This article is about The Madness in 0 A.T. (2013 C.E.) For other Madnesses, see The Madness
Starting around TimeFrame 192, the moderators of the forum initiated[1] The Madness , also known in 2013 as the RECKONING. Mod Madness is an annual event on the xkcd fora where a script normally used on discussion boards to replace offensive words with censored versions is instead used to replace virtually any word with any other word, changing otherwise normal words to horribly delightful puns or random nonsense.
It ended at approximately TimeFrame 309.
The warning given by the outsiders
Response on the OTT[]
Since many readers of the OTT had paid little to no attention to the xkcd fora before the beginning of Time, the onset of Madness shortly after the start of the comic came as a surprise. Initially it was difficult for forum newcomers to realize anything was being changed, since as is typical the Madness began slowly with only a few filters. Due to the nature of OTT conversation at the Time (misconstrued sentences by sleep deprived people) it wasn't obvious to a casual observer that something was changing.
However, soon the moderators targeted popular terms in the OTT and the changes were unavoidable. Some key changed words included newpix, sandcastle, and time. The filtering of the word "time" made following the comic particularly problematic as all of the images of Time contained the word in the url, and were therefore unviewable on the thread.
It is thought that this issue led to the site administrator granting an unprecedented immunity to wordfilters to the thread, 22 time frames after the Madness had begun. All original posts on the OTT were thereafter unaffected by filters (though quotations, searches, PMs, and the entire rest of the fora were still subject to the word swaps). This immunity would last nearly three years, until the forum migration that ended the Madness of 2016.
Other Madness Effects[]
The wild card filter in effect.
The number of words in the script quickly got out of hand and led to pages and pages of more nonsense than usual.
At some point SecondTalon[2], a mod, added an * to the script (a wild card character) that replaced all words with "HODOR", resulting in approximately 45 seconds of complete forum unreadability.
List of discovered translations[]
A more complete spreadsheet based on forum-wide collaboration can also be found here.
| Filters to | |
|---|---|
| . (dot, when not followed by a letter/number) | FULL STOP |
| 20* (anything beginning 20) | STAR DATE 2245 |
| am | be |
| ate | eat-did |
| automation | robot |
| been | be-done |
| bender | flexo |
| best | goodest |
| better | gooder |
| can | tin |
| cannot | tinnot |
| conspire | Reckon-plot |
| Easter | Passover |
| eaten | eat-done |
| economy | common wood |
| FaiD | FaDe |
| favor | bro-solid |
| Firefox | netscape |
| filter | instant |
| filters | instance |
| fire | beflame |
| god | Ra |
| Google Chrome | AOL |
| gone | go-done |
| gun | Gonne |
| Had | Have-did |
| he's | he be |
| hugs | platonic squeezes |
| humming | whistlin' |
| I'm | I be |
| instance | Zul-Gurub |
| Is/are | Be |
| knew | ken-did |
| know | ken |
| language | wordy-writey-meaning-conveying-wibbly-wobbly stuff |
| madness | RECKONING |
| man | werman |
| might | may-did |
| money | money and aeroplanes |
| newpix | fortnight |
| penis, Penis | PENIS |
| perspire | flop sweat |
| pie | Proto-Indo-European |
| post | stake |
| posted | post-did |
| reader | JFK |
| reckoned | reckon-did |
| retire | Old Folks Vacation |
| roband | rob&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& |
| said | say-did |
| sand | Magic |
| sandcastle | Magic Kingdom |
| she's | she be |
| snow | angelpoop |
| Spam | An entirely legitimate post made by someone who hasn't read the rules yet |
| Step 3.) | ???? |
| Technically Correct | Technically Correct (USE THIS ONE) |
| they're | they be |
| think | reckon |
| thought | reckon-did |
| thread | needle-pulled thing (previously: small sequence of programmed instructions) |
| threads | pieces of catgut or silk or wire wield-did by surgeons to stitch tissues together |
| time | Thing that keeps slipping into the future (previously: Things that are on my side for 600, Alex!) |
| tricks | trickses |
| Was/were | Be-did |
| watched | watch-did |
| what | hwæt |
| what've | hwæt've |
| Will | Woll |
| woman | wyfman |
| won't | woll not |
| wordfilter | instant coffee |
| worse | badder |
| worst | baddest |
| would | woll-did |
| wouldn't | woll-did not |
| written | write-done |
| wrote | write-did |
| you're | you be |