To begin with, if someone could get this in front of Ched, I'd appreciate it, he read either my 5 or 10 year post and commented on it, so I figured another follow up might be neat.
20 years ago today, I started playing Torn. April 4th 2005 was an interesting and memorable day for me. I was released from jail at 8:52am, penniless and moving back in with my mother, she and I had a tempestuous relationship and I knew that I was in for a bumpy future. After spending 452 days, 9 hours and 57 minutes in jail, I was finally back on the streets. My first day was spent reconnecting with friends, buying some essentials (my mom gave me $200, which was more than she had ever given me in my life until that point...), and then I landed at the library, sitting on aim, getting in touch with friends via AIM, and trying to find a game to play. I landed on Torn.
It's weird thinking back. I was 19 at that time, and my head was full of all of the dreams that I wanted to do, all of the places that I wanted to visit and all of the things I wanted to accomplish. With a few pages of felonies on my record everything seemed so far out of reach. I ended up working a few dead end retail jobs while desperately trying to get my life back in order. The first 5 years of my time outside of jail saw me logging into torn more or less every day -- Trying to spin up a set of factions (Torn City Underground - TCU for short) with my buddy (long banned user devoid - 98099), working, and starting to do freelance web design. My life was a little bit unstructured during this time - I moved in with a girl that I was seeing, but I knew that was going to be a temporary thing. In 2009 I started going to college to get a degree in comp sci. This was probably the most interested in Torn I ever was. I was logging in dozens of times a day, rushing to my phone to dump energy after hopping out of bed with my girlfriend at the time, and just loving all the developments that were coming out. I don't recall the exact date, but somewhere in the 2007/8 range there was a major crash where Torn was down for a few days.... good times. I creeped on / befriended one of the Miss Torn finalists named La Senza (she had another name before that...) https://www.torn.com/profiles.php?XID=383710 - She and I became friends off of torn, though as of 2025 we've never met in person we've talked about meeting several times as we've visited eachother's countries, but never quite make it happen.
2010 Saw me at my first internship working with a MASSIVE (in terms of name recognition, web presence, popularity) player in the global information space(Hint: you can't cite it....). Working with the company I was widely exposed to big data, databased, optimization, CDNs, and all manor of networking. I got my hands dirty in a datacenter doing some entry level work on servers that were worth about 50x my salary.
2011 Saw me move into my first "real" job. During my final semester in college I was able to take my last 2 courses as a directed study so I could get a day job in the industry. I started doing IT Helpdesk as an intern at a company that I had no business getting hired at. I got lucky. The hiring manager was in the process of quitting, day drinking heavily, and didn't properly screen me - he never ran a background check on me so he never found out about my criminal past. This IT job saw me doing all kinds of shitty work, swapping / imaging dozens of drives, doing all of the hacky AD work where I would have to unlock accounts, PW resets, figure out why someone's PDF wouldn't open -- you name it. That was me. Working in Boston every day... making really shit money. I started to automate away some of these tasks (joining devices to the domain, some light security work, etc). My automation efforts in AutoHotkey were noticed by an adjacent team and I was offered my first full time role in tech, with the wildly inflated title of "Network administrator" (which was very much not at all what I did). My job was focused almost entirely on network troubleshooting of customer networks where I was completely blind to how they were setup and trying to get company devices that were on-site to call back home. Decent job, but the responsibilities were pretty nightmarish- cold calling customers about devices and ad-hoc troubleshooting? Ick.
My love life has always been a mess. 2011 -> 2012 saw me in my second serious relationship, a girl named Britt. Britt was a streamer and I thought that she was gorgeous. I had the great misfortune of dating her and realizing that her entire persona (going to college, being chill, being a nerdy gamer) were all fabrications for the audience... She lived with me for a year or two before that fell apart. It was around this time that I met someone in Torn that would change the trajectory of the remainder of my time playing. I had more or less quit the game, just logging in to dump my energy / nerve and logging back out - mostly out of habit. I decided, due to my high (at the time) stats, that I would be a mercenary for hire and join a faction that would pay me handsomely for my services. I met Medicine (https://www.torn.com/profiles.php?XID=1328613) He was a really cool guy, paid me to be in his faction and intimidate anyone that tried to get into a war with us. I was friendly with all of the folks in the faction and found my "forever home" in torn. Over time, he and I played a lot. His name being medicine was not a coincidence, he had mentioned many times while playing with him that he had a chronic illness. Towards the time of his last login he mentioned he wasn't doing terribly well, so I'm guessing he passed.
From 2012 -> 2016 was a bit of a mess. I dated a string of progressively more and more toxic women while focusing most of my time and energy into my career. I saw myself go from my first job to working at a CDN -> A small tech startup which got acquired -> A healthcare company. I saw myself moved from being an individual contributor -> team leader -> manager -> director without ever really asking. Apparently my work ethic and intellect set me apart from my peers.... After dating a lot of the wrong people I thought that I had found the right person. A close friend of mine for several years had fallen for me, and I for her. After years of being best friends we had an amazing relationship. I hate to admit it, but that relationship falling apart was more or less my fault. At this point in my life / career I had some major issues that I was struggling to get my arms around. By the age of 30, I had lived more life than most people would in several lifetimes. There aren't many people who can talk about being in a stolen car, running an international crime ring, and also being in a board room with a CTO and investors talking about how our departments deliverables looked for the next 6 months. Nobody knew. Not a single soul knew the real me, and in spite of all the therapy I could afford, I never figured out a way to stop this malignancy from seeping into my personal relationships. The girl that was my best friend and I got engaged, I loved the thought of her, but I could never reconcile the idea of a house, a family.... I never had a family growing up.
2017 saw us split, and saw my life spiral out of control for a while. When she and I split, I left my job. I lived on tinder and in the beds of women whose name I would never know. I didn't care about anything, least of all "making money". Unlike you lot in the UK, this isn't really something we do in the US - just quit a job and come back to our career later on. I travelled. Excessively. I packed everything I had that mattered to me into my car and I drove. From Massachusetts -> New Jersey -> Pennsylvania -> Ohio -> Tennessee -> New Orleans -> Texas -> California -> Oregon -> Washington. I had a longboard and met a ton of friends along the way. I spent days driving around trying to feel the pulse of life, nights sleeping in my car, absolutely DECIMATING my savings. When I got to Washington, I still had plenty of money, but didn't feel any earthly attachment to anything. I sold my car and the majority of my belongings. I bought a 1-way ticket to Japan. A place that I'd always wanted to go. I was in Tokyo for a little over a month before heading to Korea, China, Thailand... I came back to the US and applied for like... 3 jobs before deciding that I wasn't ready, I f**ked off to Central / South America for a couple of months; Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Argentina, Chile, Brazil.... I was running out of money. I didn't care. Finally when it was clear that I either needed to go home or start emptying out retirement accounts, I headed home. Back to my apartment with absolutely nothing in it. It had been 9 months since I'd been home. 6 months since I'd had an American phone plan. I was dead to most of my friends, they had stopped reaching out entirely.
2018 finally saw me get back into the work force. I joined a company in ad-tech as a senior director. Business travel saw me all over the world for this job, as we had people in India, China, Poland, the UK, and San Fran working directly for me. I rarely saw home. My job was to go to places and help unblock the teams that worked for me. Destroy any politics or process that were slowing down momentum... and I did it. I was ruthless. 2018 -> 2020 saw my career hit new heights, but there was still that rebellious kid inside of me yearning to get out. In 2019 we were acquired by a very large (not quite FAANG, but they compete with those folks) company. This acquisition left me with more money than I ever imagined I would have. The acquiring company was also in one of the only verticals that prospered during covid... so the MASSIVE HEAP of RSUs that I was granted went up about 4-5x during the pandemic and I sold more or less right at the top.
The pandemic hit the reset button on my life again. I was 34 when it hit, a gym rat with no idea what he wanted out of life. I started dating maybe the only girl that was ever both good for me, and good to me. I started to settle into my life a bit more. 2020 - > 2023 saw things normalize and calm down. I left my job in ad-tech to move back into another fast paced startup. This time in a completely different vertical. I am still there today. I am a department head that reports in to the CEO, and the company is doing well. I split from the girl I was seeing in 2023 since her commitment wasn't where I wanted it to be.
So that brings us up to today. I'm 39 now. Torn has been a part of my life daily, or multiple times daily, for the past 20 years. These days my account is in a mostly steady state, login, do some crimes, maybe join some OC, gym train, logout. During the past 20 years I've amassed a pretty decent networth, and have no real goals. I have hit level 100 on all of the crime 2.0 crimes, and have somewhat respectable battle stats (for someone who hasn't really done Xanax in the past ~7 or 8 years). My current level is 99 and some change, though I'm holding at 98, I figured I would probably push to 100 by now just to say I did it for this post, but I got a bit complacent.
These days, life sees me working, rock climbing (v3/v4, pulling on some V5s but not sending them with any decent beta / reliably) and still trying to figure out what I want to do when I grow up.
I know that this is a rambly post that's gone a whole lot of nowhere, but it's difficult to sum up 20 years in several paragraphs. It's weird to think about how one day, 20 years ago, I was in a library and starting to play this game.... a young man, now one with gray hair. I'm alright, but I've got a long way to go.
Thanks George for giving me something to do for more than half my life. If I'm ever out in the UK again maybe I'll buy you a pint.
Cheers,
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