Oh boy. There is a lot going on in this article. Too much, I would say.
SCP-9009 'White People' began as a throwaway thought experiment I had years ago about a nonsapient animal with the brain of an insect that just so happened to look exactly like a white person. I thought it might make for interesting commentary on animal welfare; how, even though we might pretend like we have an objective basis for which animals are fine to kill and eat and which aren't, many of us would instinctively recoil from killing a person-shaped animal, even if, appearances aside, it's equivalent to stepping on an ant.
Then, Intercedent thought, why not go one step further, and have the 9009s hold actual positions of power, despite being, well, literal insects?
And then at some point Nikki (ubergoober) joined too. I forgot how that happened.
Anyway, after that, us three concocted a plan: we would write a story about the 9009s holding said positions of power, and, well, hijinks ensuing, with the joke being essentially "hey, white people have it so easy that they can end up in these positions of power despite contributing nothing of value". I think we succeeded in a lot of ways; however, we also failed in a lot of ways.
The biggest issue of this article, in my opinion, is that it's incredibly unfocused. Like, we evidently went beyond the original premise stated in the prior paragraph — we effectively have a timeline of the past 25 years of American history recontextualized under the 9009-world, combined with a gag comedy about various famous conservative assholes, combined with a tragedy about the destruction of the world at the hands of fascism, combined with commentary on how easy it is for white people to enter positions of power they aren't qualified for, combined with worldbuilding of the ecology of the White People, combined with our hatred of Curtis Yarvin, combined with a joke about how stupid lizard people conspiracy theories are, combined with a critique of Great Man Theory, combined with a critique of AI, combined with with with wtih wtihw tihwt ihwtwi thti wti hwt. Yeah. There's a lot.
I don't think these elements blended as seamlessly together as we had hoped. The central story of Curtis Yarvin using the 9009s to take over the world didn't really need all the spiel about 9009 ecology, or 9009 history, or the enormous, grandiose VANILLOS engine segment. And, really, our original premise of "white men can fail to do anything useful and still maintain positions of power" didn't really need the central Yarvin story either. We would've been better off focusing on just one element or the other, meticulously and systematically executing our darlings one after another until left with a much smaller, much more well-focused article.
To me, beyond just representing the power of white male mediocrity, the 9009 instances, paradoxically, also represent the folly of Great Man Theory, and the idea that a shadow government can successfully conspire to take over the world behind-the-scenes is stupid as hell. Like, think about how the 9009 instances behave: They don't desire control. They don't desire power. They're just animals, acting on instinct, attempting to survive and feed and reproduce; every boardroom meeting, every budget approval, every promotion, every rejection, every corporate decision made by a 9009 instance, is entirely incidental. They are an inversion of "omgomgomg lizard ppl control the world!!!", not an example of it. A product of brownian motion, not concerted conspiracy.
The thing is, our Yarvin storyline undercuts that premise by, well, nonetheless having a shadow government, the SCP Foundation, take control. While we had hoped to show that this, too, was doomed to fail, the reasons for that failure as stated in the article were more due to their own incompetence — the VANILLOS engine being unmaintained, 2000 being gutted, loss of the 9000 instances' training data — than actual, realistic societal forces.
If I were to redo this article from the beginning, I'm not totally sure what I'd do. I have several ideas.
I could imagine it having a much more focused narrative where the Foundation takes the role of an observer, documenting 9009 and discovering, in horror, just how thoroughly it has pervaded, not into our institutions, but their institutions as well… But, the kicker? They decide to do nothing. In this universe, 9009 is a useful compromise. It's a convenient scapegoat. "There's a problem? Just blame the guy at the top!" And, importantly, society marches on regardless of whether 9009 exists. The guys at the top have some sway, but, in the end, they aren't the ones doing the actual work. The pyramid, after all, is supported by its base. 9009 is better off being forgotten.
Another angle I think we could have explored further is our original idea of "wouldn't it be funny if brainless animals that look like white people happen to get promoted only because they're white", and swapped out the grand, overarching, world-spanning narrative to one closer to home, on a smaller scale. Perhaps a nonwhite employee is passed up for a 9009 instance during a round of promotion, and, in their frustration at what's happened, and their naive optimism, they're able to discover the anomaly.
However, probably my favorite idea of how this could've been written is one that leaned into the batshit insane 9009 ecology and their goofy behavior, that targets the "Lizard People" conspiracy theories more directly.
See, in earlier drafts, we had more parts that attempted to challenge this idea more directly — a part where Biden, during a rally, tries to eat a baby. Of course, the conspiracy theorists go absolutely wild with this, calling up visions of satanic baby-eating adrenochrome-harvesting rings hidden under pizza restaurants. Of course, the truth is that he's just hungry, and couldn't help himself. As is usual, people ascribe complicated conspiracy to events that are the result of random bullshit.
We also had another part we cut where the 9009 instances' mating behaviors are mistaken for homosexuality, fueling the whole (frankly, quite overstated) myth that "haha, every well-known homophobe is secretly GAY!". To me this was an even more egregious omission, because, without it, it just looks like we're emasculating them for shits and giggles. And, like, there is a point to be made that emasculating fascist leaders can be a valid tactic, because they pride themselves on their masculinity. However, it's a dangerous line to tread, because you don't want to imply that there'd be nothing wrong with them if they did live up to their masculinity, and you don't want to imply that them not being masculine is a bad thing.
And, while these two aforementioned parts didn't make it into the final piece, there were some pieces of this theme of people attributing to conspiracy, to whatever mental gymnastics happen to fit their worldview, events that are actually the result of Random Bullshit — the O5s' voting records come to mind, as well as the various, disconnected incident logs sprinkled throughout the article. The ecology section, I think, also feeds into this theme. What some think is conspiracy, really is just a self-sustaining equilibrium, nudged into its current state by millions of years of natural selection.
Frankly, we could've leaned into this far more. As the prior two examples showed, we could've thrown caution to the wind and deliberately played along with the conspiracy nuts, and said "yeah, what if Biden is eating babies? What if politicians are having what appear to be gay orgies? What if there are alien creatures holding positions of power? What then?"… only for the true explanation to, as I've said several times now, be the result of random bullshit, not concerted conspiracy. There is no Jewish shadow government, there are no lizard people, there are no adrenochrome-harvesting baby-eating rings. There are only wild animals, with no higher-order thinking functions, acting in their best short-term interests.
The thing is, in order to do this, we just would have needed to cut down on anything counter to this theme (for instance, we'd need to completely overhaul the role of the Foundation, and probably axe the Yarvin storyline) and taken the time to thoroughly polish up our messaging.
However, realistically, in order to make this idea — or, frankly, any of our ideas — work, I think we would really need to axe the whole framing of "oh, this is an alternate interpretation of the last 25 years of American history, and some world history". I think it sets the false impression that we're trying to set up a mirror with the Real World, to say "oh, this is a reflection of how things are." When, really, what we've created is more of a cartoon funhouse mirror. One that's taken a few good hits from a sledgehammer.
All in all, with regards to the 9009 that got posted, this was an incredibly ambitious project. Now, despite how pessimistic I've been above, I still do think there were some standout successes: Nikki's "Treatise on the Glaciopithecus" was absolute gold and Inter's corpospeak had me cackling; I'm also pretty proud of my Pregnant Elon Musk render.
However, the article itself I don't think lives up to these standout moments. And so, overall, I don't really consider it a success. But, well, it is what it is. It's currently sitting at over +300 after being on the site for (as of writing this) more than half a year. If I were to delete or substantially rewrite it now, it'd just be performative, and would be unfair to all the people who did enjoy it. Who knows, I might upload one of the 're-imaginings' later. I don't know what I'll do yet.
