How GAW Nearly Doxed the Foundation

Link to article: How GAW Nearly Doxed the Foundation.
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= **How GAW Nearly Doxed the Foundation**
= Written by [[*user StrangerSwing]]
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= Read more from me at [[[https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/the-stranger-swings | my author page.]]]
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The debate around the "point" of art is not a new one.

Perhaps it's the artist's intended message. Perhaps it's an anthropological record system. Maybe it's expression beyond words.

If you ask me, I'll respond: "What's it to you, Socrates?"

But if you ask [https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/gamers-against-weed-hub GAW], they'll tell you it's about tripping balls.

I found out about anart browsing through old forums and IRCs. This was a much easier thing to do before the bubble. No one really knew what was happening, especially the Foundation. I found myself a regular amongst an AWCY? offshoot of understimulated basement dwellers. I didn't think much of them at first - crass, attention-seeking doomers without a shred of dignity to their names - but over time I grew fond of them. They may not appear desirable to outsiders, but they look after their own. Some of these people were on their last legs, with no one else to talk to. There was always someone to love you if you felt like crytyping a PhD's worth of melancholy introspection.

And, y'know, drugs.

We knew conventional methods would not do. The feds hadn't sunk their teeth into the web, yet we were still cagey about transportation. Eager to find a way to console our own, yet slow to incur transportation risks, someone devised a new method: cognitohazards.

No one remembers who brought coghazzes to the group first. Perhaps the few remaining [https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/are-we-cool-yet-hub AWCY?] members, perhaps an anartist with ThreePort connections, perhaps feds keeping us docile[[footnote]]If you believe that kind of stuff.[[/footnote]]. But this shit hit hard. Regardless of past drug experience, every sweat-greased IRC viewer that day found themselves in a deep, deep euphoria. Lifted from their seats, lifted from their skins, bouncing the floor on a ball till the Sun turned green. What was more symbolic of the Internet's ability to unite than a server-wide drug trip?

After that, pretty much everyone scrambled to recreate the effect. A server of welfare-sucking neckbeards converted into anartists by sheer withdrawal. Only a select few //had it//, though. Turns out you can't just whip up that kind of experience when you can't tell watercolour from your nose hairs.

I remember when there were more coghazzes than conversations. We'd wake up each morning to see {{#chats 5, #good-timez 99+}}. It's hard not to feel bad for the mods having to deal with the resulting influx of new users. CannabIRC had turned into an ayahuasca retreat.

As the practice developed, there was a sort of unyielding optimism characteristic of the bubble. With more refinement, imagine what experiences could be gained from anart. This stuff'll make paraplegics feel like they're on Everest. It'll sing Beatles to the deaf. Teach advanced quantum mechanics with a fucking jpeg.

Then, as ##green|**bluntfiend**## put it, "Shit hit the fan, then the fan fell through the fucking floor"

First, some of us complained about migraines after viewing. "placebo lmao" we collectively replied, suppressing the maddening tingling behind our eyeballs. It felt like everyone was complaining about insomnia and formication.

Of course, this is nothing of note for a server of stoners.

Some users would straight up break down. Not typical "i go;;;t fiired for noo resaon and i don;;;t qualfy for wellfare" breakdown, but full fuckin' Oscar Wilde-esque descriptions of their unraveling psyches and haywire mental patterns. Something about these jpegs turned this lot from washed up druggies to Dr. Jekylls. Sometimes, the most terminally online users would just go AWOL without explanation.

I've got a vivid memory of when I decided to leave. I opened IRC Sunday morning, and saw people who dropped out in Year 10 waxxing about the //insiduous fraying of my identity as my composure is drawn impossibly taut//. Saw my closest friend's last online two weeks ago. It was like witnessing some choreomania I hadn't caught yet.

Just days later, the Foundation shat itself six times over as the headlines started rolling in. "24yo Programmer Hospitalised, Cause Unknown." "16yo Suffers Stroke From Unknown Substance Abuse." "Images Found On Internet Cause Cerebral Palsy". The server came to a standstill as we realised we had entered the real world. Rumours went round that some of the more prominent users offed themselves in fear of GAW getting swatted.

If not for ##gray|**bones**##, every member of GAW would've gone full Joel Barish on account of Foundation amnestics. Before the web crawlers had the time to mutter the word "Secure", it threatened to send coghazzes through global news networks of all kind. Some off-site parley later, ##gray|**bones**## tells us the group stays together on the condition that we moderate our coghazzes, keep our mouthes shut, and tighten entry requirements.

For such a chaotic group that so perfectly symbolises the Internet in microcosm, it's only fitting it's built on doxing the Foundation.

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How GAW Nearly Doxed the Foundation

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