Last year, I promised to write a history of the old ETT. After some delay, I've finally decided to get around to it. In this series of posts, I'll try to cover as much as I can about ETT's final years, drawing on my own memories, as well as on archives.

/home

I started using ETT somewhere around 2017; in July of that year, I came across a community at /home, which was essentially the unofficial homepage of ETT. Through it I also discovered other pages, such as /dict and /chatroom.

/home was probably created by cabalex, who would become inactive a few months later, then return in 2018. unnamedauthor was another user who seems to have contributed to /home-affiliated pages, and Chatrumor was the creator of ETT's two most renowned pages, /chatroom and /dict. The first was created as a competitor to cabalex's /chat (also affiliated to /home); the second was a page directory with over a hundred entries. The main users associated to this community, other than the three aforementioned, were J, Pixelstorm, The Maths God, Card, and PotatoGamer1.

/armybase

After joining /home, I created a page called /armybase. Among its first visitors were PotatoGamer1, who invited me to his page /polandball, The Maths God, Pixelstorm, and DeadPigeonGuy. The earliest, however, was probably 71.11.64.73, who defaced /armybase with the "Text Wehrmacht".

Archives of /armybase from early August show a comment section, a list of updates, and a welcome message. As the page's owner, I wrote fictional war reports, such as "our enemy SittingFalcon778 has been killed". On /MathsTemple, I also set up an "office" for /armybase, where "soldiers" were to be stationed (although I was its only user).

71.11.64.73 and 1002

In July 2017, 71.11.64.73 created the Text Wehrmacht, a gigantic stack of swastikas which he used to vandalize pages. He quickly became one of the most hated users on ETT, along with Tiktak, SERVE THE PEOPLE, and other griefers active at the time. Nevertheless, their actions were tolerable, and all we had to do was regularly store backups of our pages.

The arrival of 1002 marked the first case of automated vandalism. One day in late August, a bunch of pages were overwritten with the message, "This page had been erased by /edit/1002." This soon escalated into a massive spam campaign, in which pages were overwritten every few minutes with the same message. I tried to restore a few of them, but my attempts proved futile. So ETT remained unusable for roughly a week, until that user named 1002 left. It appears that they left a message before leaving, which read, "When you waste your programming skills to make a bot that overwrites edit the text pages XD".

Moriarty

Moriarty was a user who appeared on September 1. On that day, he erased a large number of pages as part of a "takeover", redirecting people to his own page, /Moriarty, where he had apparently set up a puzzle. This sparked an angry response from ETT's users; despite that Moriarty restored everything a few days later and denied any malicious intention, he was still widely viewed as a troublemaker. I disagreed, however, and vehemently proclaimed his "innocence".

Moriarty became "inactive" for a few weeks, though he did retain a presence on a few pages. And as ETT faced other incidents of griefing, the backlash against him gradually subsided.

snake2vr and the Black Void

snake2vr, who joined around the same time as 1002, vandalized pages in the name of "The Pact". He became particularly active following 1002's departure, and was the most prominent griefer alongside 71.11.64.73.

I also came across a mysterious vandal named the Black Void, which I warned /polandball about. Not long after, that user began attacking /polandball as well as a few other pages. PotatoGamer1 and I bitterly tried to fight back, while /polandball's players relocated to a temporary page.

During this time, PotatoGamer1 also introduced /antihackers, originally created by L.O.G., as a page to discuss the issue of griefing. The rest of ETT was largely unaffected by the Black Void. When I wrote hate comments against them on /chatroom, Chatrumor seemed to have no idea who they were.

The Black Void disappeared a few days later, after which /polandball resumed activity.

/creshter

/creshter was my attempt to document the various griefers of ETT. It was a list of pages they supposedly owned, some of which were real, and others were completely made up. I thought it would be funny to invent fake figures and pass them on as insider knowledge. I claimed, for example, that /datordizzboiiesr would "start a war soon", even though nobody actually owned that page.

I did not expect, however, that other users would contribute to /creshter, turning the page into a much more reliable source of information. Eventually, it would even be endorsed by WORDET.

The Worldwide Defense Taskforce

In the middle of September, 142.44.160.133 went around overwriting pages with the lyrics of "EDEN - End Credits", and this quickly became the predominant form of spam.

Around this time came a user named Pascal S, who seemed to have little involvement in communities such as /home and /chatroom, but who ruthlessly opposed griefers; wherever they went, he would wage war on them. Over time, and I don't remember how exactly, this gave rise to an "anti-griefing organization" called WORDET, of which Pascal S was a member.

WORDET existed in three iterations spanning roughly a year, but very little has been recorded about its early beginnings. As far as I remember, it did not actually have many members. The "group", if it could even be called one, was ran by Pascal S, and later Catsec (who joined around the same time), and they were likely WORDET's only members at the time. (Also, WORDET's name was an abbreviation of "Worldwide Defense Taskforce".)

The Admin Group

On September 24, Moriarty founded the "Admin" group to replace /chatroom's defunct "Mod" group. He said: "The Mod group is dead. The Admin Group has been founded by Moriarty and taken over /chatroom. We now administrate and back up /chatroom. We are four." Those four members were CrossT, Master, Seb, and Moriarty. I joined later as well.

The Admins' takeover of /chatroom resulted in a conflict with the Mod group's only remaining member, Chatrumor, who refused to hand over the page. And the conflict went on for several weeks, with both sides trying to impose their own versions of /chatroom.

A compromise was finally reached in October. Chatrumor got to keep /chatroom, while the Admin group moved to a new page called /trueChatroom.

The Squiddy Virus

Vandalism was already quite serious, but the arrival of new griefers in October made things even worse. The "Squiddy Virus" began spreading around that time; so did "Oj Alija Aljo", the "Islamic State", "Pakistan", and many others.

On DeviantArt, a former ETT user said of the Squiddy Virus: "Also, I must confess. I was the one who created the 'Squiddy virus' that wound up spreading through ETT and eventually destroying the site in its final days. I didn't do the Ned Flanders crap, though. Regardless, I deeply apologize for accidentally making a joke that wound up getting abused by spammers."

The First World Edit War

By late October, the most active griefers were 71.11.64.73; 199.168.78.69, responsible for the "GET SPOOPED" spamming; and the XCTR Federation, identifiable by its Anonymouse.org address. I was doing a considerable amount of spamming myself, under the alias "142", although I kept this identity secret from other users.

One day, I came across an anonymous message announcing a "World Edit War". At first, I thought it was a joke, so I did not take it seriously. But then I went to WORDET's page, and found that they were indeed preparing for such a thing.

There was a table of users and pages, probably a dozen in total, divided into two opposing camps of anti-griefers and griefers. On one side you had WORDET, /MathsTemple, and a few others. On the other side, you had notorious vandals such as 71.11.64.73. I added /armybase to the list of anti-griefers, claiming it would fight against "142". However, when the war broke out, mostly what I did was attack pages as "142", and after that I left ETT for a month or so.

Not much has been recorded about the war itself. I've only found one relevant archive, from November 4, showing the announcement of a "final destruction" with frivolous threats of DDoS attacks. Some users, like 199.168.78.69 and Bob The Beardless, continued their activity into late November, but it's not clear if they were specifically involved in this conflict.

71.11.64.73 would later blame WORDET, Catsec, and Chatrumor for the World Edit War, which, according to him, resulted in the end of "142".

Continued in Part Two