Chapter 108
The gallery without the Head Mod.
It was no different from a can of flat cola.
Deleting useful features.
Resetting the market's items.
A lawless wasteland where tactical nukes and gore images ran rampant.
- Ttyu-ttya ttyu-uwattya... ttyu-ttyattya...!
- I'm a neungi mushroom.
- What is life?
Just as people were growing dazed and confused, two announcements appeared.
[Notice: I Have Appeared]
Author: Head Mod*
Hi.
Reply.
[Upvotes 9999+] [Downvotes 95]
The announcement from exactly one week ago, when the Head Mod hunt was at its peak.
The only difference was the addition of “Reply,” making it a short, terse announcement.
But this time, the reaction was completely different.
- The world has started moving again.
- Oh my!!! Why are you only coming now,,@@!!
- Hellohellohellohellohellohello
- I will never ignore a greeting again.
- (Frog knight meme clapping with tears in its eyes)
The gallery was practically in a festive mood.
There weren't any tactical nukes or gore images this time.
Only the announcement's view count shot up madly, with countless replies beginning to pile in.
- You're going to start being active again, right?
- Fuck, I waited so long for you, Head Mod...
- If you're not here, I'll really leave the gallery...
- Yeah~ Please don't go AFK again~ If you go AFK, you'll just get kicked out of the gallery~
The gallery without the Head Mod had been silent and cold like a stone floor.
The gallery users instinctively recalled the old days and were completely consumed by PTSD.
They had realized that the Head Mod was not the captain of a public-restroom cleaning crew, but the gallery's moderator.
But contrary to everyone's wishes, the Head Mod did not add any items to the market.
[Notice: Yep]
Author: Head Mod*
(Adrian Cathedral meme)
[Upvotes 9999+] [Downvotes 94]
- ???
- Wh-what is this?
- (Elf meme blinking stupidly)
- This problem is too difficult, teacher.
They had simply uploaded a single meme as a new announcement.
That was all.
No further activity followed for seconds, minutes, or even hours.
The gallery users were initially confused, but at least the meaning was clear.
- Someone figure out what the speaker intended, for fuck's sake.
- Answer: No. 1.
- Ah, the Head Mod went AFK again!!!
Figure out what the speaker intended.
Otherwise, they wouldn't come back.
The gallery users immediately racked their brains, pooled their collective intelligence, and soon succeeded in interpreting it.
[Title: Interpreting the Meme the Head Mod Posted...jpg]
Nice to meet you. It's a good day.
No, actually, neither am I glad nor is it a good day, fuck.
Why? Because the Head Mod hasn't come back.
So I put my brain into overdrive and scanned that picture along with everything from the week before the Head Mod hunt.
And in the process, I found something strange.
(Meme of troll posts flooding in)
(Meme of posts with similar speech patterns, spacing, and spelling)
(Meme of every sentence ending with a period)
The bait had started without any context.
Normally, someone throws out bait, someone bites, and it gradually spreads.
But looking at this, you could see that suspicious posts had suddenly poured out at midnight.
The speech patterns were subtly different, yet they all consistently used periods.
Especially “Do you guyz still trust the Head Mod?” ← They kept making the typo “guyz” over and over.
What does that mean?
(Frog farmer meme holding a torch)
What else could it mean, fuck? It's time for a revolution.
[Upvotes 5123] [Downvotes 93]
- So you guys were the trolls.
- Looking at it now, the downvote counts on posts like these are all roughly the same too?
- Yeah, fuck, since they don't use the gallery much, you can see the commonalities in weird places.
- (Frog knight meme with a bright-red face)
People began scraping together even the posts from a week earlier using a single photo.
They quickly figured out what the meme meant.
- Fuck, it's the cathedral again?
The cathedral had been trolling.
*
The circumstantial evidence was conclusive.
Anyone could see that the cathedral was the ringleader behind the trolling.
“That's not enough.”
But it couldn't serve as a justification.
There was nothing more dangerous than labeling someone the culprit based on their speech patterns alone.
[Title: This Is a False Accusation!]
Author: Louis
As expected, Archbishop Louis came forward as the cathedral's representative and announced that they had been wronged.
Where is the evidence?
If speech patterns count as evidence, anyone could be the culprit.
How can you label us as the culprits for a reason like this?
This is the real sin!
I warn you, Head Mod.
Are you posting a meme that appears to call us the culprits when there is no clear evidence?
Are you not afraid of God's punishment for making false accusations?
Stop leading more lambs astray and repent of your sins.
Delete the announcement immediately and post an apology to the cathedral.
Otherwise, you will fall into hell according to the sins you have committed.
[Upvotes 1412] [Downvotes 9853]
- Hmm...
- But, speaking objectively, he's not wrong.
- The Head Mod only posted a cathedral meme and never actually explained why, right?
You can't label someone the culprit based on speech patterns alone.
They had even threatened to send me to hell for posting a meme to sway public opinion without any concrete grounds.
But...
“So?”
What of it?
Fake news doesn't need a reason in the first place.
Wasn't what the cathedral did every day basically a witch hunt?
The cathedral was good at incitement and fabrication.
I was merely fighting fire with the exact same incitement and fabrication.
- Head Mod*) lol.
Lol, just two characters.
It was a more decisive force than stringing out reasons and clear evidence.
- LMAO
- Guess there really is a reason?
ㄴ For real, lol. What does it mean when someone's tongue gets that long?
ㄴ But the Church had been suspicious for a while.
ㄴ For real, all that rambling is pathetic.
The gallery soon began declaring the cathedral the culprit, as if nothing had happened.
People said they had always disliked them, that they knew this was how they would turn out, and so on.
“Evidence? I've already got evidence.”
More importantly, I had conclusive proof that the cathedral was the culprit.
When I compiled the posts from the time of the Head Mod hunt and analyzed their IPs, they all pointed to the cathedral.
Of course, they had tried to be clever by posting several times under different usernames and from different locations, but...
“Who am I?”
[Analyzing all IPs used by this user]
No matter how they changed locations or manipulated their IPs, the system still possessed all their previous IP records.
In other words, the cathedral really had used a public-opinion campaign to frame me.
But the reason I didn't reveal this conclusive evidence was simple.
“They can take the same beating.”
They had attacked me after inciting people with fake news?
Now it was their turn to be hit with the exact same fake news.
*
[Title: Spooky Spooky, the Cathedral's Current Situation...jpg]
(Meme of a crowd gathered and surrounding the area on all sides)
(Meme of clergy trying to hold people back, then retreating inside after being pelted with tomatoes)
(Meme of people violently shaking the front gate)
Open the f1cking door.
- Lol, come on in~
- Revolution, right? Time for them to get theirs?
- What, is the event already starting?
After the announcement appeared, people immediately swarmed toward the cathedral.
A crowd reminiscent of a modern protest had completely surrounded the cathedral.
“Wow, this looks like an old protest.”
The difference was that instead of signs and candles, they were carrying pitchforks and blades.
“Please calm down!”
“We didn't do this!”
Several clergymen came out to try to stop them, but that only made things worse.
[Title: Lol, These Bastards]
(Meme of the bishop's office refrigerator seen through a window)
They were making good use of the market, huh?
They even had that expensive refrigerator too, lol.
Why were the guys who normally took donations and made such good use of the market stirring up trouble? Seriously, I don't get it.
[Upvotes 1202] [Downvotes 94]
- Anyway, don't use it!
- Lol, you want to use the market's items and keep us in check too?
- This seriously pisses me off, fuck lol.
- Didn't these guys hide behind the clerics during the Great War too, watching the situation from behind?
ㄴ Fuck, were they exempt?
ㄴ Yeah, they sat it out saying they had gathered to pray.
On top of that, their past deeds were listed one by one, and the situation gradually grew more heated.
There were people who had never heard of the market, but no one had used it only once.
Having realized the value of a market whose prices never changed despite the insane inflation, the gallery users became even more violent.
[Title: Please Calm Down! We Didn't Do This!]
Author: Louis
This is all the Head Mod's false accusation!
We didn't do this, please calm down!
[Upvotes 102] [Downvotes 303]
- For real, this is kind of excessive;
- Isn't the Head Mod also accusing them with too little evidence?
- How is this any different from the Head Mod hunt? I almost said that, lol.
Of course, not everyone agreed.
Some people felt repulsed by the extreme, one-sided public opinion, while others believed in the cathedral.
At this point, I added a new announcement.
[Notice: It's Me]
Author: Head Mod*
A compilation of evidence that the cathedral was trolling.
(Screenshot 1: Lookup of the past IPs of authors who posted during the Head Mod hunt)
(Screenshot 2: Evidence of the sharp drop in posts from the cathedral's IPs during the Head Mod hunt)
(Screenshot 3: Screenshot showing Archbishop Louis's IP matching the IP used for the trolling)
Lol.
[Upvotes 9999+] [Downvotes 93]
I deliberately uploaded it late despite having conclusive evidence.
That way, the backlash would be even greater after all their excuses.
- ???
- No, fuck, I still thought it couldn't be true, but it really was?
- Wow, no way. They even changed their IPs to troll?
- Wow, how many troll posts did one person write in a day?
- Wow, this is seriously creepy.
Even the cathedral's remaining public support completely turned against it.
“What can you do now?”
Lies didn't work either.
The public-opinion campaign had failed as well.
I was just about to conclude that the cathedral's only remaining option was to restore things to normal.
No, there was one more.
Namely, to label the protest heresy.
- Thwack!
Then an arrow flew in from somewhere and struck the head of the man protesting the cathedral at the very front.
“Huh?”
The man in the gif collapsed onto the ground and died on the spot.
They had really drawn weapons against their own people.
“Wait, they shot a citizen of their own country?”
I was so stunned that I couldn't speak, and just then, the flow of posts, which had been paused, suddenly began accelerating.
[Title: FFFFUCK]
(Meme of arrows flying in one by one)
(Meme of protesters being struck by arrows, writhing in pain, or dying)
(Meme of inquisitors and knights emerging from inside the cathedral and swinging their swords)
These bastards have really gone insane.
Since they couldn't think of any other way out, they had started grabbing people and killing them indiscriminately.
They're saying the protest is a heretical riot and an act of blasphemy against God. Fuck, what do we do?
I have to run, so I can't write any more.
[Upvotes 1042] [Downvotes 93]
- ???
- No way, they're actually doing this?
- Fuck, save me, I think I'm gonna get caught.
The cathedral declared the protest heresy and began killing people.