's posted by Blue Reindeer, who I think actually is the person who created the text world explain explorers subreddit after they read protruded demand's comment and were inspired. So this is their comment, slightly abridged. The line really changed the way I see things. Like someone on the line said, the line is like life. It really doesn't have a point, but is still there. It's truly strange how an ASCII line on a fairly obscure site on the Internet brings 107 people together on this subreddit and brings this strange feeling of accomplishment. Many people who I know wouldn't see this ten hour marathon as an accomplishment, but they don't know even half of the experience we who made it to the end of the line have experienced.
Kayla: The other thing that baffles my mind is that how many people will come after us and see our messages, I, being one of the first on the bottom, along with only a handful of Redditors, saw mostly messages of the earlier travelers from 2010 and earlier. Everyone who came after us will see our messages along with the older ones, creating an experience of combining the past and the present. The trip reminds me of this quote. We're standing on the shoulders of giants, but in this case, today, we are traveling with the people of the past together.
Chris: That reminds me a little bit, too, about how astronauts say they come back to Earth after seeing Earth from orbit or from the moon for the first time. And it's such a monumental experience that it literally changes their brains. I mean, it changes their outlook.
Kayla: Are you comparing traveling the line to going to the moon?
Chris: Yes.
Kayla: That's amazing. Yeah, I went to the moon, you guys.
Chris: Yeah, well, I scrolled an AsciI line, so.
Kayla: No, I'm saying I went to the moon because I scrolled.
Chris: You metaphorically went to the moon. Yeah. Okay.
Kayla: This next comment is from user Feb 29, guy who goes by baron on your world of text. The journey is what really amazed me. I met a lot of cool people on the way and even extended the line myself for a fair distance. The fact that we can create such beauty from absolute emptiness with nothing but our words, following a single aSCII line into the infinite is incredible. If you haven't made the trip yet, I highly recommend it. The journey may be long, but you just might meet someone along the way. And if not, the comments of those that went before will be there to keep you company. The llama bridge, the line hotels, the Reddit checkpoints, they're all there, and they'll probably be there until the end of text world. So go travel the line.
Kayla: Don't let me bore you with my far less meaningful text. And if you happen to find messages by Barron, well, that's just me saluting you across time and space.
Chris: Wow.
Kayla: Then we've got a comment by a super nice guy.
Chris: That's his screen name. Super nice guy.
Kayla: Super nice guy. What has the line taught you? The line has showed me that resilience really is something that lies in the hearts of every mandehead. It's like Hamlet, sort of dunno if you've seen it. Hamlet always measures himself by what other men have accomplished by their own feats, no matter how trivial. That's sort of like this. The triviality of the project doesn't matter, because the magnitude of it and the determination it takes for the line to exist. I'll hail the line.
Chris: Okay, all right.
Kayla: I'm getting all hail the line tattooed on my body. And here's some quotes that are directly from the line left by, you know, some are attributed, some aren't. What lies beyond the beyond? Kill me. It's so good. Here's a quote from Lin Yutang. I don't know who that is, but they're quoted here saying, a good traveler is one who does not know where he is going to. A perfect traveler does not know where he came from.
Chris: Wow.
Kayla: Here's a Dostoevsky quote that's along the line. Man is a mystery. It needs to be unraveled. And if you spend your whole life unraveling it, don't say you wasted your time. I'm studying that mystery because I want to be a human being.
Chris: Jeez. These are some quotes, man.
Kayla: I know. And this last one is from a traveler who made it to the end. I finally made it. I meant to write something meaningful for you. I guess you'll just have to keep looking. Scott.
Chris: This is just like. You keep dropping like spirit bombs like this.
Kayla: I know. I'm just like Goku.
Chris: Jeez.
Kayla: And these are just some examples. Like, all in all, there are dozens and dozens of people on the Internet who faithfully and blindly followed an unknown creator's line into infinity and had a spiritual experience doing so, myself included.
Chris: Like, any one of those quotes would be enough to, like, end an episode on.
Kayla: I know.
Chris: Holy shit.
Kayla: Well, we're not there yet.
Chris: Now, we'll get to that.
Kayla: As we wrap up or prepare to talk about whether the line is a cult or just weird, I want to read protruded demand summary of the message the lines creator originally left behind for those who dared to make the trek. This is the third time I've read this quote, but I think it's important to keep saying it, especially now. Now more than ever.
Chris: Now more than ever.
Kayla: We are all travelers on a path. We are all the same. There is no point in dwelling on petty differences. Everything we do has an effect. It may never know what that effect may be, but it is there, and it is important. Always think about this. Never let it leave your brain. Always do the best you can to help your fellow man. Life is the most valuable, worthless thing in the universe. Treasure it. You have one life to live. Never let anything hold you back. Do everything you can to make the world a better place. And again, thanks.
Chris: Protruded demand.
Kayla: This is just a summary based on protruded demands memory. It's not the exact message that lies at the end of the line. Do you wanna. Do you wanna know the message that originally waited for explorers at the end of the line?
Chris: Wait, you know it?
Kayla: Yeah, I have screenshots of it.
Chris: Well, I don't know how I feel about saying it.
Kayla: I know it's there, but I'm not gonna share them. I'm not gonna share them with you. I'm not gonna share them with our listeners.
Chris: Yeah, I don't think that we should.
Kayla: No. It would defeat the entire purpose. So instead, I urge you, it would.
Chris: Rob people of an experience that is clearly worth having.
Kayla: Yeah. So go. Take some time. Go on the journey yourself. You'll come away changed. You'll come away a different person. And if you do come across screenshots, don't look. Go find. Go find it for yourself.
Chris: Yeah. Make sure I never see him.
Kayla: Well, go do it. Go do that.
Chris: I will. I know. So I'm saying until I do that, it's 10 hours, Kayla. I have naps to do. I have to play my shitty mobile game.
Kayla: You have to decide if the line is a cult or if it's just weird.
Chris: We have to decide things. Oh, man. Well, before we do that, I want to say thank you for doing this topic, because it really is a bit of a tonic. Things are tough right now, and kind of taking that step back and thinking about something, like, so universal and so spiritual, it helps.
Kayla: Good.
Chris: All right, let's rumple that paper. All right. So I know we give our initial thoughts before we read these. I mean, it's definitely very weird. I don't think it's a cult, and I think it's because of the expected harm criteria. But let's get to it. I'm gonna mix these up. Let's see. I'm gonna start with charismatic leader. I'm gonna go bottom up from where list is written is the charismatic leader Andrew.
Kayla: Or I think the charismatic leader in this case would be the creator of the lion.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: So it's like you have, like, a. Like an overlord and then the cares. I don't know. That's weird.
Kayla: It's God and then Jesus.
Chris: Okay, fair. Yeah. I would say, like, in a weird way. High.
Kayla: Yeah, I think it's extremely high. Like, because, like, you're, like, who did this?
Chris: Yeah, we don't know who they are, so I can't, like, put it. It's not, like Mary Kay, where I can be like. It's. That it's. We don't know. Yeah.
Kayla: And that's what makes it charismatic and compelling.
Chris: I mean, it's part of what makes it charismatic and compelling. I think even if we knew the person's name and knew who they were, I would still say that there is, strangely, a lot of charisma, in a weird way, in the art that they did.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: You know, like, you can experience Leonardo da Vinci's charisma via the Mona Lisa.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: Same way here.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: Hi. Ritual. Sky high. Ritual. Ritual is through the.
Kayla: It's just. It is ritual. It is a ritual.
Chris: It is ritual incarnate. Like, it's the most pure expression of that criteria that we'll probably ever have on the show. Percentage of life consumed. Actually, that's high, too. While you're engaging with it.
Kayla: While you're engaging with it. But we've had this before. We had this exact conversation with Cicada 3301. Whereas it consumes your life for a fixed period of time and then it doesn't.
Chris: And it doesn't ask you for, like, I think part of the consumption of life criteria is like this ongoing loss of self versus sort of like, hey, engage with this thing very heavily, maybe.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: But we're not demanding that you stick around forever.
Kayla: Like, once you're done with the line, you don't have to, like, constantly go back, though. There are people who, like, I know that there was a group of people who, on the anniversary of, like, the line being introduced to Reddit, went back and redid it like, the same people went back into, like, there is some return and obvious people do stay in the world.
Chris: People go on pilgrimages over and over.
Kayla: Yeah, it is a pilgrimage.
Chris: It absolutely is. Okay, so we saying low for that one except for like a burst when you're actually engaged with it.
Kayla: Yes.
Chris: Okay. Antifactuality, this is closed logical systems and motivated reasoning and all that sort of thing.
Kayla: I don't think there is anti vex reality because it's like even though you're on this blind journey of faith, you do end.
Chris: It doesn't, it's like faith without a denial of fact. Oh, God, that's, I need to think about that more. I don't even know if I can answer this one the right way right now because now I'm like, I don't.
Kayla: Think it's anti factual.
Chris: Yeah, I don't think it is. Even though you do have to or certainly protrude demand, had to make a journey without knowing where he was going and that you can get lost. But I would say. I would say low.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: Is it niche?
Kayla: Yes, I think it's extremely niche because again, it's like, it's niche.
Chris: It's very niche. Not many people know about it. You said the Reddit community was, what, a few hundred people?
Kayla: And that the largest Reddit community that I found that has to do with this is like 328 members.
Chris: Okay, so this is Quite niche. And then expected harm is like negative, I guess.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: This is less of a poison and more of a tonic, as we just Said. Yes. So definitely low on that. So that brings, so it's interesting, I think more of these. Man, this feels like cicada again, where it hits enough that I'm kind of like, well, but it's not harmful. So is it like a non harmful cult?
Kayla: It's got niche. It's got. It is niche. It is ritualistic and it has a charismatic leader, but it doesn't consume a lot of your life. It's not anti factual and there's non expected harm. It's half and half.
Chris: Yeah. Okay. So I guess half and half. I feel like the criteria are a little bit more criminal court than civil court. I feel like it's more. More, to me, on the side of beyond reasonable doubt than it is preponderance of evidence.
Kayla: Okay.
Chris: That's just my sort of gut about this. This thing that we've been doing for 26 episodes now that I still am.
Kayla: Confused about, apparently 27.
Chris: This is our 27th. But I think that going half and half makes me say, not a cult, but it's definitely super duper weird.
Kayla: Yeah. And it. It's hella spiritual and hella, like, oh, yeah. It's not woo. But it's.
Chris: No, it's not. It's like, I firmly. I would. I would fight you to say that this is the most spiritual thing we've talked about on the show.
Kayla: I think it is. What's, like, what would. What would be after?
Chris: Well, I mean, I think somebody who was into new age shit would say, like, you know, ramtha or teal Swan.
Kayla: But what is our crit like for our criteria for you and me and our definition of spirituality and what resonates with us spiritually? What do you think is number two? I think Cicada is up there for me, probably.
Chris: I don't know. I'd have to look at our list.
Kayla: Yeah, I guess I have to look at our list, too. But I think that you're right.
Chris: I think that this is to me, and maybe it's. Maybe it's just my preferences and everything in my value system, what's in my own brain. But it definitely feels like it connects me to the human experience into the rest of the universe and my place in it more than those other things do.
Kayla: Yeah. So not a cult.
Chris: Not a cult. Definitely weird. Glad that you were able to talk to the creator, man.
Kayla: It was great. Thank you again to Andrew Butter. To have that context and that grounding was very useful. And because we can't talk to the original creator of the line, it was nice to talk to the, er. Creator of the world, creator of the person who created the canvas upon which the creator painted.
Chris: Right, right. Yeah. You know what's funny about this whole thing that we've been saying? Oh, now we're at the end of the line because we're the end of the episode and I've been doing the recording this episode which is also.
Kayla: It's a line that you're following.
Chris: I'm sitting here watching audacity being like, oh, it's a line that I'm just.
Kayla: Following this whole time, if everything's following a line.
Chris: And sometimes it feels like, you know, with our longer episodes, like a three hour episodes, that feels like that editing line is never gonna end.
Kayla: Oh, yeah. You gotta have faith. And when you're listening to it, you're like, I gotta just get through it, through this.
Chris: Who are these boring ass people to? Oh, it's us.
Kayla: So I think that's it for the topic. Do we want to take a little minute right here just to, like, reenter the real world for a moment? And it's my least favorite place. I know, but just. I only want to continue talking about tonics, but I just know, as protruded demand says, do everything you can to make the world a better place to live. And I think that the line inspires me to try and do that. So, considering that we are living, is that okay if I, like, talk a little bit about reality?
Chris: No, Kayla, fuck you.
Kayla: Considering the times that we're living in, where there is a lot of attention being paid by mainstream, and particularly white society on racial injustice and issues of racial injustice, I just wanted to talk a little bit about ways that we can be digging in and helping to do the work. And when I say we, I'm talking specifically about white people, as Chris and I are both white people. And while I'm sure our listeners know what Black Lives Matter is and know what it stands for and the work that it's trying to do, I want to point out that there are groups that, along with black Lives Matter, there are groups for white people to be a part of that are actively anti racist, because it's not enough to just not be racist. It's.
Kayla: In times like this, especially, we need to take an active stance and we need to be actively anti racist. And so I'd recommend a group that's. This group is La based, and this is called white people for black Lives. I mentioned them at the top, and it's anti racist organization that is an affiliate of the national group showing up for racial justice, or surge. And Surge is a national network of groups and individuals working to undermine white supremacy and to work towards racial justice. Through community organizing, mobilizing, and education, surge moves white people to act as a part of a multiracial majority for justice with passion and accountability. So if you're la specific, check out white people for black lives. They have general meetings, they have trainings, they have conversations. And if you're not in LA, you can check out surge.
Kayla: They do the same kind of work. And it's specifically for white people because it gives us a place to work through whatever internalized racism that we may have learned along the way in our lives. And it allows us to help each other grow and learn out of that and not do try to do that in a space where we'd just be re traumatizing people of color and black people who've already lived through racism.
Chris: You told me it was kind of like, actually, it's kind of like cicada in that. And also the Tulpa episode where we talked about, like, the newbie problem. And you said this group sort of helps try to solve the newbie problem. But for this. Right. This aspect, so it's, you know, newbies just to reference that can come in like it's, you need new blood, you need new members, you need new people joining a group. But then when they come in, they have all these questions that people have already asked and answered before. And so it's hard to strike that balance. And so this group tries to sort of solve that problem a little bit. For people that are interested in being anti racist and things like racial justice.
Kayla: I think, like white people, it can be hard for us sometimes to know where to start and know where to jump in because it's like, I'm afraid to ask the wrong questions or I don't want to be offensive. And so having these groups where you can work with other people that are working to be anti racist, you have that space to ask those questions and you're not.
Chris: That's part of why they exist.
Kayla: Yeah, it's exactly answer those questions for you. So those are, that's something that you can do right now to get started in this work and help make the world a better place. And I, when you need to take a break and rest from doing the work, head on over to yourworldoftechs.com Missernst and follow the line and then dive right back in and doing the work and making the world a better place.
Chris: As protruded demand would ask of you. The end, and we are at the end of our episode line.
Kayla: We'll share more links and things like that on our social media.
Chris: Yeah, definitely check out our instagram because we'll post some pictures of places within World of text.
Kayla: Oh, absolutely. I remember, like, we'll share links about, like, how to get involved with the movement. Right? Now, but then I'm mixing in our. For our regular programming. We have a lot. All of the pictures that I showed you during this, we have screenshots of your world of text to kind of show you what it looks like. And it's cool. So keep an eye on our instagram.
Chris: Yeah, and I know I said this before, but thank you for sharing this topic, because things like this help kind of let you take a step back and realize that, you know, even the biggest problems are in some ways small against the backdrop of the universe and humanity. And that even though things feel overwhelming, it's helpful to have that reminder that, yeah, we're all on this journey together, and we're all sometimes lost in the vast infinite, but we can create things that help us find each other and get where we're going.
Kayla: That makes sense. That was a really beautiful way of putting it.
Chris: Thanks.
Kayla: You're welcome. That's the episode, I think. I think we're done. So, yeah, again, check us out on our socials. Culture just weird on Twitter. Culture just weirdos on Instagram.
Chris: We haven't crassly begged for people to leave us reviews in a while, have we?
Kayla: I don't think so.
Chris: Go. Go. Leave us a good review and stuff, man. Five stars. Just do that.
Kayla: Rate, share, subscribe. Is that what it is?
Chris: Say good words at us on the place where it matters.
Kayla: Do it.
Chris: All right.
Kayla: I'm Kayla.
Chris: And I'm Chris.
Kayla: And this has been cult or just weird?