LosingCTRL

This archive has been compiled over a number of years, documenting a person, and their creation, that was the catalyst of a number of my long-term friendships, my desire to get into web design and digital archiving, and trying to take a reflective look on what art, exposure, ridicule, and self-imposed isolation did to what would be called a nearly-forgotten ‘lolcow.’ I hope that this can serve as a place for all of these things to sit that isn’t my hard drive or my head.

Over the course of 2008, Nate, the author of LosingCTRL, uploaded a regularly-updating gaming webcomic and was a frequent ‘contributor’ to a number of related forums. His behavior, opinions, and art, became the focus of a number of threads where he frequented. That’s where I, and a number of other people, ‘found out’ about him. Over the course of that year, starting in late February and early March, an organic group of harassers and faux-admirers, (including myself,) began to form — prodding him along and watching him, and his comic, devolve into a solipsistic, isolated work of politically-related nonsense.

Over that course of time, I saved the vast majority of his webcomics, a good number of his forum posts, photos, artwork, and files he had uploaded, information about his life that he had revealed, and ultimately, a timeline of what he had created.

It’s been a good number of years since I was involved in the community that dissipated pretty much as soon as Nate stopped posting at the end of the year, and even if it was a blip in terms of my online experience, it was a very, very formative one. I’ve grown past a lot of what I used to think were a lot of fair arguments about why we were harassing this guy (although it is, and was, objectively funny,) and with a lot of that having dissolved — I’m now left here with the archive of a person, and a period of time, that has kinda slipped from memory.

Below every comic upload, I’ll write out some context, along with screenshots and files when available. I hope they’re helpful to understand what was going on ‘behind the scenes,’ so to speak.

Today, I hope that this archive will serve the dual purpose of preserving my own memories, and illustrating the descent of a person whose creation was far overshadowed by its creator. It’s an exercise in figuring out how art can suck super hard — and how remembering it often does for a reason.