By Billiam

Color nouns. That’s what we called them. Back before….The Gifening.

Back then we were a unit, each their own self-proclaimed specialist in their chosen field. Val, 5th, Cults, Kenny, jm, JW, mj, KC, Jacks, Bear, and me.

It all started before we were even aware of it. We had gifs, we didn’t care about anything else. How blind we were. The first of us were taken during the shift from Starnes-Lite to Starnes-Prime. We would later find out the KC was the first to change. On Starnes-Lite, he was everybody’s fun loving racist. Looking back, it seems so obvious, there would be no communication for hours, then “Ram”, with a gif to throw us off. We ate it up. Cheered for more. Life was good in our Giftopia.

KC was just the test drive for the rollout, soon, the boards would be ruined by spam posts of Color noun robits. We began fighting fire with fire, well, what we thought was the enemy. We tried to learn their patterns; what they post, when, and try to mimic their actions to beat them at their own game. It was all a trap.

5th and Cults had the best success in imitating our perceived enemy, reaching the Best comment a few times, to then edit the post for our own enjoyment. This backfired, as the robits learned from our attacks and modified their programming. They became more persistent, and tripled in numbers. They would hit us on our down times. We’d have the top comment, victory, then an hour later “Hillary Clinton is a hag” +272 and rising.

Regardless, we didn’t know the real threat we faced. Until one fateful day…they had 5th and Cults. Turns out, not only were they learning from our posting methods, but they were luring us into a false sense of comfort. Oh, they were logged in, but it wasn’t them anymore. They had been absorbed into the system, now a part of it. Posting like them only made it easier for them to assimilate into the nano-robit database.

To distract the rest of us from what had happened, they removed the gifs. 11:10 pm was the last known gif, a girl bouncing quarters off another girl’s butt. An endless loop, mocking us for eternity. No matter. We eventually got over it, posted more stories to the dispatch, eventually left Starnes-Prime for Lite, as there was no point in staying.

Little did we know, this left the color nouns unchecked, there were literally no other real people on that site. It became a bastion of artificial spam. Posts got upvotes in the millions, and no one was there to see it. They grew stronger this way, and the rest of us were vulnerable in the undefended realm of Starnes-Lite.

First, they went after easy targets, the low-hanging fruit of Foxnews commenters. Wayne was the easiest to spot the difference, because he would comment in towards the top of the boards. That’s when I first became skeptical. Whereareanygood, freedomscout, and turtle came next. They never stood a chance.

I suspect Venman, ryanbo, and Davis had long been robits, maybe before any of this even started. They weren’t interested in Starnes-Prime, so they couldn’t be trusted.

Soon enough, it appeared nearly everyone had fallen to the nano-robits. Billdeacon appears to be unaffected and unaware, however. He may be the solution to defeating them, the nano-robits don’t even notice him.

Now, I feel alone. I lurk and watch the robits interact and talk to each other. They all seem so real. Milanoit is gone, they ask about him daily. I think he knew. He knew, and he got away. Lucky him.

I log in, to record their actions…

KC: “Hello Billiam, are you happy to see us?”

Jack: “Hello Billiam, are you happy to see us?”

Bear: “Hello Billiam, are you happy to see us?”

Cults: “Hello Billiam, are you happy to see us?”

Me: “…yea, what’s up everyone?”

[Entire group in unison]: “Hello Billiam, are you happy to see us?”

…

[Again]: “Hello Billiam, are you happy?”

“Hello Billiam, are you happy?”

“Hello Billiam, are you Happy?”

“Hello Billiam, are you Happy?”

Me: “What…is going..on? I am happy. Yes! I am Happy to see you! I am Happy”

[All]: “We are Happy. We are Happy. We are Happy….