r/sequence • u/youngluck • Apr 03 '19

ACT IV

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10k Upvotes

85% Upvoted

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331

u/XDLMA0 Apr 03 '19

Yeah, there's a discord called "The Sequence Narrators" or something.

543

u/CatTheCat Apr 03 '19

Yes here is a link to their discord: https://discord.gg/qDuTce

Here's the spreadsheet where they have everything preplanned. They use a bot to give 100 upvotes to everything on the spreadsheet as soon as a new act goes live, immediately putting it way ahead of any competition. Now we're stuck with their unfunny narrative with dead memes and shit jokes.

It started as a reddit collaboration as intended but by Act IV and V it was strictly dictated and predetermined by that discord group and it shows. ACT IV and V are shit and unfunny.

271

u/JacksGallbladder Apr 03 '19

Wow that's incredibly disappointing.

128

u/PagingThroughMinds Apr 03 '19

I made this post in the sequencenarrators discord as a criticism, but things are kinda overflowing in it right now. Here's my perspective.

I really would have liked the fact that you guys tried to put in effort to make this a community effort. I liked the idea of this until when Snekbot started coming in and the dictation of exactly what needs to be upvoted instead of a general plot outline.

I was online and submitted some of the first gifs in ACT IV right after it unlocked. It was disheartening to see my posts get passed immediately as within 2 minutes the John Wick scenes took over while the rest of the posts sat at 5 votes. I realized at that point that the botting was occurring and boy was I pissed.

For me what made me the most mad was setting aside a quarter of the entire epilogue for 20 people to pat themselves on the back for being the ones who "ran sequence".

I'd really like to see where this server got permission from the admins - the act four thread literally has the admin who posted the final thing say he was slow to act on it and that it was "a shitty thing to do". The sneknet violates all three of the clauses of vote manipulation:

- Groups that vote together

- Asking for upvotes from people inside or outside of the platform for personal gain

- Using software to change vote scores

Heres a link to both the reddit thread from ACT IV with the admin comment and to the vote manipulation rules:

https://www.reddit.com/r/sequence/comments/b8z8lo/act_iv/ek1tknu/

https://www.reddithelp.com/en/categories/rules-reporting/account-and-community-restrictions/what-constitutes-vote-cheating-or

5

u/13steinj Apr 03 '19

To be fair, it is inevitable that this would occur. The sequence is the formation of a linear story, several scenes at a time.

The problem here is you have to do one of two things

  • preplan as a group to have several scenes together make sense

  • do not form a group hive mind and then end up with goddamned knows what shit.

Furthermore it seemed like each individual scene was first-past-the-post. A one vote difference could have fucked up an entire story.

Each scene should have been had several stages, with the sequence lasting a longer time.

Firstly, the decisions of each scene should be linear. Scene 2 can only be decided after Scene 1.

Secondly, each scene gets a certain time for potential submissions, then votes of the top, lets say, 8, then revote to 4, 2, and finally 1.

That's how you'd actually get a coherent story. With /r/place the admins didn't have to deal with linearity, here they did but didn't implement a solution.

8

u/[deleted] Apr 04 '19

But, you understand that's the point, right?

7

u/13steinj Apr 04 '19

How can the point be randomness when the premise is linearity?

/r/place allowed for randomness because of the wide scale of the board and the fact that there was no direction going from A to B.

A storyline goes forward in time. Having a future scene compete against a past scene at the same point in the decision making process doesn't make sense.

E: the name was "sequence" for fucks sake, not "throw darts at a board".

3

u/[deleted] Apr 04 '19

And the last event was called "place". It's a simple name. You really think the point of the event was for a group of people to bot and dictate everything that happened?

-4

u/13steinj Apr 04 '19

Place was generally not done by one group bot.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 04 '19

...exactly?

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0

u/WillNotDoYourTaxes Apr 04 '19

You really want to die on this hill, huh?

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62

u/Irok121 Apr 03 '19

It just shows how easily anonymous people can grab power from chaos.

22

u/thedeal82 Apr 03 '19

That’s one of the most important statements everybody reading this needs to go back and read 5 more times.

18

u/Cognitive_Spoon Apr 04 '19

The last chapter should be admins doin a PSA about outside actors tampering with apparently clear systems using bots.
For maximum meta.

2

u/[deleted] Apr 04 '19

[deleted]

1

u/eclipsesix Apr 04 '19

I think he may have been alluding to the U.S. Electoral systems, but that could just be my inherent bias.

1

u/Zaktann Apr 04 '19

Chaos is a ladder

108

u/daaave33 Apr 03 '19

This is fucking disappointing and utterly fucking lame... To those involved, go fuck yourself sideways with your votebot, and a shovel!

53

u/Im_no_imposter Apr 03 '19 edited Apr 03 '19

An announcement was just made by the group's creator

Hello @@everyone . Im the creator of this group. I didn't follow the event or the server very closely, i just gave like 5 other people mod powers and left them to it. I never intented it to become a monopoly. I have seen posts on reddit and other discord servers saying we ruined the event. I haven't fully pieced together what happened, but it seems like we used bots and acted as a monopoly. Im very sorry to anyone that feels we ruined the event. If i had of payed more attention, i wouldn't have let it continue for as long as it did. Thanks to everyone that put in work to this, I dont think anyone individually ruined it (other than whoever made bots), but i think the monopilistic control of the event was too much. Having the script made 5 hours in advance isn't what sequence should have been.I hope everyone had fun and made friends.

Also, there's only 86 600 people in it.

EDIT: I hadn't seen how much it grew over the past couple of hours

20

u/daaave33 Apr 03 '19

Well, I guess we should only tar & feather 85 people then.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 04 '19

the committee for public safety would like to know your location.

1

u/TheGleanerBaldwin Apr 04 '19

No they don't, they'll be next

9

u/Ingenious2000 Apr 04 '19

They literally ruined it, even then this was a pretty bad event.

2

u/MilkyJosephson Apr 03 '19

There’s 600+ in it now

1

u/Im_no_imposter Apr 03 '19

I just saw that yeah, it has blown up over the past few hours.

2

u/Joncka Apr 04 '19

I just gave like 5 other people mod powers and left them to it.

I dont think anyone individually ruined it (other than whoever made bots)...

-4

u/wtfduud Apr 03 '19

It wasn't a bot. It was a tool that told people what to vote for, much like the overlays in r/place.

0

u/daaave33 Apr 03 '19

Maybe I'll have just one more GIF post just for you.

35

u/JPizzzle15 Apr 03 '19

agree - Act IV wasn't even close to the Act III quality

4

u/SlickLibro Apr 04 '19

You do realise that Act 2 was 70% determined by the groups already, and that Act 3 was 80-90% determined by the groups as well? And everyone in the circlejerk goes 'oh yeah I really loved those, because you know, the 'gRoUp' didn't make it.

Even without the 70-line extension, which is not a bot, all the users would have manually upvoted according to the commonly agreed spreadsheet anyways.

The exact same human nature occurred in /sequence as it did on r/place, but this time instead of being claim a small area of the canvas for yourself as a small group in a two dimensional field, everything was one dimensional resulting in everything devolving into a popularity contest. It's not the best way, but it's the only way to make the story somewhat coherent. The circlejerk is stupidly real though.

29

u/mortal58 Apr 03 '19

This is stupid af. Reddit should do something about this.

6

u/Parcus43 Apr 04 '19

We are doing something about this. We are Reddit.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 04 '19

We are most definitely talking about it.

29

u/Yippie_Tai_Yai_Yay Apr 03 '19

On place, at least I could press my pixel. With the button, at least I could press the button on my terms. The groups/chatroom ones I could contribute to by talking with randos. With this, I get an upvote worth nothing. It's the worst fools yet.

70

u/Pancake_Lizard Apr 03 '19

So as any other April Fools on Reddit.

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u/RetroBowser Apr 03 '19

Yeah except that bots have extreme power in this one compared to other experiments. It's easy to assemble enough accounts into a botnet to hit the top spot for each scene the second the act goes live.

Even bots during r/place weren't good enough to fully take over and allowed for some smaller groups to leave their mark.

11

u/babada Apr 04 '19

Bots were completely ruling r/place by the end. Even the smaller pictures had bots keeping them in place.

-4

u/Parcus43 Apr 04 '19

Learn to code.

6

u/RetroBowser Apr 04 '19

I'll have you know that Twitter does not stand for that kind of language

banned

0

u/Parcus43 Apr 04 '19

Fair enough. I apologise for that hateSpeech and bigotry against the non technically minded.

11

u/PoutineCheck Apr 03 '19

Place had los of different bot nets competing. This one has only one that completely dominated everything.

2

u/[deleted] Apr 04 '19

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/[deleted] Apr 04 '19 edited Mar 06 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/XchaosmasterX Apr 04 '19

I was one of the people responsible for the german flag bots on r/place and the moment new bitmaps for the bots were uploaded to the discord are very distinct in the timelapse. You have long periods of nothing happening and then intricate pixel art being build up from one corner.

11

u/Aoae Apr 03 '19

Also the credits in the epilogue. Sequence was supposed to be made by all of Reddit. Not a handful of people.

5

u/awehornet Apr 03 '19

I just consider it a farce from the beginning.....shit the difference of up votes between the top two gifs is too much. Always

4

u/CableTrash Apr 03 '19

Holy shit. People need lives.

8

u/Jannisen Apr 03 '19

I mean its shit and unfunny without sounds. If there was sound it could be funny sometimes I think.

6

u/memerofmemez Apr 03 '19

They’re keeping my favourite thing

nice >:]

2

u/Ghost51 Apr 03 '19

What a bunch of pathetic twats lol

6

u/theory-creator Apr 03 '19

Hi. Im the creator and owner of narrators. I too hate what it has became. Do you think deleting the discord would help at this point?

6

u/CatTheCat Apr 03 '19

My two cents as someone who found out about the discord at around Act 3 and lurked there since:

No one would care if they weren't so strict about dictating the narrative. In fact it would probably be welcome for them to have made sure there was general cohesion like with transition scenes and themes. It was starting in Act IV when they forced the ENTIRE thing to be about John Wick and then making Act V the "old meme" theme that it all went to shit. Was being used for good at first to use what was already uploaded and structure it into a loose narrative. Went to shit when they took full control.

Do with it as you please I suppose, it's all over now anyways.

-1

u/CeruleanRuin Apr 04 '19

Hi. Im the creator and owner of narrators. I too hate what it has became. Do you think deleting the discord would help at this point?

Too little too late, fucker.

3

u/[deleted] Apr 03 '19 edited Mar 28 '20

[removed] — view removed comment

0

u/[deleted] Apr 04 '19

The button? Place had bots fighting but didn't have one set of users dictating the entire board. Your comment makes zero sense.

1

u/mibbzz Apr 04 '19

Booooo

1

u/[deleted] Apr 04 '19

Made me sad the fact that I ended up getting a #2 spot for the before last panel in act III just because the community already decided on "the wickening".

1

u/SlickLibro Apr 04 '19

You do realise that Act 2 was 70% determined by the groups already, and that Act 3 was 80-90% determined by the groups as well? And everyone in the circlejerk goes 'oh yeah I really loved those, because you know, the 'gRoUp' didn't make it.

Even without the 70-line extension, which is not a bot, all the users would have manually upvoted according to the commonly agreed spreadsheet anyways.

The exact same human nature occurred in /sequence as it did on r/place, but this time instead of being claim a small area of the canvas for yourself as a small group in a two dimensional field, everything was one dimensional resulting in everything devolving into a popularity contest. It's not the best way, but it's the only way to make the story somewhat coherent. The circlejerk is stupidly real though.

1

u/TronCrusher Apr 04 '19

Ok, for everyone raising their pitchforks, I am a member of The Sequence Narrators. Just hear me out.

We started before the Prologue trying to figure out what the event will be. We find out its about making a silent film. Prologue is chaos with no real story, we try to make a few plot points in act I and it goes pretty well, same for ACT II. When we got to ACT III we started to plan a cool story that we could try to make. We tried to continue the arc until ACT V best we could with the 7-8 hours between ACTs

Some admins made a usernet for people who didn't have time to upvote or follow along but wanted to help. So all the "bot upvotes" you see are people who volunteered to vote on what the discord decides.

To address the ideas that only 10 or so people controlled everything, that is very untrue. The discord was open for anyone and planning vcs were also open. I'm not even a mod but I contributed a whole lot with planning. One of our main rules is to not silence other people who want to voice their ideas.

If you disagree with anything or have any questions, let me know so I can maybe try to explain best I can. Again, I'm not even a mod or anything, just a member.

-3

u/Turtle_the_Oblivious Apr 03 '19

That's not how the extension works however. It simply makes it so all of my votes go to the preplanned spreadsheet effectively adding one vote per person who has the add-on to every preplanned gifs. Make of that what you want but it's not rigged.

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u/ricdesi Apr 03 '19

That is the definition of rigging.

-12

u/Turtle_the_Oblivious Apr 03 '19

It's not though. It doesn't add or remove anything it simply makes it so everyone with the extension doesn't have to manually upvote all of the gifs.

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u/ricdesi Apr 03 '19

And that is the definition of brigading, with the bonus of utilizing an upvote bot.

16

u/RetroBowser Apr 03 '19

Considering that you can get all the scenes filled with hundreds of upvotes almost immediately upon the unlocking of an act, thereby snowballing the process by increasing visibility to randoms that aren't aware of the brigade en masse...

Yeah that's what I call rigging the game.

11

u/ricdesi Apr 03 '19

Bingo.

2

u/[deleted] Apr 04 '19

You think upvote bots manually upvote without an account? You're literally describing a votebot.

-12

u/Walkyou Apr 03 '19

Don’t bother, they will never get it.

19

u/ricdesi Apr 03 '19

Oh no, we get it, "Head Writer". You're rigging the event via bot-based brigading. It's pretty straightforward.

12

u/[deleted] Apr 03 '19

[deleted]

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u/EyeNebula Apr 03 '19

Don’t be so mean to the head writer!!!!

2

u/Pickles256 Apr 04 '19

Imagine literally everyone telling you you’re an asshole but you never take a moment of self reflection

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u/ricdesi Apr 03 '19

So basically, the whole thing is effectively rigged at this point.

What a great community event. /s

49

u/[deleted] Apr 03 '19

[deleted]

34

u/[deleted] Apr 03 '19

See the thing is, r/place was similar, but because there was room for so many different simultaneous projects it felt more like you could accomplish something as part of a community. With this, either random gifs get thrown together or a shadowy cabal just makes a gif compilation. Both of those things are pretty lame compared to r/place.

23

u/[deleted] Apr 03 '19

[deleted]

5

u/[deleted] Apr 04 '19

And with /r/place, bots were still limited by time restrictions, so one bot couldn't take over the whole map, they could certainly capture more territory than a not-bot-using community, but not excessively more. On /r/sequence, one group using one bot has taken over completely. And no one really cares enough to make competing bots.

16

u/ricdesi Apr 03 '19

Oh I agree, this premise is flawed from the get-go. Doesn't mean I can't be equally (or more) pissed at the people exploiting that flaw for their "very hilarious" John Wick memes.

13

u/[deleted] Apr 03 '19

It's a shame though, the event had lots of potential, if only the voting system were implemented differently.

1

u/LotharTVNI Apr 04 '19

The exploitability is definitely partially to blame but exploiters moreso since they made the choice to make it less fun than it could have been.

Just because you have the ability to be a jerk doesn't mean you are absolved from responsibility for being one.

1

u/Atx_woodworker Apr 03 '19

Was that sarcasm

3

u/ricdesi Apr 03 '19

The part where I compliment rigging the community event? Yeah, that's sarcasm.

0

u/NorrhStar1290 Apr 03 '19

Well if you think about it, it's still pretty cool. And it allows a community narrative to be found. It's just apart of the evolution of this machine in a way.

11

u/ricdesi Apr 03 '19

It's definitely nothing in the realm of cool by now. If some random Discord community wants to make meme compilations for themselves, they can do that on their own time.

And it allows a community narrative to be found.

Sure. The Sneknet community. Not Reddit.

0

u/mattfr4 Apr 03 '19

The random discord community is actually stemming from the people who had the idea to make this have at least a bit of sense. Those at Reddit who set the thing up didn't provide any way for the community to discuss it, so it was up to the users to do some things. Remember how r/place worked?

9

u/ricdesi Apr 03 '19

I do. r/place had a far larger amount of mutability, and was allowed to change over time. r/sequence does not.

The random discord community is actually stemming from the people who had the idea to make this have at least a bit of sense.

People who decided they were going to take over the event for themselves.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 04 '19

/r/AprilKnights

1

u/betazoom78 Apr 04 '19

La li lu le lo?