Old Dog

Day 3,901, 07:56 • Published in USA USA • by Paul Proteus

Welcome to the museum of irrelevant and ancient media. Today's exhibit is Goodbye Blue Monday. The format is preserved from the Mesozoic Era era. If you pay close attention and utilize even rudimentary carbon dating, you can see that the jokes were certainly stale when published.

This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself, forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.


At this point there's more dust than image. Accompanying music.

Good morning, void. I doubt I have a subscriber left, but there's therapeutic value in the thought. It's been a while. I am sure everything is different and yet, nothing seems to change. I don't understand Discord particularly well, but the same faces are there as there were when I last left. In that way, the eUS is kind of like tennis. I won't say I am back. Grand pronouncements followed by sudden disappearances are something of a genre in games like this. Nostalgia is a strong pull, but the game offers a weak hook. Still, here I am. Hineni Hineni. And, I missed you. I missed...this. The title is misleading. I do not intend to learn any new tricks. To qualify that point, I stopped learning new tricks years before I quit eRepublik. The complexities of this game have never been particularly appealing to me. At least not the complexities coded in. That's why media is valuable. It doesn't change. I can still be here, eight years later, broadcasting the same drivel, from my heart to yours.


Honestly, I'd rather try to square the circle than learn more inane combat mechanics

I do, however, intend to relearn some of what made this game worthwhile. I intend to stop by Discord, hang around the Fed Forums giving off a whiff of senility. And if you'll have me, maybe an article or two. So this is just a tentative hello. I don't particularly care why we're wiped. As long as we can still shoot the shit, it doesn't seem particularly important. This game has always been largely fabricated, a thin veneer or facade barely concealing a chasm. There is no pearl, only darkness. We spend too much time trying to discern the man behind the curtain, and argue about what it means to be entitled to the hollowest of rewards when in reality we exist in an entirely arbitrary microcosm. However, this community is our arbitrary microcosm. If you're still here, this is a hello. If you're not, consider stopping by just to say hi. There are no strangers left. There's something beautiful in that.


GBM artist depiction of current editor Paul Proteus, attempting to deceive himself and his reader

I've become rusty, it will take a while to write anything decent. But maybe if we all put our feet into the water, we can create something ex nihilio.

So that's all, I forgot how long these take. Don't be a stranger. Join the Feds. Take my hand.