Age of Decay

### Notable Events

Death of Nullatrum, First Orangist Wars, Formation of I.R.O.N.I.C, KylerC123 Wars

### Name Origin

Named after the decay of wiki due to Nullatrum’s “death”

## Overview

The Age of Decay, Also known as The Beginning of Orangists Era or simply Spring 2018, was a historical period of time in the Surreal Memes Wiki, spanning approximately 11 weeks, from sometime in Mid March to May 28th, 2018. The Age of Decay was the first era in the wiki’s history to feature a significant amount of conflict and drama.

The Age of Decay started when Nullatrum, the wiki’s founder and only user with given powers, began to grow inactive. The resulting gradual loss of order (The “Decay”) would cause vandals, especially those that worshipped Orang and were known as Orangists, became a large problem. Eventually, though, other users would go to war with these orangists.

## Detailed Summary

Since the wiki’s creation, it had been ruled by a single admin by the name of Nullatrum. Nullatrum was semi-active most of the time, and he contributed every once in a while. Vandals had been a problem in the wiki earlier, but only rarely, and they were quickly blocked by Nullatrum. The problem was, Nullatrum would start to become inactive.

(Looking back, this isn’t entirely truthful, as Nullatrum had gone months without activity before, and until April, it was more that vandals were becoming more common than Nullatrum becoming more inactive.)

Nullatrum’s inactivity had taken its toll, and now some users (mostly unlogged IP accounts) were starting to vandalise articles, especially major ones such as the Orang page. This already happened occasionally, but by March it had become much more common. By Mid-March, a new form of vandalism was taking root: Orangist vandalism.

Many users claimed to worship Orang, and since Orang was at that point against Meme Man, they declared Meme Man to be their enemy. These Orangists, as they were called, frequently vandalised the Meme Man and Orang pages, rewording them so they became propaganda that painted Orang as the hero of surreal memes and Meme Man as the antagonist.

Prominent users like PoseidonHeir and Kyleroo quickly became aware of this vandalism and continuously reverted it. Poseidon realized how much of a threat Orang was to the memeverse, and how much of a threat his supporters were to the wiki. So, in reaction, began to give the wiki a bias of its own, and he made some pages more pro-Meme Man and anti-Orang. This was a slightly controversial choice, but Poseidon did it with the intention to show Orangist vandals that they were misguided.

In Early April, these Orangist vandals became even more common, and although there were many, one stood out in particular. At that point, he used an unlogged IP address on the wiki, which started with 6, and he got the nickname “Fandom 666” pretty quickly. Poseidon, Kyleroo, and a few other users like Epicfailer0 made a thread called “Tracking of Orang Supporters” to find the Orangists and fight them in general, which is now ancient and has 500 messages.

The thread took an unexpected turn when user Grand pillar started a roleplay as a pillar from surreal memes and fought the other users in the thread in roleplay, although he eventually became trustworthy and would go on to becoming a respected member of the wiki, and later a bureaucrat.

On April 23rd, Nullatrum made his last ever edit, without any goodbyes or explanation. Now, there would not be any chance of intervention in the case of a major vandal attack, and normal wiki users would have to defend themselves against the onslaught of Orangists.

Fandom 666, who was now a major vandal and annoyance, made a user account, KylerC123, and began to vandalize and spew propaganda even more. Kyler was far from the only Orangist, though, and the wiki’s situation was only going downhill.

On April 26th, PoseidonHeir founded the organization I.R.O.N.I.C, or the Interdimensional Repulsion Of Non-Valid Information Corporation. As the name suggested, I.R.O.N.I.C’s goal was originally to deal with the Orangist propaganda that appeared everywhere, but it quickly evolved to deal with Orangists in general, and then to deal with vandals and rulebreakers in general.

I.R.O.N.I.C originally consisted of trustworthy users that had been part of the Tracking of Orang Supporters, but others joined as well. On May 12th, Kyler replaced his user profile with a threatening note, claiming that Orang himself had taken over his account and that all wikians would die on May 25th. He referred to this date as the Great Orang Movement (later First Great Orang Movement, as two more would come), and it would be the day he’d completely obliterate the wiki in the name of Orang.

Many users found this worrying, including PoseidonHeir and much of I.R.O.N.I.C. However, by this point Kyler’s attacks were becoming rare and dated, and he slowly became less significant. Kyler later changed the date of his Great Orang Movement to the 28th for reasons unknown, and despite I.R.O.N.I.C anticipating a lot of drama, the Movement never came and the 28th was peaceful after all, and Kyler would not appear on the wiki until the following August.

After their victory against Kyler and the other Orangists, I.R.O.N.I.C became widely accepted as the wiki’s government and PoseidonHeir the wiki leader, despite not having any actual powers. I.R.O.N.I.C’s exponential growth and control over the wiki would start the I.R.O.N.I.C age, which would be a time of peace and prosperity for the next 2 and a half months.