Idle

Do you have a facebook? If that answer was a yes, go to your games/apps icon to the lefthand side of your screen and search for a game called "Idle Worship." Chances are you'll find the game. Chances are that the game has been discontinued. And chances are, you'll have no idea why. In fact, there's a 50/50 chance youi'll have never played/heard of this game before.

When it was still up and running, it was by far the best game on facebook that I've played. Compared to titles like Mafia Wars, or some coders' lame attmept to re-create Super Mario World, you'd see why. If you're one of the unfortunate souls who did NOT get to play the game, and problably never will, it's basically  a game where you play god and rule over an empire of mud-people whom you create. You can rule in evil or happiness, depending if you kill your denizens, or if you reward them. You can have other gods come over to your islands (where you build villages) and help you. Or some douchebags will come over and lob a fireball your way. You collect resources like food (fishes, you have your mudlings fish) or collect materials and minerals (wood, stone, gold...basically most Minecraft stuff.) You also have a totem where you can make them pray, causing you to gather power, which in turn is used for godly actions (create mudlings, sink an island, throw fireballs, beat the hell out of a missionary with a fish, that sort of stuff.)

Explanations out of the way, let me tell you about an incident that would shut this godly game down for good. You see, I've done some researching on the internet (the ultimate source of reliable and completely true facts) and found a short article posted by a user with a strange username called "Iesiesiesiaolovaid" or something along the lines of that. It was all in detail about a condition where young people wearing headphones hear two different things at once, each sound in a different bud. They were supposed to be in different frequencies, and would cause the listener to get symptoms such as headache, dizziness, easy agitation, depression and, in extreme cases, would commit suicide. This condition was long since labeled by the good people of the internet "Lavender Town syndrome," as a testimate to Nintendo's mistake with using these bineural waves as Lavender Town's original theme music, supposedly causing the deaths of multiple children. This was nothing new, but I wanted to know more about the origin and other occurences of the syndrome, so I continued reading. I came across a portion of the article that cited the death of an adolescent by the name of Andrew Michaels, who, while playing a game online, had an experienced that threw him into a state of depression that his parents immediatly noticed. His honor roll grades quickly fell through the floor, the football varsity team he was playing for kicked him out necause of lack of participation, and he was suspended from school on account of suspicion of drug dealing. I tried to read more into it, but the user only used a portion of this happening to only give this statement more influence, rather than changing the entire article into a story of a teenage death spiral.

Now on the trail of this death, I did the smartest thing possible and googled "Andrew Michaels death," to encounter 10 relevent links that each involved an Andrew Michaels, however all throughout North and South America, but nothing too specific about what I was looking for. I did the next search I had in mind "Andrew Michaels suicide," to, again, come across searches that fit the description, but didn't have exactly what I was looking for. After a few more futile attempts, I typed in a search stating "Andrew Michaels Lavender Town Syndrome." The search outcomes were so relevant and efficient, I kicked myself for not using an internet term for a search that could easily be transformed into a Creepypasta. The first link came to a Facebook page about a teenager who had commited suicide from asphyxiation with a fire extinguisher in the Jackson Memorial High School of Cittlesmith Ohio. The second link came to a public investigative report about the same person and place. I opened the Facebook page in a new tab, and clicked the link for the report on my current window. The report went deeply into his background and personality, so I skimmed through until I found something interesting. Apparently, Andrew had a facebook account, but he had not gone on it for the past 2 years. When he then went back on, the report states that he immediatly went on the Facebook game Idle Worship.

Facebook game, Lavender Town syndrome, depression, suicide... everything seemed to fit together perfectly. I clicked into the Facebook page and searched for Idle Worship. When the game came up, I went through the process of learning the storyline, powers, controlling mudlings, basically getting the form of the game. When I was free to go, I went into island view...and saw that I was confined to a sector. At first I thought I had no chance of seeing his island and that this entire journey wasn't going to reach it's full potential, until I looked closer and saw that Andrew's island actually WAS there. A massive stroke of luck lead me to the core of this investigation, which has apparently been dead for a year! Thinking that I should join the C.I.A., I went over and traveled to his island.

It was a perfectly normal island. Nothing unusual, just a normal, natural, very Idle-esque landscape. That's when the sound kicked in. I only had my speakers at 15%, but some ungodly music just BLASTED out and nearly made me fall out of my chair, pissing my pants and crying. I didn't, though. No, I threw the headphones off, but made sure not to unplug it so that it wouldn't go through the main speakers and be even louder. The music still filled the room. It sounded like Ice Demons by Kevin McLeod, only 2 octaves higher on the bar scale, slightly slow, and it sort of...morphed. It was liked someone had their fingers on the TREB/BASS sliders and they were sliding it up and down randomly, fastly at once then all of a sudden slowly, stopping and then continuing its chaotic chorus. Then I actually saw the inhabitants of the island. The mudlings were a bridht gray, like old porcelain dolls. Some were even chipped. And they weren't really doing anything. Some walked slowly with their heads doown, others just stood there looking at different directions, not even moving. Most of them were on the ground, and half of them were in a fetal position, hugging their knees to their chins, shivering as if they were freezing to death. The other half just layed there, staring into the sky, unmoving. To say I was unnerved would be an understatement.

I took in the scene, and saw that there were no houses. There used to be a totem it seemed, but it was torn down, weather from gods using acid rain or something more sinister I don't know. The tress were chopped down as saplings, making them ungrowable, and the boulders weren't even touched. In all, it seemed that if Andrew played on this island, he did next to nothing besides create mudlings and chop down tiny trees. I forgot to mention the sky. It wasn't your normal sunny Idle sky, it was a dull gray depressing weight. It only added to the depression. I finally got the courage to click on one of the mudlings, one of the ones lying down, and instead of selecting it,  It just sighed, and looked even more withdrawn. I did it again to the same one, but nothing else happened. The same thing happened with the next few mudlings I selected, just a sigh and deeper sadness, and no other reaction. I tried one of the curled up ones, and it just started to cry. Water is supposed to dissolve them, but this guy just cried and held its knees a little tighter. Again, trying to get another reaction lead to nothing. The standing ones flopped down and sat, looking at the dirt. I only clicked one of the walking ones, because that's the only time I did, and when I did, it looked right at the screen, right at ME, and spoke. It actually spoke. It's voice was like a tired old grandfather who'd seen too much, and said "God has abandoned us." He continued to look at me, and the cloud transition to the island view displayed, and I was, of course, back at island view. I tried to re-enter Andrew's island, but each time it acted as if I clicked on a piece of sea.

I opened up Notepad and wrote down my experience. In fact, I copy and pasted most of it into this. After that, I went into Microsoft Word and typed up a document that also contained the experience, but in the form of an explanation that Andrew commited suicide most likely because of the music he listened to, and because of what he had seen. After that, I opened up Google Chrome and went over to a new page to type up an account of all that has happened. This. The underlining moral is that Andrew played god, and he left his creation to die, and after seeing the pain he'd caused, he felt the same grief they did for 2 long years, compressed into the span of a few short weeks, and he just couldn't take it. So he took his own life. I know, why should this be different when 5,000 other Facebook users had to have ignored their mudlings from day 1 as well? And why would such an important message be carried on through a Facebook game to a teenager? This isn't just to document what has happened, it's to write down what I believe too. I believe that God himself chose a person at random to experience the burden of being an almighty creator, and so that he could know the pain of losing that society, and so that others could make an exapmple of the challenges he faces to keep us from dropping that low into grief. After all, Misfortune.gb is supposedly the Devil himself, so why can't this be a possibility? Andrew played God and he failed. So if he isn't capable, then who is? And if no one else is capable, then can there even be a God?

I sent Idle Games an e-mail containing the Word document I wrote to see if they would respond. They did, though not directly. They took it upon themselves to check out the island and the coding, and they found some bugs in there at first, then they found that the bugs had actually been integrated by someone outside of Idle Games. They pursued the mystery for a bit, then went on to find that the bugs were beginning to appear again to another profile, and that one of their admins lost their commands, so they shut it down, planning to bring it back up when they had the chance, or so i was told. After a week they finally e-mailed me back that they were going to have to shut the game down to prevent a bug from turning into a virus and hack into the money they made off the game. I looked on it myself, and it was true. Idle Worship was dead. Was I happy? Not really. I was glad I could figure out the mystery, but I can't help but remember those mudlings. There's a situation like that happening right now, and like the mudlings, they have no divine creator to rid them of the plagues they're facing. There is no God to help them. There is no God. I know that now. If there was, this wouldn't be happening, and a teenager wouldn't be dead because of a stupid fucking game. I decided not to give the documents to anyone else in fear that they'd think I was insane. After all this, I problably was.

I'll end it  with this; don't believe in a God. Don't pray for happiness, or food, or a child and don't pray for you to come back to your family. It's not going to happen. He doesn't care. He's not there. He's busy enjoying our pain and suffering. Keep to your own, and maybe, just maybe you'll survive in this hell of an exsistence.

162.72.191.28 02:50, February 3, 2014 (UTC)