#..this is my area....#

August 14, 2009 9:52 AM

Your World of Text is an infinite grid of text editable by any visitor. The changes made by other people appear on your screen as they happen. Everyone starts in the same place, but you can scroll through the world using your mouse.

Put any letters at the end of the URL to go to a new world. For example, http://yourworldoftext.com/mefi. They all start off blank. If you use something hard to guess, no one will be able to visit your world unless you tell them about it. (About)

posted by grobstein (85 comments total)

metafilter: full of awesome jews.
posted by lyam at 9:59 AM on August 14 [2 favorites has favorites]

This says a lot about the internet, and is pretty awesome.
posted by rageagainsttherobots at 10:01 AM on August 14

oh, and if you're looking for some blank space, you can drag it a bit
posted by philip-random at 10:02 AM on August 14

or delete everything...
posted by lyam at 10:04 AM on August 14

it's like being in a room full of fourteen year olds all shouting each other down to make a point.
posted by philip-random at 10:06 AM on August 14 [1 favorite has favorites]

Someone suggested http://yourworldoftext.com/askmefi
posted by grobstein at 10:06 AM on August 14

Paint me wierdly engrossed.
posted by Rumpled at 10:06 AM on August 14

it's like one giant bathroom wall
posted by doobiedoo at 10:07 AM on August 14

I could get completely lost there
posted by yiftach at 10:07 AM on August 14

This might just take up the entirety of my morning.
posted by zer0render at 10:07 AM on August 14

This is fricking awesome.
posted by Hypocrite_Lecteur at 10:09 AM on August 14

I love it!
posted by juliplease at 10:18 AM on August 14

That was fascinating. I spent about five minutes "defending" a bit of spamminess:

+----------------+
!MAKE IT LONGER  !
!BUY ACAI BERRIES!
!CHEAP VIAGRA NOW!
+----------------+

Because you know, every medium gets overwhelmed by spam pretty fast. It was kinda fun; someone was editing along making jokes by changing one character edits ("CHEAP VIAGRA SOW"). I liked how anonymous and random it was.
posted by Nelson at 10:19 AM on August 14

Poopaya?


(I love this.)
posted by functionequalsform at 10:21 AM on August 14

This is amazing.
posted by DWRoelands at 10:21 AM on August 14

It's like Twitter hooked up with /b/ in a gas station bathroom.
posted by reductiondesign at 10:22 AM on August 14 [6 favorites has favorites]

I started a game of nethack but I got attacked by a demogorgon...
posted by Zaximus at 10:23 AM on August 14 [4 favorites has favorites]

There's a human powered game of Conway's Game of Life going on in askmefi
posted by Space Coyote at 10:24 AM on August 14 [1 favorite has favorites]

Holy crap this is really fun. And I don't understand why. As someone wrote, it does need more colors :)
posted by Salvor Hardin at 10:24 AM on August 14

I wonder how long the rocket will stay put.
posted by zer0render at 10:25 AM on August 14

Zaximus: sorry, that was me.
posted by idiopath at 10:26 AM on August 14

Lot of n-bombs being dropped in there.
posted by peeedro at 10:31 AM on August 14

Metafilter: (phallocentric militarism?)
posted by joe lisboa at 10:34 AM on August 14

Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
posted by generichuman at 10:35 AM on August 14

Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Take it to the Faulkner thread, buddy.
posted by joe lisboa at 10:36 AM on August 14 [4 favorites has favorites]

...already replete with 4chan memes. Are we surprised?
posted by Schlimmbesserung at 10:38 AM on August 14

Or the Macbeth thread.
posted by juliplease at 10:38 AM on August 14

Or the Macbeth thread.

Well, yeah, if you want to be all literal about it.
posted by joe lisboa at 10:40 AM on August 14

Am I doing it wrong? Here's a screenshot of what I see.
posted by MrMoonPie at 10:41 AM on August 14

I guess it is easier than re-enrolling in Jr. High in order to interact with idiots....
posted by HuronBob at 10:41 AM on August 14

This is why we can't have nice publicly accessible non-moderated openly modifiable things on the Internet.
posted by burnmp3s at 10:43 AM on August 14 [3 favorites has favorites]

Hi. Would whoever is constantly editing all my contributions on the Mefi world please stop it?! If you have some kind of problem with me, just send me a MeMail, okay? The last thing we need lately is another MeTa call out, but this is just rude.
posted by barrett caulk at 10:45 AM on August 14

And Godwin's law proved yet one more time.
The main page is now filled with "HITLER" and "HI HITLER".

Sigh.
posted by Lucubrator at 10:48 AM on August 14

Lot of n-bombs being dropped in there.

There and everywhere else trolls can post without consequences. I tend to think it isn't racism, just that trolls use it since one of the few words left that can still get a strong reaction from people. Plus it's short and easy to type.
posted by anti social order at 10:51 AM on August 14

Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Take it to the Faulkner thread, buddy.

Or the Macbeth thread.

Or the "life" thread.
posted by grobstein at 10:53 AM on August 14

It works for me a zillion times better using Chrome.
posted by peeedro at 10:55 AM on August 14

yeah--little snippets like "why do jews have such big noses" and "kkk vs. kfc" are probably just all over the place there because they're so easy to type, too.

i went into this thinking "what a cool idea," but then quickly left feeling disappointed that i'd run smack dab into yet another example of how human beings are probably better at ruining good ideas before they ever even get off the ground than they are at anything else.
posted by saulgoodman at 10:58 AM on August 14 [3 favorites has favorites]

I'm not sure an open, unmoderated forum on the internet could be considered a "good idea"
posted by HuronBob at 11:02 AM on August 14 [1 favorite has favorites]

I'm not sure an open, unmoderated forum on the internet could be considered a "good idea"

(well, it might be if people didn't suck so much.)
posted by saulgoodman at 11:05 AM on August 14 [1 favorite has favorites]

I wonder if this site is

a) going to summon Nyarlathotep

or

b) an indication that he is already here, alive and well on the internet.
posted by PontifexPrimus at 11:07 AM on August 14

Zalgo is powerless there.
posted by brenton at 11:14 AM on August 14

Finally, multiplayer Notepad!
posted by Mwongozi at 11:14 AM on August 14 [16 favorites has favorites]

i went into this thinking "what a cool idea," but then quickly left feeling disappointed that i'd run smack dab into yet another example of how human beings are probably better at ruining good ideas before they ever even get off the ground than they are at anything else

That's the same way I felt about BPT, but eventually they got the moderation working a little better. The same interface for this would work better if there were more moderation controls, like being able to make it invite-only or having some system to ban people and revert their changes, but I think the free-for-all aspect is part of the point of this.
posted by burnmp3s at 11:17 AM on August 14

Needs a "zoom out" feature.
posted by Orange Pamplemousse at 11:18 AM on August 14 [1 favorite has favorites]

Another entry in the 'it's sorta like' list: It's sorta like someone dropped the #mefi IRC channel bucket. Instead of pouring out in a metered stream the insanity is just exploded everywhere, coating the Intertubes with a sticky, vile film.
posted by carsonb at 11:20 AM on August 14

This is what the Metaverse would be like if you mixed snow crash with meth.
posted by Space Coyote at 11:32 AM on August 14

Heh. I'm proud to say I started the rocket :)

First it was a rocket for all of MeFi

Then someone changed it to USA

which morphed into USSR

which changed to GIRLS

Girls like rockets too.
posted by Salvor Hardin at 11:40 AM on August 14 [3 favorites has favorites]

I don't know what you are all talking about. I just collaborated on a novel with several other yourworldoftext users, and it's going to press shortly.

(It consists entirely of the word "penis," but hey, published is published.)
posted by brain_drain at 11:41 AM on August 14

Nobody's mentioned Borges' Library of Babel?
posted by Mapes at 11:49 AM on August 14

Nobody's mentioned Borges' Library of Babel?

The universe (which others call the World of Text) is composed of an indefinite and perhaps infinite number of hexagonal penises, with vast air shafts between, surrounded by very low penises. From any of the penises one can see, interminably, the upper and lower penises.
posted by otolith at 12:04 PM on August 14 [3 favorites has favorites]

i don't get it. when i go to any of the links, it just say "funde" repeatedly across the screen. and if try to scroll, there's some vertical gray bars and then some boxes made of thin red lines.
posted by sio42 at 12:07 PM on August 14

i wish some you people would think outside of the box instead of constantly rebuilding the box.
posted by the aloha at 12:10 PM on August 14

some *of* you people.
posted by the aloha at 12:12 PM on August 14

MrMoonPie -- I had different but equally sucky results in IE8...Google Chrome seems to work much better.
posted by aydeejones at 12:19 PM on August 14

I love the epic box battle that has been going on for about three hours now. Sometimes it gets erased completely but it always comes back, and pro/anti box slogans are starting to emerge.
posted by brenton at 12:27 PM on August 14

I look upon it with disgust because it feels like I'm sliding through the varicose veins of the net; this is the final destination of the uncontainable backflow, the vile and completely anonymous pool of filth and decay, growing, unrestrained, tainted and viciously vile. But I always find that I can never leave without cleaning up, righting wrongs, or adding little secrets of my own.

I'm also tempted to paste the entirety of House of Leaves on a page.
posted by Cat Pie Hurts at 12:28 PM on August 14

Metafilter: some *of* you people
posted by phrenq at 12:34 PM on August 14

I contributed the tasty bacon items on the checklist. My hidden narcissism revealed!
posted by lyam at 12:42 PM on August 14

I can no longer guard the sacred space from the all caps porn attacks. *sigh*
posted by podwarrior at 12:50 PM on August 14

Someone had a field day typing BERNARD.

The beautiful thing is that by the time you read this it might ALREADY BE GONE!
posted by Askiba at 12:51 PM on August 14 [1 favorite has favorites]

I love that it supports old school ASCII codes like the black 'n white smiley faces (ALT+1, ALT+2 on the numeric keypad)...oh and unicode too, of course.

I want to see some drop-shadowed 8-bit ASCII boxes, none of this plus sign hyphen pipe nonsense.
posted by aydeejones at 12:55 PM on August 14

Also: trying to make any kind of text art in the main world is an endeavor. It's as if Picasso had to fight off drunks and the clinically insane while he painted.
posted by Askiba at 1:02 PM on August 14

Wow, like, metababy man. I mean, like metababy. WHere I just clicked "random" and got a quote from ZachsMind.
posted by dhartung at 1:03 PM on August 14

God, an awesome concept in theory, but sitting there and watching what was actually being typed was like living inside a youtube comment.
posted by Dormant Gorilla at 1:04 PM on August 14 [2 favorites has favorites]

Wow - try a few random pages - it's surprisingly easy to find ones that have been written in.
posted by Salvor Hardin at 1:10 PM on August 14

I find that that it gets nicer the further you get from the center.
posted by Mister Cheese at 1:16 PM on August 14

This is exactly what I think the internet is when I try to visualize it.
posted by The Whelk at 1:18 PM on August 14

Reminds me of Letters
posted by Zangal at 3:32 PM on August 14

I'm trying to do a bit of virtual geocaching on the mefi text world.
posted by Anything at 3:49 PM on August 14

I predict this site will accomplish in seven days what too kuro5hin.org seven years.
posted by localroger at 5:39 PM on August 14 [1 favorite has favorites]

What did kuro5hin.org accomplish in seven years?
posted by grobstein at 5:51 PM on August 14

The page for Reddit is surprisingly orderly. I mean, they have an entire isometric city just off to the upper-left.
posted by Rhaomi at 6:51 PM on August 14

Well, set fire to a house. Good times.
posted by TwelveTwo at 8:48 PM on August 14

http://www.yourworldoftext.com/nethack
posted by xorry at 9:23 PM on August 14

TwelveTwo: "Well, set fire to a house. Good times."

BASTARD, that house has been in the family for 0.0034% of a generation.
At least you signed my Guest Book though, no one else did.

I rebuilt it with a dog.
posted by vapidave at 1:50 AM on August 15

grobstein, they proved that the mob won't sort it all out without moderation from above.
posted by localroger at 7:49 AM on August 15

http://www.yourworldoftext.com/mefi
if we were all in a bathroom stall with sharpies together, that's what i imagine it'd look like.
posted by fuzzypantalones at 8:37 AM on August 15

And exactly as sanitary.
posted by idiopath at 9:33 AM on August 15

the fnords keep appearing and disappearing
posted by philip-random at 10:55 AM on August 15

What's with all the Spanish?
posted by ageispolis at 4:14 PM on August 15

It's amazing what has changed and what has stayed the same in the past day.

I typed in the lion yesterday to the right of the starting point. I'm glad it's still a hit.
posted by peeedro at 11:10 PM on August 15

This is so fantastic I don't even know what to do with myself anymore.
posted by lhude sing cuccu at 12:49 AM on August 16

I put apples on the tree.
posted by lhude sing cuccu at 12:54 AM on August 16

no one's planted anything in my field of love and flowers :(
posted by rubah at 9:08 AM on August 16

It 's like a bathroom stall wall on acid.
posted by vipassana at 7:21 PM on August 16