footnote (#376)

Signed-off-by: Christine Dodrill <me@christine.website>

blog/epilogue-2021-05-26.markdown

@@ -2,8 +2,8 @@
 title: Epilogue
 date: 2021-05-26
 tags:
- - freenode
  - irc
+series: freenode
 ---
 
 # Epilogue

blog/final-chapter-2021-05-20.markdown

@@ -2,8 +2,8 @@
 title: Final Chapter
 date: 2021-05-20
 tags:
- - freenode
  - irc
+series: freenode
 ---
 
 # Final Chapter

blog/footnote-2021-06-15.markdown

@@ -0,0 +1,144 @@
+---
+title: Footnote
+date: 2021-06-15
+tags:
+ - irc
+series: freenode
+---
+
+# Footnote
+
+- [Final Chapter](/blog/final-chapter-2021-05-20)
+- [Epilogue](/blog/epilogue-2021-05-26)
+
+---
+
+Before the darkness was the darkness, the darkness was a child. This child found
+themselves lost and without purpose. Life was scary. Things were changing
+constantly, and they found themselves at a loss. One day they were walking about
+the etherial network and stumbled across a meeting house.
+
+The child looked inside and was confused. There were hundereds of rooms with
+even more people inside. There were rooms on every topic. There was a shower of
+culture and an outpouring of knowledge. Hanging out here would permanently
+change the course of the child's life.
+
+---
+
+Horrified by the room takeover golem, the remaining regulars had fled their
+former homes. This was not a home for legal reasons, but it was their social
+home on the etherial network. Sadness had turned to rage had turned to
+depression had turned to laughter. One of the former regulars was a apprentice
+scryer, so as a lark they decided to set up some meeting rooms to scry their way
+into rooms in the old meeting house. It was a one-way scry and all they could do
+was watch.
+
+---
+
+Historically, IRC spam has been a unique form of art. Yes, I'm serious. There
+have been legitimate works of art created in the desire to disrupt conversations
+on IRC. It sounds absurd, but it's true. One unique quality of these artworks is
+that in order to see them, they must be shared with others. At some level you
+can't view this art alone, and that makes it beautiful.
+
+Fighting IRC spam has turned into a full time job. There are hundreds of
+different bot kinds and so many different ways to spam that fighting it is
+difficult due to the server software being very simple. Historically IRC
+developers have not wanted to add hooks so that people could run a bit of code
+on each message as it was being processed. There were legitimate fears that
+doing this would allow a malicious server admin to log every channel, not just
+the ones they have joined. IRC was created at a time where all of the admins
+knew eachother; but they were part of different organizations, each with their
+own rules and subtly different codes of conduct.
+
+One of the best ways to fight IRC spam has been to wait until the spammer gets
+bored and goes off to do something else. Users are not as understanding to this
+method.
+
+---
+
+Someone had set up a golem-creating golem and aimed it at the meta-discussion
+room of the former meeting house. It did its job dutifully and continued
+marching on:
+
+> (pissnet) come to pissnet for cold wet chats!
+
+The people watching the scry had never seen this brand of disruption before. By
+now the people watching had amassed to over a hundred and they were all bored
+and eager for something new. Something new was here!
+
+> (pissnet) come to pissnet for cold hard piss!
+
+Over time, the shadowy group behind these golems became known as the urinators.
+These urinators became a bit of a hero to the people who watched in horror as
+the situation developed. The golems got discovered and ejected, and even earned
+the ire of the anti-golem golem. The disguise was clever, the ejections where
+swift, but the watchers laughed as the golems kept getting more and more
+creative.
+
+---
+
+The darkness was dismayed. Everything was falling apart around them. The
+maintainers of the maintenance golems had fled. The spellcrafters that empowered
+them [had sworn to give no more
+assistance](https://atheme.github.io/atheme-open-letter/). The halls themselves
+were starting to show the rot that had built up over the last 20 years of them
+existing.
+
+The darkness pondered amongst themselves until they pulled back a memory from
+the past. A memory from the child. The halls themselves had to be replaced!
+
+---
+
+The watchers looked on in horror. The scryer had given up hope and decided to
+move on with their life. The urinators had suceeded in shutting down the things
+that were fun to the watchers. The urinators won.
+
+Some urinators created their own halls. It was an experiment in anarchy for
+running these types of halls. It is astounding that it managed to stay as stable
+as it did.
+
+---
+
+I have been completely unsure how I should broach the topic of pissnet in these
+articles. For people unfamiliar with IRC culture, you must think I'm making shit
+up or something. It is _so_ out there that it's almost like an abstact art
+gallery or something. But no, pissnet happened. It started as IRC spam and then
+turned into this: [letspiss.net](http://letspiss.net/). I don't really think I
+can suggest readers of this blog go there. It is some kind of weird anarchist
+IRC hackerspace, but most of the users are ircops and can see your IP address.
+
+Like, for people that are really deep into IRC culture, the whole pissnet
+shitshow was so out there that they thought the people that were telling them
+about that were making that shit up.
+
+But it's real.
+
+---
+
+> We are moving past legacy freenode to a new fork. The new freenode is
+> launched. You will slowly be disconnected and when you reconnect, you will be
+> on the new freenode. We patiently await to welcome you in freedom's holdout -
+> the freenode. If you're looking to connect now, you can already /server
+> chat.freenode.net 6697 (ssl) or 6667 (plaintext). It's a new genesis for a new
+> era. Thank you for using freenode, and Hello World, from the future. freenode
+> is IRC. freenode is FOSS. When you connect, register your nickname and your
+> channel and get started. It's a new world. We're so happy to welcome you and
+> the millions of others.
+
+The darkness smiled and replaced the halls where they were. The darkness hoped
+that millions would follow.
+
+They didn't come.
+
+---
+
+- [Freenode commits suicide, is no longer a serious IRC
+  network](https://www.devever.net/~hl/freenode_suicide)
+- [the end of freenode](https://ariadne.space/2021/06/14/the-end-of-freenode/)
+- [All Freenode Channels and Users
+  Gone](https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/o0263h/all_freenode_channels_and_users_gone/)
+- [Last remaining >1000 user community channel seized by freenode
+  staff](https://linux.chat/linux-on-freenode/)
+
+Freenode is dead. The spirit lives on in [Libera.chat](https://libera.chat/).