Tagpocalypse

The **Tagpocalypse** was the impending end of TF2Tags on January 16th, 2019, where the domain name of the website permanently expired.

## Farewell.

On January 16th, 2018, TF2Tags's domain name expired, causing the site to go down. Panic, sorrow, and confusion spread throughout the community quickly, as with other instances when it was thought that Dr. Dos pulled the plug. However, Dos, having forgotten to change the credit card he used to renew the domain, rectified the problem shortly after this occurred, when Proto Kirby contacted him and asked what was going on.

Dos, however, did not come with good news. On January 30th, 2018, at 3:33 a.m., updated the News section of TF2Tags for the first time since November 2016, and for what would be the final time. In the post, titled "Farewell.", Dos talked about many things regarding the site, from how he started it, to the community, to regret for past actions, to the announcement of the site's closure. The full text can be read here.

The immediate response from the Taggers was varied. Some, like The Lazygineer, Makin' Bacon, and Toastclaimer, naturally, made jokes. Others, like Proto Kirby and Llux, thanked Dr. Dos for creating the site and putting up with everyone for 7 years. Others, like Ass Ketchup, made bucket lists, describing a set amount of goals they wished to achieve before the site goes bottoms-up. Some, like Fancytag, decided to extend olive branches and "bury old hatchets", as it were. Some, such as Ulysses and Bonkspenser, expressed happiness to hear about the site's closure. Walumancer, one of Dos's biggest critics, made a response to Dos's statement, in it expressing both gratitude for creating the site and anger for his admitted past mistakes. TGRobert proposed getting a team together to work on a replacement site for the community to use following the expiration, which eventually came to fruition as Tags.tf two and a half years later.

Despite the varied responses, however, that day brought the community together in ways it had never seen prior. Many first and second generation Taggers returned from their graves to give their thoughts and feelings on the matter, as well as to get in on the jokes. These included A Fucking Idiot, Bonkspenser, Marmot, TheOnlyGuyEver, Fancytag, and many others.

## State of TF2Tags

Following the announcement of the Tagpocalypse, the site experienced an influx of life that it desperately needed. Old Taggers returned and semi-active Taggers stepped up their efforts. For a few months, the site seemed like it was going to remain active to the very end. However, this state did not last long. By May, the site's activity had fallen off considerably, many believing it to be dead. Only a few tags were made every day, with some only seeing one or two (or even zero) tags produced at all. There had been some brief instances of resurgence (such as a week in August and the two Wahfia raids), but this inactivity was otherwise constant. The site was both literally and figuratively on life support. During this time, fourth generation tagger Moura offered to purchase a new domain for the site, set to open on May 30, 2019, which would have all the code for the original site but would not archive the original >200,000 posts. However, due to his general lack of coding experience and an abjectly terrible internet connection, this did not end up working out.

## The Endgame

On January 1st, 2019, the site's days became numbered. With just over two weeks left before the domain expired, the site had entered its endgame. While some Taggers such as Proto Kirby and Player 1 + Player 2 joked about this, Walumancer pointed out an oddity in the top submissions: the third-most critted item in the site's history had become a post by Expand from May 2018, a two-item set making a "ur mum gay" joke. Somehow, this post managed to amass 1120 crits and 9 misses, with only Expand being shown as voting on it. Such a huge mass of crits confounded Taggers that witnessed it. The keywords had Expand thank tagger Llux and someone named Mr. Cherry. Llux claimed to have no idea what this was about, or who "Mr. Cherry" was. Moura began attempts to replicate such a huge increase in crits, and managed to do so client-side. Site moderator Fancytag decided he would delete the item from the site, citing the utter lack of crits from anyone other than Expand and Cammie, who critted the submission not long after this situation was unveiled. Most likely, this was a final troll from Dr. Dos, as only he has access to the server.

The next day, Expand coincidentally decided to return to the site one last time before it disappears forever only to find his shitpost deleted, with no idea why. It is assumed that he was unaware of the massive amount of crits his shitpost attained, reinforcing the idea that this was the work of Dos. Later that day, Proto Kirby decided to do the unthinkable and return to her original popular name of Smoky Quartz.

In the final week, several Taggers came together to create one final series, where they would work on it collaboratively. Known as The Final Week, it chronicled the final week (duh) of Tagopolis, a city about to be nuked, and the final events of key people in each of the three major factions: Llux's Police Force, Makin' Bacon's Crew, and, naturally, the Wahfia. This series involved Makin' Bacon and Walumancer getting set up and ambushed by the cops and being forced to work together, EGG-Z seeking answers about his origins, Blast becoming unhinged, and the final case for beloved detectives Hon-Hon and Sneky.

On January 14th, 2019, the Wahfia launched one final assault on TF2Tags, and would grow to be their most successful and most shitposty, filling up 15 entire pages of ridiculous nonsense. Even non-Wahfia members joined in on the chaos, including Marmot and Ulysses.

On January 15th, hours before the site was set to end, the Wahfia managed to critbomb Makin' Bacon to the position of highest-critted Tagger on the site, surpassing Relk\_Cehi. Due to the site not ending immediately when the server changed times, however, tension rose within the Wahfia's ranks about whether or not Relk should be told. Fred Fuchs would eventually critbomb Relk to equal Makin's points and threatened to critbomb Relk further if Makin's points continued to rise, keeping them tied for first in the final hours. However, Walumancer critted a few of Makin's tags (what ones he could still crit) within the last hour, cementing Makin in history as the most-critted tagger ever on the original site.

At the same time, Ulysses (the Tagger formerly known as Ulysses) announced to all the Discord servers that TGR would be buying the domain from Dr. Dos, and would be revamping the site with lots of features, old and new. They announced a team of six moderators to aid TGR, which are Ulysses, Makin' Bacon, The Lazygineer, Moura, Therister (Le Tryhard Hunter), and Walumancer. The new site was opened on June 1st, 2020, to unprecedented success.

On January 16th, 2019, at approximately 6:47 pm EST, TF2Tags shut down. Dr. Dos delivered one final goodbye before announcing that he would be setting his Steam profile to private and would ignore any emails relating to the site. Thus ends the long and turbulent history of the original site.

## Gallery

Seven years later and the tag referenced is still the most critted on the site.Joshy expresses gratitude for the site existing and being in the community, as well as thanking Fancytag for being a good moderator.Llux expresses gratitude to Dos and everyone for the time they shared on the site.Proto Kirby thanks Dos for creating the site and thanks the community for helping her through the worst of her depression.Fred Fuchs gives some advice to the community.Ass Ketchup creates a list of goals and resolutions he wishes to stick to for the rest of the year.Marmot being genuinely hilarious.Jesse gives some brief responses to parts of Dos's farewell address and addresses the community.Flak makes a joke.Kirby Gamez expresses sadness at the death of the site.Toastclaimer references Expiration Date.Bonkspenser, unlike most, is happy at the news.Makin' Bacon realizes he has to get his ass in gear. He still hasn't.Walumancer returns and makes an ominous statement.Fancytag takes the time to bury the hatchet with a few Taggers.The Lazygineer makes a joke.During this time, A Fucking Idiot went on one of his posting sprees. This is one of them.TheOnlyGuyEver makes a joke......and then thanks everyone.Moura feels sad.Walumancer makes a lengthy reply to Dos's farewell address.Some guy thanks Dos for the site and looks forward to making the final year a good one.DudeTheNinja gives his thoughts and announces his return.