Preface

OT research part 2. This one has me deep in OT's arserabbit hole since 4 o'clock, and it's almost 11 now. Before me is a wall of interconnected threads. I stare at it, trying to make sense of it all. I must say, I have graduated to detective abraker in those long 7 hours. The quest is simple but the path is long. This is the oldest mystery of this subforum.

The search for the dancing cake

Let's flashback to the black-and-white olden era of OT when people powered their threads using 240p gifs. Birthday threads were plentiful back then unlike now. So much so, people questioned if there should be a subforum dedicated for them since they were so plentiful that you might almost call it spam. Combing through all those threads took a couple hours, and honestly I gave up after 69 threads.. because not a single one, or almost not a single one, of those threads had a dancing anime girl.


So when did people start posting dancing anime girls in threads then? And that's when I stumbled across the TRUTH. First, the dancing anime BIRTHDAY thread tradition is a twisting of OT's TRUE history by that muscle seagull. People indeed have never consistently put dancing girl anime gifs in birthday threads in ye olden days. In fact, that was not even a thing until the Fag Era. Two posts by Ephemeral rewrote OT's culture and hid its true traditions. The offending posts?

• 
  * community/forums/posts/6042485
  * community/forums/posts/6064326

Here is a list of birthday threads before and after. The difference is striking!

• 
  No dancing anime girls on birthday threads:
  * community/forums/posts/5756222
  * community/forums/posts/5755587
  * community/forums/posts/5838247
  * community/forums/posts/5888152
  * community/forums/posts/5893176
  * community/forums/posts/5948094
  * community/forums/posts/5982363
  * community/forums/posts/5998392
  
  Ephemeral makes post
  * community/forums/posts/6042485
  
  Sudden dancing anime girls on birthday threads:
  * community/forums/posts/6043587
  * community/forums/posts/6055546
  * community/forums/posts/6067988
  * community/forums/posts/6069173
  * community/forums/posts/6080414

.

Why did the seagull migrate south?

Ephemeral performed and 2-strike K.O. to the tradition. First strike was the post threatening exile, compelling denizens of the day to conform. Second strike was writing the rule in stone for future-born denizens to see. This was written into stone once more in osu!'s official rules during the old web -> new web transition:

Off-Topic Rules wrote:

Birthday threads are allowed only in Off-Topic, and nowhere else. All birthday threads must be accompanied with no less than three (3) images of dancing anime girls or they will be ruthlessly thrown under a bus.

Was it done on purpose, and if so, why? Luckily, I gathered valuable intel regarding this a few months back when I ran a joint mission with TicClick here. Snooping to the backroom dealing of the osu!wiki discussion I came across this peculiar conversation. This gave me insight as to what might went on in advance.

Ephemeralis wrote:

also all of them are salient rules and not at all jokes, save for the anime girl inclusion in birthday threads (which is tradition more than anything)

How can this be a tradition if there is evidence it was never a tradition? It seems he genuinely believes it is a tradition.

Here is what I think has happened. Ephemeral was removed so long from OT he has since forgotten some aspects of it. Being a busy admin as he is, with many things floating in, out, through, and around his mind, it is quite easy to mix things up. He remembers there was an anime dancing girl tradition, but not the context of it. In the heat of the moment of that fateful day in B1rd's birthday thread, he asserted the tradition as he thought he remembered, and thereon applied it in its written form.

Mystery solved!

except... wait...

If he thought there was a tradition, what was it actually?

Let's dance

So now I had to begin the search all over once more. It was like searching for a nugget of gold among all the crap pile of shit those animals left behind. I have about seen the most bizarre war crimes of the past, and the most insane displays of humor right violations. Ah, but found it at last I did.

The tradition was not birthday threads, it was goodbye and welcome threads. It's a running joke you can't quit osu!, so it makes sense people would derail those threads.


But why dancing anime girl gifs? This is where my investigation comes to a roadblock. Time is not kind enough to preserve the old. Ancient ruins of olden OT have limited existing records of events of those days. The surviving stone tablets I did find suggest the denizens of those days were infatuated by dancing lolis to the point they made it a running joke to derail threads with them.


Some artifacts in those threads were collected for examination. Evidence suggests that certain gifs were standard issue in denizens' shitposting arsenal of those time. Those include:


This is where I shall now retire. I leave it up to detectives greater than I will ever be to pick this mystery up where I will now leave it, and finish what I could not. Perhaps an ancient fossil may rise once more to share the tales lost to time. One could only hope as much.

edit: 1

Did abraker just post twice within 24 hours?

EXILE EXILE EXILE

Wait does being an GMT give you filters for forums or special searching features

ShinRun wrote:

Wait does being an GMT give you filters for forums or special searching features

nope T_T

I got only this to use:

home/search?mode=forum_post&query=dance&username=&sort=created_asc&forum_id=52

home/search?mode=forum_post&query=Dancing_loli2&username=&sort=created_asc&forum_id=52

home/search?mode=forum_post&query=birthday&username=&sort=created_asc&forum_id=52

OT of old was not even publicly accessible, so I couldn't use the wayback machine for shit either.

i find this rule meh

The rule used to include a link to someone's userpage where you could get the dancing anime girls from but i forgot who's userpage it was.

edit: i think it was shellghost, and the original rule was also to post dancing anime girls in goodbye threads, the one for birthday threads must have been a reference to that.

If my memory serves me right then basically we got tired of random people posting that they're quitting the game even tho we had never heard of them so we turned it into a joke to spam the posts with dancing anime girls, eventually it became a "rule".

I dislike dancing anime gifs. I find them cringe

Julian_Kaiser wrote:

I dislike dancing anime gifs. I find them cringe

Cry about it.
[POST IS NO LONGER EXPERIENCING TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES]

ghoulybits wrote:

Julian_Kaiser wrote:

I dislike dancing anime gifs. I find them cringe

Cry about it.
[POST IS NO LONGER EXPERIENCING TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES]

related(repost):
dance on me balls

cat fucking a handbag yours only yours
for dora's tickle dancebag

it's no lie

mister in the crowd said
"LOOK Harry had a Vagina Malfunction"

Julian_Kaiser wrote:

I dislike dancing anime gifs. I find them cringe

we got a fucking traitor lads

ghoulybits wrote:

Julian_Kaiser wrote:

I dislike dancing anime gifs. I find them cringe

Cry about it.
[POST IS NO LONGER EXPERIENCING TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES]

Funny, you sound hurt.

Cerno wrote:

Julian_Kaiser wrote:

I dislike dancing anime gifs. I find them cringe

we got a fucking traitor lads

Doeth not make mention of any vulgar word from thy mouth. I condemn vulgarity, thou heathen. Get rid of thine iniquities.

high effort post

Julian_Kaiser wrote:

I dislike dancing anime gifs. I find them cringe

Pretty sure that was part of the joke though if the point was to discourage goodbye threads.

full ot docummentary when

There is no mystery. You are servants to my inexplicable will.

You always have been.

You always will be.

I am okay with that.

Ephemeral wrote:

There is no mystery. You are servants to my inexplicable will.

You always have been.

You always will be.

Quite the big ego you have, your will does not stand everlasting.
We are not bounded to your laws. While you may claim to have your will enforced to us like servants, we can refutably act against it. For it is not you who decides the jurisdiction, you don't own unilateral power.

I'll probably be exiled for this.

Julian_Kaiser wrote:

Ephemeral wrote:

There is no mystery. You are servants to my inexplicable will.

You always have been.

You always will be.

Quite the big ego you have, your will does not stand everlasting.
We are not bounded to your laws. While you may claim to have your will enforced to us like servants, we can refutably act against it. For it is not you who decides the jurisdiction, you don't own unilateral power.

I'll probably be exiled for this.

Free will is an illusion, the seagull stands omnipotent.

WitherMite wrote:

Julian_Kaiser wrote:

Ephemeral wrote:

There is no mystery. You are servants to my inexplicable will.

You always have been.

You always will be.

Quite the big ego you have, your will does not stand everlasting.
We are not bounded to your laws. While you may claim to have your will enforced to us like servants, we can refutably act against it. For it is not you who decides the jurisdiction, you don't own unilateral power.

I'll probably be exiled for this.

Free will is an illusion, the seagull stands omnipotent.

Free will is a gift. The boastful seagull remains delusional.