Lowlife.

Hello world, am I too old?

I regret to inform you that I’ve gone down the rabbit hole. It’s 3AM and what started with googling people on the internet turned into googling Minecraft servers that I’ve run, cringing at the mistakes I have made, and then inevitably googling myself. 

I found a lot of very interesting things, including a reddit thread of the first server I ever ran, JuiceCraft, with my boyfriend at the time - Sam. I regret that relationship a lot - not entering it, but how it ended. I wasn’t a good person in college; in fact, there could be an argument said that I’m still not a good person, just and older and more mature garbage individual. It’s hard to believe that server happened SEVEN YEARS AGO. I have been playing a single game, somewhat consistently for nearly 10 years at this point. 

I sit here and think about the communities that I created, the people that I met, the people that I fell in love with, the company that they shared with me. I think about the mistakes I made, but the support they offered. Caboose was the first It was a weird friendship, fostered from when YouTube used to have messages. I don’t know how I found his videos, but I truly believe that he was the beginning of what my life is today. It’s been ten years, but I’ll never forget the way that he greeted me on the CabooseCraft server. 

I met Sam on CabooseCraft. Sam was an interesting fellow and I definitely didn’t do our relationship justice. How can you fall in love with someone you’ve never actually met? I don’t know the answer to that, but I do know that I fell in love with Sam pretty early on. I’d never been treated the way that he treated me. I’d never seen respect in the way that he respected me. Things got toxic though. It was a pretty long time ago, so I don’t remember specifics, but what I do remember is that we would fight pretty regularly, about stupid stuff. I know he was dealing with anxiety and I was dealing with it too, and being so far apart wasn’t helpful. I only wish I could have been a supportive figure in his life like he was with me. 

We server hopped for awhile until we found one called NokCraft. This is where the story really gets interesting and where another really important piece of my life today comes from. This is the first server where I posed a question to myself: How fast can I become staff on this server? What do I have to do to show that I am worthy of a promotion. I’m not sure how I tricked them into giving me a spot, but they did. This was the first place that the idea of a community was drilled into my head. Late nights and stupid conversations, making friends over the internet is way easier than it is in real life. On the internet, you don’t have to worry about how people perceive you. On the internet, weird people tend to clump together. People who get along tend to clump together and form groups, and those they don’t like tend to group together elsewhere.

On NokCraft is where I met StankPunatra. What a chum, that StankPunatra. In a crisis, you learn very fast who is your friend and willing to fly with you and who is foe and is willing to fight you. I learned on this server that StankPunatra was one of those people who was willing to fly with you. Things on the server got toxic because, if we’re honest, not all managers have leadership qualities, and Nokcihc_Der didn’t have either quality. 

This was the first server mutiny that I took place in, and probably one of the ugliest. It was one of those moments that you’re waiting for something to happen to give you an out - and then you bolt for the door. The moment happened when Storm_Surge and Team Avolition showed up. They griefed the server multiple times; doing stupid stuff and no real damage (woman’s intuition). It was then that we saw our out. I fled the server, took the main server manager and most of the staff and created my very first server with Sam: JuiceCraft. I learned everything that I took with me from server to server on this server. My first chance to run the ship the way I want to run it; not just be a lackey on board as we flounder at sea. I learned plugin maintenance, how to cultivate a community, social engineering and over all hospitality from this server. 

Sam and I inevitably broke up. He was the first person that I considered to be a soulmate, and one tick in the “there’s no such thing as soulmates” box that is heavily checkered today. A few years went by as I struggled through college until I met Dave. Dave and I began dating in a way that I can’t quite remember, and we weren’t together for very long, but I valued the time that we spent together, because he was the first dude who was with me on a weekly basis. He spent the night at my apartment many nights.

He was an administrator on a server and did al the backend work for it. I worked my way into this community and found a connection with a player named NeroGoBoom. He became one of my closest friends and we would talk and text all the time. There was a lot of jealousy there, because Dave thought that Nero and I had something going on, which we didn’t, and wouldn’t get it out of his mind. My mental health was not great at that point, and I contemplated killing myself. I broke up with him because I didn’t want to drag him down with me. Things got toxic again, and another mutiny arose. 

At this point, I went to create another server - NerpCraft. Named after the typo that I would often type when addressing Nero. Neal became the head support system for me, and I was so grateful that he existed. Together we co-admined NerpCraft. It was so successful, lasting more than a couple of years. My mental health got the better of me again and I had a mental breakdown. The server closed quickly afterward and I went a few years without playing Minecraft.

One day, out of nowhere, I got the urge to start up another Minecraft server. This time - all alone. It would be a small one, with enough plugins to keep people safe. I named this server CrepitusMC. (Crepitus was latin for explosion). I loved the community that I created, the server that was existing and the overall comfort of knowing that everyone was there to just play the game. I had a healthy number of staff members - from mini-mods to semi-admins and everything in between. Some of the players that played on there, I still play with today!

I don’t really remember what happened after that, but I do know that I went a good amount of time without playing Minecraft; busy at a real life job and trying to live paycheck to paycheck. I’d love to start a server up again, except that I’ve found another community to call home. 

Peaceful Farms. I’ve been playing on this server for about a month now, and I’ve made some of the best friends through a game in a long time. We call ourselves the Butthole Brigade, after a time in the server when the chat was dead and I typed butthole - and got reprimanded bc it was a bad word. Remember me saying that some of the players on CrepitusMC I play with today? They’re part of the butthole brigade. One of the most important people in the butthole brigade is our fearless chef butthole, Charlie. I don’t know what it is about him, but we’ve had so many heart to heart conversations, and it’s truly amazing to hear about a life lived in a different country. How are things different between the UK and America? Not as different as I once thought. 

It’s hard to put into words how I’ve grown so fond of all of them, including the server manager Ky. I think I see a lot of myself in them, I think thats why we were drawn together. 

Throughout this whole journey, I have learned that people aren’t so different after all. If you give them a moment to speak, let them feel safe, and offer the stage to them, you get to see their true colors. You can then pick and choose the community that you want to be part of.

My depression has been real bad lately, but I think my saving grace has been finding this community of weirdos. Weirdos who I spent a majority of my evenings talking to, saying the word butthole and generally laughing at our lack of willpower to survive. 

Never underestimate the power of friendship, but also don’t write off how truly amazing internet friends can be. They can be absolute lifesavers if you let them.