#enturbulatedoccupation

I: The Anonverse

To create a Waste one must start in presession.

We should first consider Myra LeJean herself: though we never heard many of the specifics, it is clear that her ability to maintain relationships, trust, and emotional stability was compromised at a very early age. Abuse early in childhood can produce what the official books often call personality disorders; personally, I think that borderline personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder, developmental trauma disorder, and a variety of other diagnoses of this nature describe different manifestations of the same internal state. While Myra LeJean appeared to be a survivor of psychiatric abuse and as such refused to let anyone use these terms in relation to herself, and I am wary of narrowing it down to any specific "diagnosis", it is generally accepted that something happened [1, 2].

While Myra was never particularly forthcoming about her native world, some of her conatives were. Most of our extant documentation on the subject comes from scrollbackAntacid, who wrote a full series of articles for Transamphibian under the name "Why Revolution Is A Terrible Idea, Except When It Isn't" [3] explaining the political and social structure of what is sometimes called the Anonverse.

Myra was a member of a militia that appears to be an exaggeration of a social trend visible along the seams of a significant minority of politically otherwise stable Earths; namely, that of large social movements organized via the Internet and infused with Internet culture [4].

Myra was a member of one such culture: one premised upon the concept of anonymity (thus the name Anonverse), where self-aggrandizement was looked upon as the highest sin. Furthermore, as the Anonverse drove groups like this to an extreme, Myra was heavily indoctrinated into this and related principles. It probably increased her brittleness.

II: The Waste

It is clear that Myra LeJean did not adapt well to Sburb.

For those of you not familiar with the details of Sburb title assignment, holding the belief that self-aggrandizement is the highest sin is a one-way trip into rolling the Waste title [5]. Furthermore, Sburb titles are generally designed to correct these ostensible personality flaws by indoctrinating one in behavior opposite to that of one's "flaw". This means that Myra was forced into attracting and seeking attention.

It is clear from contemporary written evidence [6] that Myra LeJean enjoyed this attention. It is also clear from similar evidence that Myra LeJean believed that seeking such attention was morally wrong [7], that seeking such attention would bring doom upon her head [8], and that seeking such attention was her giving in to Sburb's attempts to erase her personality [9].

As such: unlike most Sburb players, the struggle against Sburb took on a moral dimension to her. Because she was culturally expected to bow to the needs of the collective, she faced several of the same pressures that face other Replayers coming from collectivist cultures [10], despite the fact that most people do not consider Anonymous a collectivist culture [11].

III: A Hill To Die On

In the words of the eternal gentlemanMannerism, "one must pick one's own hill to die on" [12]: meaning, everyone decides for themselves which principles they choose to uphold as sacred, and it is the utmost in discourtesy to attempt to argue against someone else's Hill unless they actively solicit such arguments.

Myra did not pick the hill that she was going to die on. Sburb picked it for her, by making her a Waste.

That Myra conformed to the expectations of Sburb with such alacrity, despite her morals being so adamantly opposed, would perhaps surprise most presessioners, but that's the nature of Sburb. Being forced to the brink of death clarifies one's values immensely, after all. Myra decided that she was better placed among the living, despite the increasing self-hatred that she accumulated over the years in remaining that way.

But the moral conflict of being forced to act against herself did not dissipate over the years. Though we have little writing from Myra's late period, secondhand accounts from close associates and coplayers verify that her difficulty in dealing with this dilemma obsessed her up until the end [2, 13].

Furthermore, Myra LeJean remained committed to the concept of anonymity long after she gave up trying to maintain it herself; see the Guest boards of Sburb.org, which to this day can be posted on under any name, in theory. In practice, the concept has been heavily compromised, but to this day the "Relationship Help" thread and other Guest Board fixtures remain culturally involate except in extreme cases like spamming.

(Around Timestamp 63, after much debate, the ability for moderators and admins to associate Guest posts with Sburb.org timetrav and forum accounts was added... and it should be said that Myra did not make doing this easy. I should know; I volunteered developer time trying to make it happen.)

Conclusion

Myra lived and died a Waste, tangled up in the notion of anonymity and attention-seeking with a moral dimension that most of us would never think to assign to it. It's something she couldn't transcend, but she tried her hardest despite it.

I guess that's a conclusion for both Myra and her boards: our original values may have been compromised, but we still try. There are worse hills to die on.

Note

Immediately after I posted this, I got an email from a nonexistent Pits account stating that "I may be dead but I can still see this, you know."

Make of that what you will.

References