Short History of the Surreal Memes Wiki

The Surreal Memes Wiki has been an active community for a while, and has gone through many conflicts, changes, dramas, revolutions and other events of importance.

This page describes the entire history of the Surreal Memes Wiki in a relatively short and easy-to-read article. However, due to being short, it's not very detailed, and much more detailed versions can be found here, and even more detailed explanations in this wiki's articles for individual eras.

## Early Ages

### The Beginning

*Main article: The Beginning*

The Surreal Memes Wiki was created on May 11, 2017 by the then-active user Nullatrum. At that point, the wiki was very small and only a couple other users existed, none of which still exist here. Since surreal memes were still young at this point, the only existing pages, for a while, were those about major characters such as Meme Man and Orang, and pages about old memes such as SUCC and NO VEGETAL.

Since Nullatrum was at least semi-active throughout this period, there was no conflict, and only one minor account of vandalism was unearthed.

### Winter 2017/2018

*Main article: Winter 2017/2018*

The winter of 2018 was where the wiki's community of contributors started to grow slowly. Users like Nullatrum, Gotgunpowder and Kyleroo were the most active at this point, but there were now multiple others. The size of the wiki was also slowly growing at this point, as were its pages and the overall popularity of surreal memes. This was also around the time when the infamous PoseidonHeir arrived and became a significant contributor.

### Age of Decay

*Main article: Age of Decay*

In March and April 2018, the SMW was still hugely different from what it is now, but it was beginning to sort of resemble it, since this was when more familiar wiki users came. The wiki was growing at a faster pace at this point, surpassing 200 pages. However, problems were also growing. Nullatrum has never bothered to make anyone else an admin, and when he became inactive, there was no longer anyone to moderate the community or block vandals.

Of course, vandals saw the opportunity. Many of them supported Orang, the then-antagonist of surreal memes, and put their pro-Orang propaganda into important pages. These users were known as Orangists, and they quickly became a major threat to the wiki. PoseidonHeir formed a loose group consisting of users like Kyleroo and Epicfailer0 to fight these vandals and propagandists, but it proved to be very difficult.

The Orangists persisted, and one stood out in particular, known as KylerC123. PoseidonHeir made a group known as I.R.O.N.I.C. I.R.O.N.I.C's main goal was to fight Orangist propaganda, but it also dealt with vandals in general.

I.R.O.N.I.C did a good job considering the circumstances, and most Orangists, including Kyler, were defeated by May. Following the victory, I.R.O.N.I.C's leader PoseidonHeir began to act as the wiki’s de facto leader despite having no technical admin powers.

## Vandal Ages

### I.R.O.N.I.C Age

*Main article: I.R.O.N.I.C Age*

In June, I.R.O.N.I.C started to grow exponentially, from having a few members to having over 20. There were no vandals during this time because now I.R.O.N.I.C had such a strong control over the wiki. In July, BagelBoy released Riddle of The Rocks 2, which showed Orang promising to be trustworthy and turning to Meme Man's side.

This divided the Orangists into two groups; Seperatists, who were untrustworthy like the earlier Orangists, and Unifists, who were peaceful and now trusted both Meme Man and Orang.

### Age of Chaos

*Main article: Age of Chaos*

The Age of Chaos started on August 7th, when two major vandals, CheeseDestructor and DeLoominarty, wreaked havoc, way more than any other vandal had before. DeLoominarty's attack was short, but CheeseDestructor was persistent lasted until August the 9th, when his largest attack occurred. Both of them left the wiki alone after that, but CheeseDestructor was secretly taking to KylerC123 on discord the entire time.

At the end of August, they attacked again, this time with a third vandal at their side called Omnipotent gangster. Omni was very annoying and loved to cause drama, but he mostly fought in roleplay. He started a war with I.R.O.N.I.C known as the Omni vs. Meme war, but eventually made a truce.

The truce was fake, though, and Omni and Cheese attacked on September 10th. Kyler had switched sides, however, and he soon convinced Cheese to do the same. Then, a random user named Deadline666 came out of nowhere and started his own side to the war. Soon enough, Deadline turned to I.R.O.N.I.C's side and everyone was fighting against Omni. This drama became known as the Final War, and it involved both roleplay and mass vandalism.

Eventually, Omni made a truce and gave up fighting, and the war died down. There were some other vandals around this time period, such as ARMENIA IS BEST, The Real Orang (who was found out to be an alt of CheeseDestructor) and TheDarkStarXGod, but they were relatively minor in comparison.

## Early Modern Ages

### Safe Age

*Main article: Safe Age*

In October 2018, medium-significance user JoeJoeTheAnimator adopted the SMW and gave other users like PoseidonHeir and SANTACLAWS admins and bureaucrat powers. This was celebrated across the wiki, since now vandals would be blockable in seconds and a state of relative security had begun.

However, the problems weren't over, because JoeJoe was beginning to go corrupt and do many unfair things: Blocking users at random, creating off-topic pages and threatening to block anyone that questioned them, changing the wiki rules as he pleased, and dodging any fair criticism. The other wiki admins were getting very sick of JoeJoe's troublements, so they reported him to the sitewide FANDOM staff and asked them to remove JoeJoe's bureaucrat powers. When JoeJoe saw the report, he backed down and agreed to be more cooperative, and the other admins agreed and removed the messsage.

However, the state of the wiki was only going downhill. Many people that didn't understand surreal memes were joining the wiki, and they invited their friends, who invited their friends, and so on. These new users caused a lot of trouble by making hundreds of off-topic pages and spam, and there was nothing that could be done because some wiki admins couldn't quite agree on what to do.

### Democratic Age

*Main article: Democratic Age*

With the wiki's culture shifting away from surreal memes and the wiki itself essentially becoming a place for random fan creations, admins like PoseidonHeir and SANTACLAWS decided something needed to be done. With the support of a lot of the community, they established a democratic wiki government with an elected president and a council. Admin and major contributor GammaRaul became the first president on December 1st.

With a clear and organized government, everything fell into place, and low-quality fanon pages ("page spam") became less of a problem. For most of december, the wiki was doing very well, but later a vandal showed up by the name of Squidward pepe. Squidward pepe was no ordinary vandal; if she was, she would have been blocked and that would have been the end of it. But instead, she spammed disgusting NSFW imagery, used code to break pages, and couldn't be IP banned because she used a vpn and had over 50 accounts.

It was arguably the most stressful thing the wiki ever went though. Eventually, she stopped, because the admins traced on of her unlogged IP accounts back to England. She was, or at least pretended to be, scared of this prospect so she left the wiki alone for a while. However, JoeJoe was once again acting up. He rigged the second wiki elections, blocked users unfairly, promoted an untrustworthy user to bureaucrat, among other things.

### Post-JoeJoeTheAnimator Era

*Main article: Post-JoeJoeTheAnimator Era*

The end of JoeJoe was when he was caught making insulting propaganda about SMW admins and users on Miraheze, a site similar to fandom. Everyone was so sick of JoeJoe that they forced him to retire and kicked him out, and blocked him. He would never be a serious threat to the SMW again. When he left, there were more Squidwardpepe-like attacks out of the blue, but there were cleaned up within the day.

JoeJoe, however, went to miraheze and tried to rile up the community there and get them mad at the SMW by feeding them lies. They believed it at first, but when it was proved wrong and JoeJoe continued to cause drama, he was kicked out of Miraheze. He would come back a few times and once he even vandalised, but after that he disappeared from the internet entirely, and even when he came back he left everyone alone. Squidward pepe attacked a lot during these months, but her last major attack would be in April.

## Late Modern Ages

### SWDF Era

*Main article: SWDF Era*

In april, PoseidonHeir reformed I.R.O.N.I.C, which hadn't been of much use once the Safe Age started, into the SWDF. His reasoning was that since the days of Orangists were long over and vandals like Squidward pepe and corrupt users like JoeJoe were more of a threat, these would the the things the SWDF would specialize in fighting.

The SWDF was created, although this was a more symbolic change since admins just dealt with most problems normally. Still, there was very little vandalism and drama, except for a small incursion by a vandal named Mr. Pissshithead who was most likely Squidward pepe. GammaRaul, a respected longtime wiki bureaucrat, mysteriously disappeared from the internet completely on May 11th, 2019, and would never be seen again.

### Age of Inactivity

*Main article: Age of Inactivity*

In June, the SMW started to become less active; new users joining and events were becoming less common; there was no conflict at all during this time, which was one of the few good qualities of the next months to come. In July, much of the SMW's remaining userbase left, and even edits were few and far between. SANTACLAWS and others called for the wiki to be revived, but it was no use.

### Archive Era

*Main article: Archive Era*
In September, most of the remaining community, which was pretty small by now, was sick of the wiki's inactivity. PoseidonHeir decided it would be better to let the SMW rest in peace rather than be occasionally disturbed, so he chose to archive the wiki (meaning no more editing, the wiki is just a group of articles and everyone goes on their way, this never really happened). Poseidon didn't want to make such a major decision without the consent of the remaining community, so he set up a poll and the option to archive still won. It looked like this would be the end of the Surreal Memes Wiki, but of course, it wasn't.

Later in the month, there was a significant encounter with an anti-FANDOM libertarian vandal group known as Project Sengula. They threatened the SMW and the remaining admins (which were few, since most had left by now). They were a large group with dozens of members, including Squidward pepe (although she didn't bother the wiki anymore) and they took themselves and their cause seriously.

Following Project Sengula's many attacks, a lot of drama went down, the first major drama the SMW had experienced since JoeJoe's banishment. Outside users opposed to Sengula -but affiliated with politics, not surreal memes- joined the wiki, causing even more drama, although not destructive. By October some earlier SMW users that had left in the summer rejoined to fight Sengula, and at least parts of the community found themselves united again.

## Retaliation Ages

### Battlestation's Renaissance

*Main article: Battlestation's Renaissance*

In November, seasoned wiki user Battlestation, who had been at least partly active throughout the summer and fall, began trying to revive the wiki's community. Along with outer, newer users, he created many new pages, and brought other bureaucrats back to life. His efforts were largely successful, and by the winter of 2019/2020 the wiki was back to its older, active self.

SANTACLAWS saw the activity and decided action had to be taken to keep the wiki growing. Although with the support of nearly every other wikian, he created a second democratic system for the wiki to keep things in order, and he started to improve the wiki in general.