April 1st, 2021 (NADS)

## A-paul-clypse

A screenshot of the server from this day

On April 1st, 2021, NADS, the official server for Paul Shapera, fell victim to several simultaneous April fools pranks.

* The staff team enacted a color swap of everyone's nicknames. Instead of usual color system where staff is purple and the rest of the server is rainbow, staff became rainbow and the rest of the server became purple. This idea was originally proposed by Eurydice.
* The patreons choose a new icon for the server to use for the day. After a vote, they selected an image of Paul sucking his thumb with a light pink and blue background with sparkles. The image was photoshopped by PixelWayve, and Red proposed that the picture be used as a server icon. The server name was also altered to "The New Albion Chaos Society."
* Matt (AbsolutionJailor) created a "posssumvibes" channel on May 5 2020, and with the help of Alex (the cool one), Easy, and CitrusCircus, had been diligently posting pictures of possums for months while the channel remained hidden to the majority of the server. On the chosen day, the "posivibes" channel was hidden and "possumvibes" was revealed, giving the impression that the posivibes had been suddenly and unexpectedly transformed.
* Many individual users changed their nicknames and profile pictures to impersonate other members of the server. Red was the first member to do this, taking Kerttu Aarnipuu's username and icon. Others who suffered from identity theft included PixelWayve, Pumpkin, X\_Blade\_Mage, and Red. Pumpkin was the first to change her nickname and icon to imitate Paul Shapera after thinking the idea up during server icon discussions, and many others followed suit.
* Inspired by the overwhelming amount of nicknames and conversation about Paul, PixelWayve changed the server name to "Paul" and renamed every single channel and category to also be named "paul." For clarity's sake, "#possum-vibes" was renamed twice after, once to "#happy-paul" and again to the final name before the end of the event, "#posi-paul". Additionally, the #vent channel was renamed "#venting-paul" and the #tough-topics channel (where conversations on politics, current events, and other heavy content goes) was renamed to #tough-paul.

## Paul Supremacy

At the highest count, 55 members were using "paul" in their usernames, and 2 members were using the nickname "Luap." This naturally caused great confusion as to was speaking, as everyone appeared to be Paul.

Paul Shapera himself showed up to join in the chaos and blend in with the multiple pauls. At a glance he was indistinguishable from the other pauls, but some users were able to identify him by his unique "Lounge Lizard Piano Wizard" role. PixelWayve later removed this role from him and started assigning it to other members. At one point, 15 members simultaneously held the "Lounge Lizard Piano Wizard" role.

To disguise himself further, Paul changed his username several times, copying the names of X\_Blade\_Mage, Cy, and Binxy. Those who had written discord notes on Paul's account were able to track him.

Paul also released a short video on Instagram of himself repeatedly singing his name.

At the end of the day, the word "paul" had been said 1,435 times on the server. This single day had a higher paul count than the entire previous month, as the word "paul" had been said 908 times in March 2021.

## Color Swap Roles

In order to perform the nickname color swap, new roles were created. A "PURPLE" role was assigned to everyone on the server, making all members the light purple color usually held by moderators. An "XTREME PURPLE" role was assigned to the Official New Albion Cast and Crew, making them the dark purple color usually held by admins.

   Individual roles with unique colors and names were created for the staff members and staff candidates:

* PixelWayve - *"The Innocent One"* (Deep Magenta)
* Zacotive - *"Otter"* (Blue)
* Brasstail - *"Grapefruit"* (Maroon)
* Kirby - *"Paul's Alt Account"* (Yellow)
* Soule - *"The Paul Whisperer"* (Green)
* Space\_Eurydice - *"slandered Han by saying edgar is better >:("* (Orange)
* Nax - *"bunny twink"* (Red)
* Gabriella - *"Disability Queen"* (Teal)
* Dester - *"Confused by youth slang"* (Brown)
* Pumpkin - *"Always the Bad Guy"* (Tan)
* Red - *"The Simp"* (Light Red)
* Katelyn ~ Caravan Enthusiast - *"Caravan kinnie"* (Cyan)
* Theo - *"Always talking about Lee"* (Light Green)
* Lilimira - *"The nerd who got the HHH cover reference*" (Turquoise)
* X\_Blade\_Mage - *"Monster addict"* (Periwinkle)