LosingCTRL

For the record – I am not a professional writer, historian, or, (in spite of my moniker,) an archivist. I simply happened to be a member of an online harassment community who kept good track of my files.

I would give some extended backstory of the particulars: why I decided to begin this project after nearly 16 years, my methods of content allocation, what have you; However, it would dilute the goal of this project: to preserve and display, for at least as long as possible, the story of Nate.

Nate uploaded from January 1st, 2008, throughout the entirety of the next year, starting with a new year’s resolution that this year, he would create and maintain a dream of his: a successful webcomic about his favorite topic, gaming. He fulfilled his resolution, for better and for worse.

I have collected through a number of means, primarily for my own interest at the time, retroactive searching (although this has turned up little,) and documentation by an informal group called ‘GnatWatch’ which maintained a number of images and information about their target of harassment. From this, I have compiled over the course of the past year or so a working ‘archive’ that will hopefully illuminate the narrative told through Nat’s comics and posts, along with posts and images from chats and forums that he frequented, or where he was heavily discussed. These will be incomplete. The nature of the internet’s gradual decay has taken this away. It’ll happen to this website too, eventually.

The dates will not be … perfect. He began to upload these 16 years ago today – and uploaded on Mondays and Wednesdays. I will be posting on the corresponding days and holidays, but not specific dates, unless otherwise stated. I am unsure how I will go about this once we get into holidays that are earlier or later in ‘24 than in ‘08, but we will cross that bridge when we get to it. Nate posted with relative consistency every Monday and Wednesday, therefore I will be posting each Monday and Wednesday at 12pm. Nate would post from any time between 00:01 to 23:59, really whenever he finished drawing his comic of the day, but I quite frankly do not have the time nor interest to keep the same sporadic schedule that he did.

This won’t be a useful archive to anyone who didn’t already have a vested interest in what would be called a ‘lolcow’ or a ‘niche internet microceleb,’ but instead can serve as a little narrative slice of something that was a part of my life, that was a part of Nate’s life, and a part of some collective history out there. Something that I’d like to share with the world.

I really doubt Nate would mind. I have no idea.