The SCP Foundation and Me: A Case Study in Obsession

When it comes to well done and groundbreaking entertainment in new media, you won't find a better example than The SCP Foundation. The site is presented as the archives of an organization devoted to finding, containing, researching -and if necessary, destroying- anything deemed abnormally dangerous or harmful to humanity's perception of reality. This can range from a homicidal lizard that will never ever ever ever (ever) stay dead to a previously unknown integer that causes math to stop working to a green goo that mostly just smells minty but if it ever comes in contact with dead bodies something so terrible happens that most people aren't allowed to even know about it.

Most of the website is devoted to entries cataloguing these anomalous objects, although there are also a fair amount of stories dealing with the Foundation, the items it contains, and various other Groups of Interest that operate just outside of everyday life. The fact that the site is a wiki means that just about anyone can submit a piece, and there is a very active community involved in editing the site and reviewing new content. And I am super obsessed with a huge fan of the whole thing.

I started reading the site last year, but I didn't start binge reading until last summer, and since then I've eased into the habit of going to the site and just tabbing through the "random page" option whenever I'm procrastinating or just bored. So by now I'm intimately familiar with the site, but it's taken me that long to get there because this thing is huge. You could just chalk up my love for the Foundation to the fact that I'm a weird dude, but as I read more and more of the stuff on there I realized that my fondness for the site goes beyond mere entertainment value. There are three big themes that keep coming up throughout the site that I find rather compelling.

The Three Try to Steal All the Money, Ch. 3 Part 2

The next few months saw Jastio participating in most of the pivotal battles that drove the Insurrection of the Outer Territories to its conclusion.  After Crown’s Reach the Citizen’s Militia pushed through Pennsmouth and then Kathryn’s Bend. He saw action in both these places, ranging from street to street fighting to house clearing to protracted sniper engagements. Jastio fired his gun in every instance, and many times killed someone too. More than once he was one of only two to survive a battle. He received numerous commendations and received a pair of medals he almost never wore. At war’s end his unit was positioned behind the regular army to support their push against the final rebel stronghold in Crying Bluffs. He was far from the battlefield when the surrender was made and the brutal civil war ended. When the governor’s announcement of peace came over the radio his squad cheered. Jastio might have joined in, he might not. He didn’t really remember anymore.

The days after the war all ran together. There was brief participation in military rule of the outlying provinces before regular police forces could be re-established, and not long after returning to the city he was honorably discharged. At the end of his service, all he had to show for it was his rifle, his uniform, a pair of medals, and the inability to get a decent night’s sleep. He didn’t even have his own apartment, instead returning to live with his father just like before his conscription. His life briefly seemed as though it was geared to return to normal, the way it was before.

The Three Try to Steal All the Money, Ch. 3 Part 1

3: The Best Gunfighter in the World

On his fifty-sixth day of service in the Kingsholm Citizen’s Militia, Jastio Finnegan killed his first opponent. The suburb of Crown’s Reach had fallen to the rebels and his unit had been tasked with uprooting them as the regular forces dealt with the rebel’s main force to the east of the city. Twelve hours after occupying Finn Square a sniper’s bullet pierced the helmet of the corporal, and the rest of the squad found themselves crouching behind sandbags, statues, and signs for an interminably long amount of time as another squad tried to pinpoint the rifleman’s position. The only noise that pierced the tedium were distant bird-calls, the muted thunder of far off artillery strikes, and a periodic reverberating crack that signaled another potshot from the sniper.

After a small eternity the radio-man’s device crackled to life from his back, and the voice on the other end told them where to look for their opponent. Pfc. McCluskey took up position with his rifle as Jastio placed his helmet on a stick and moved it just above the stonework of the fountain they were using as cover. There was another crack, followed by a loud ping as the bullet ricocheted off the helmet and directly into McCluskey’s chest. Jastio scrambled and moved to put pressure on the wound, but McCluskey wasted no breath.

The Three Try to Steal All the Money, Ch. 2

2: The Man with Too Many Names

            As the airship pushed off from Jiu Cliff, he checked his pocket watch, which beeped 14:56 back at him. More than half an hour behind schedule, and if the retrofitted propellers and giant seams in the fabric of the main balloon were any indication the damned thing wouldn’t exactly be making good time. A liberal estimate would place their time over Kao Tze at just before 16:00. That would give Wei at least a full hour to wait around with no sign of the airship in the sky. 60 minutes to realize that he probably had better things to do than wait around with a land vehicle in the hopes of collecting a paltry sum that was easily less than five percent of the score’s actual value. All he could do was hope that he’d picked a driver with the right blend of enthusiastic and stupid to let him pull this off.

            As the man reclined in his seat he made a show of reading his periodical while going over the details one more time. His name today was Nigel Ingstrom III, scion of a fuel magnate and his air-headed wife who was looking to find a place for himself in the family business. This airship ride represented the culmination of a grand tour of the Eastern Lands, scouting out prospects for fuel sales in the region. His last stop had been the mining city of Bei Lan, and while he could have hopped a train on the Central Line from there back home to Kingsholm, even first class accommodations would pale in comparison to the luxury afforded by an airship. And why would a man of such alleged stature as Mr. Ingstrom ever settle for less?

The Desert of Feedback

Whenever I talk with my friends in the working world one thing keeps coming up again and again. They're all like me, fresh out of college and new to the professional world, and they're all experiencing culture shock in the same way. It's not going from a couple of hours of classes a day to an eight-hour daily schedule and it isn't the different nature of the work they're doing. Psychologically we've all long since acknowledged that these will be major differences we're just going to have to get used to after making the transition out of school. The big sticking point, the one area where they haven't been as able to easily adjust, is the lack of feedback.

This is something I'd realized a while ago but it was only yesterday that I burned through Daniel Pink's Flip, which so succinctly and accurately addresses the issue and gave me the title for this post. Section 12 is entirely about the idea that our generation is being asked to make a stark transition from a world of instantaneous feedback to one where performance reviews are something that traditionally happen just once every year. As Pink points out, our generation is one where we've grown up with video games that instantly give you a score to judge your performance, where sending a text is met with a prompt acknowledgement that the message was delivered and then read. Even in school grades are constantly meted out, offering a tangible metric of ability.

About a month ago I picked up Splinter Cell: Blacklist, and since then I've sunk more hours into it than I thought I would. It's a fun game to be sure, but beyond the interesting asymmetrical multiplayer and the satisfying nature of its stealth it offers something else that triggers the endorphins in my brain like you wouldn't believe. Every takedown, every objective completed, every secret path found, is met with a message at the bottom of the screen acknowledging your action and awarding you points towards one of three styles of play. On average you'll get probably ten to twenty of these messages a minute.

This feedback not only isn't present in the working world, it isn't present in most aspects of life. Learning about the electoral college is one of the best ways to become disenfranchised with the current system of selecting presidents. A lot of the dissatisfaction with Congress stems from the feeling that the concerns of regular citizens aren't being heard over the din of money being thrown around by huge lobbying firms and corporations. Senators and representatives are perceived as being disconnected from the rest of the country, and this lack of feedback has led to staggeringly low approval ratings, if not outright disenfranchisement with the whole endeavor.

People want to feel like they're having an impact. It doesn't necessarily have to feel like a positive one, so long as it feels like our actions have contributed something. All I'm doing when I get an achievement in a video game is affect a number, a gamerscore that no one but me cares about, and yet this is one of the most popular features of the last generation and it prompts me to play in ways I might not have otherwise considered. It's a way to look at all the games you've played at a glance and the things you've done in them, a more tangible sense of accomplishment.

As I see it, addressing this lack of feedback is one of the biggest challenges faced by my generation as it enters the "real world". It helps explain why gamification has found such widespread application and acceptance, since it seeks to rectify precisely this problem in areas as disparate as purchasing decisions and personal fitness. Doing so will accomplish more than offering a sense of constant and contrived satisfaction. Effective feedback can foster motivation for those doing well, and can offer insight into how those who are struggling can improve.

The Three Try to Steal All the Money, Chapter 1

1: The Girl Who Couldn’t Sleep

When Renee Altka turned five years old, she was no longer able to sleep.

            It didn’t occur exactly on her fifth birthday but rather sometime shortly afterwards. The exact date was lost because at first she and her family regarded it as little more than the insomnia brought on by hyperactivity that afflicts every small child. When a week passed without Renee sleeping a wink her parents took her to a doctor, and as far as he could tell she was just suffering from regular old insomnia. He gave her family a mild sedative to help her re-adjust to a regular sleep schedule and that seemed to work for everyone except Renee.

            Truth be told, all the drugs did for Renee was make her loopier than usual. She would swallow one of the little blue pills then lie in bed and stare at the ceiling for the entire night, a routine that continued well after she ran out of pills. Each morning she would watch the sunrise and at breakfast before school her parents would ask her how she’d slept. She always told them she’d slept fine - out as soon as her head hit the pillow – because it was far easier than telling them the whole truth. Then her parents would ask Renee about her dreams, which were always so vivid and colorful, and when Renee answered this question she didn’t have to lie, at least not totally. Her dreams were always recounted with exquisite detail because she still had those, and they were far livelier than any of the dreams she’d had in the first five years of her life.

             Rather than inhabiting the odd and varied landscapes of her mind, the creatures and objects that Renee dreamed of would occupy the space around her. A cat with three tails and the ability to speak the language of the Easterners would curl up at the foot of her bed. A woman with a fox for a head wearing an intricately decorated shawl would sing an ethereal melody, accompanying herself for the harmonies. There would be a man dressed in the same top hat and suit worn by the carnival barker at the town refinery’s fair every year, but instead of encouraging people to pitch in for the raffle he would simply laugh to himself while detaching and reattaching his right arm. At first Renee was worried all these apparitions would wake up her mother and father, but no matter how loud they were her parents never betrayed any suspicion that they’d heard weird noises coming from her room.  Every night a cavalcade of images and creatures would parade through Renee’s room as she lay on the bed and watched them go, occasionally throwing a pillow at them and watching as it sailed through their incorporeal forms.

            Aside from the nights Renee’s life was otherwise perfectly normal. She went to school, made friends, tried to talk to boys, and liked to read despite her town being small enough and distant enough from the Central Line that books were hard to come by. Rather than severely impairing her, her sleeplessness merely imbued her with a slightly loopy air. Sometimes she’d be asked what time it was and reply that her begonias were fine, thank you very much, before snapping back to reality and checking a clock. Occasionally she’d get into the habit of simply stopping in the middle of the street and staring off into space, but this rarely lasted more than half a minute. As far as Renee was concerned, being regarded as slightly weird was a small price to pay for being able to function on no sleep at all.

            One day when she was sixteen, one of her classmates kissed her. Tommy wasn’t the cutest kid in her year, but he wasn’t half-bad looking, and he seemed nice enough to boot. This all would have been fine if the kiss hadn’t happened immediately after lunch with about half the school watching, and even that would have been bearable if Tommy hadn’t followed the kiss by wheeling around and yelling, “Dave, you owe me two coins! I kissed the crazy girl! Pay up!”

            After suffering through the rest of school, Renee didn’t go with her friends to The Fountain for sweet drinks like they usually did. She also didn’t run home to bawl her eyes out into her pillow. For reasons she couldn’t entirely explain, Renee somehow found herself on Sentinel Hill overlooking the town. She took shelter beneath the solitary tree that was the hill’s namesake, planted after the guard tower that used to reside there was torn down some hundred years ago. While the willow shaded her from the afternoon sun Renee reflected on the town below. The tiny town, home to around five hundred people living in the shadow of the Carlson Slime Refinery where her father and half the other fathers in town worked, and whose newer generations would forever regard her as the crazy one. No matter what work she took on or what passions she pursued, her unique condition ensured that her title among the denizens of Carlson’s Landing would be Renee the Crazy Girl who just wasn’t right in the head.

            When Renee did allow herself to cry, she felt something brushing up against her cheek to wipe away the tears. The three-tailed cat purred and whispered something to her she didn’t understand. She blinked, rubbed her eyes, and saw the cat was still there, joined now by a baby-sized man in green pajamas squatting in the grass nearby and producing cans of beans from his pockets. Renee considered this for a moment as she scratched the cat behind its ears, then stopped and realized what she was doing. The cat looked up at her, its eyes almost as wide as hers, and meowed, “Jiaozi?”

            Renee dropped the cat and scrambled over to pick up one of the tiny cans of beans and found that it rested comfortably in the palm of her hand. She threw it at the tree and examined the chip of bark it knocked off the trunk. Renee smiled.

            At first she didn’t steal anything major. A cake or two from the bakery. Some extra fried potatoes from another customer at The Fountain. Food was easiest both because it was small enough and because the cat was her most willing accomplice in this regard, at least once the language barrier was overcome and she could assure him that he’d receive a portion of the profits. After a few months Renee could even control which dreams manifested. Her friends grew more distant as she spent less and less time with them, preferring to head from school straight to Sentinel Hill. The stares and whispers she received in the halls and streets didn’t matter as much to her anymore thanks to all the new and interesting friends she could spring forth from her head.

            A couple years later when Tommy asked her to the final school dance it was something of a surprise, and the giddiness it engendered was enough to keep her aloft for the rest of the week. The joy and shock settled down the night of the dance as the hours dragged on and Renee found herself sitting at her kitchen table, waiting for a knock on the door and passing the time by playing cards against the fox-headed woman. Rather than endure her parents returning to find her sitting alone at home she stormed to the school and burst into the gymnasium to find the dance in full swing.

            She brushed past her friends as they tried to speak to her and stormed over to where Tommy was holding another girl in his arms right in front of the band. At first he regarded her quizzically, but as memory kicked in a smile spread across his face. At last he couldn’t help himself and burst out into laughter, clearly amused by the idea that anyone would ever want to ask her to the dance. He found himself joined by the chuckles and jeers of his friends nearby. Renee couldn’t contain herself, but just as she was about to cry her head split open. It was different from the dull aching pains which she’d grown well accustomed to over the years. The sharp pain reverberated through her skull and as she clutched her temples a tall man with no face and clad in a dark suit strode out from the crowd and walked slowly but purposefully towards Tommy. The band stopped playing and the entire crowd turned to see this man approach a now pale Tommy and place a hand on his trembling shoulder.

            Renee redoubled her efforts and as she focused through the migraine the man in the suit disappeared. The gym was silent as Renee collected herself, started to say something, then thought better of it and made for the door. She took no chances that night. Before her parents or anyone else could hear of what happened she packed her things, grabbed what little money she’d saved in her sock drawer, and ran off down the street. When she reached the top of Sentinel Hill she stopped and regarded the small lights of Carlson’s Landing, hazy through the smoke that rose from the slime fields. A bird with rainbow plumage flapped down to perch on the tree branch above her and regarded her with its opal eye. When it took flight again along the course of the Kraslow River, she followed it for years.