I bet you clicked on this ready to tweek at yet another post showcasing the COSMETIC RAGE that consumes the player base whenever a color changes on this website.
I cleverly worded the title in a way that would bait you and now here you are, you little bait taker.
This post is NOT about that topic. There's already enough threads.
Let's talk astrophotography.
Pale Blue Dot is the name of a photo taken by Voyager 1 before Torn was even a twinkle in Chedburn's eye.
It looks like this:
Reminder to schedule your annual eye exam
In this photo, you can barely see the planet Earth, a tiny speck against the vast backdrop of space.
Everything we'd created to that point (except Voyager 1 and probably some other space junk) is in this photo. And yet we can see none of it.
It's a snapshot of a world just before my brother was born. A world that knew very little about space. A world before 9/11 and AI and all the other horseshit we endure in our day to day.
But it wasn't a world without problems. On this Earth, the people were enduring a global recession. The Soviet Union was on the brink of collapse. People in this picture were starving. But from so far away, none of that seems to matter. Mainly because you can't see it. But I'm rambling.
Torn has its own Pale Blue Dot.
It looks something like this:
Or if you go way backer:
Through web archives, we can see a snapshot of how Torn used to be.
It's a snapshot of a Torn before some who will read this were even born. A Torn that knew very little about Xanax timers. A Torn before Monarch and websockets and all the other horseshit we endure in our day to day.
But it wasn't a Torn without problems. In this Torn, the website went down nightly for maintenance. The servers were terminally on the brink of collapse. People in these archives were paying 50 fucking energy to attack. But from so far away, none of that seems to matter. The Torn we know today may as well another Torn entirely.
Indeed, Torn has come a long way.
I wonder...
The internet used to be a series of tubes that would drop you in the middle of any website for whatever topic you were curious of.
It was beautiful.
These days, the internet is more a dingy hallway with a billion doors, each locked and secured.
Gone are the days a web crawler could sniff around, take notes, and feed a database that would eventually be queried by some bored Torn player on a Monday morning.
It's pretty cool that I can do that. Guess I was born at the right time.
But let's take it forward another 20 or so years.
Will anyone wonder "What was going on in Torn in the 2020s?"
And when they seek that answer, just what will they find?
Will they learn about the Ireland War?
How Proxima was the first to sacrifice his candies to unleash M'aol?
How Evaline started TornCon, bringing so many of us together IRL?
How Mikzcool and AgntOrngRuffy dualhandedly kept the Torn City Times in business with their fantastic comic strips?
Or how BrandyQHQ brought us the Torn Tenacity Trials, unlocking a novel way for players to compete and for staff to catch scripters?
Will they read the sacred texts by Bumbi and Cheesus or any of the legendary shitposters who came before and flew so the two of us could crawl?
Will they find out how Piccolo has helped to carry on and even evolve the Dollar Sale tradition?
Or how GenShinigami has saved countless noobs from being scammed by creating Nebula Services?
Or anything else that's happened this decade that I am not recalling in this specific moment?
Or will they just see a pale blue dot when they look back on today?