Recognized

January 29, 2024

You Know Up & Down?

Y’know, that one noodle map I made when I was in middle school? That one. Many people saw it, especially anyone who played Beat Saber at the time it was made. And Beat Saber’s a pretty well-known game, especially with people who are into tech and computers. And tech and computers are used quite often, especially with teens to young adults. And if all these assumptions are true, it might have made the following events a bit less impossible.

I Considered The Possibility

While I hadn’t really gone through the chain of thought in the section above, I did wonder how many people I walked past in my everyday life had heard of or even played one of my Beat Saber maps. It wasn’t a ridiculous idea, in fact it was quite likely that at least a few people I’ve seen in my life have heard of something that I’ve done. The issue is I don’t go around advertising the fact I play some random VR game. However, I did consider the possibility that someone at my school who I communicated with through Discord would see the username and connect the dots. Didn’t think much more after that though.

Get On With It Already

So at school we have clubs, one of which being the computer science club. This club is absolutely awful for several reasons, but that’s for another time. We also have two year-long levels of actual computer science classes, of which I’m currently taking the first year of. I don’t have any friends in that class, but I got to know the kid who sits next to me a bit, who I’ll call Aaron. Aaron missed sign-ups for clubs, but fortunately it seems the school takes a more hands-off approach to clubs, so he was able to get in late by just asking the club owner. He joined the club’s Discord server soon after. We talked a bit in there, realized that we were the ones sitting next to each other in the computer science class, and then that was it… until a closer friend of mine sent me a screenshot along with the simple caption: “Your biggest fan”

Turns out, Aaron had gone through and connected the dots pretty quickly. A later statement says he would’ve brought this up to me in person (which would have caused me whiplash omg) but I figured I could just reply to the message, considering the surprise had been lost. Can you guess what his favorite map is? Yeah, it’s Up & Down. But also Dummy! too, which was refreshing to hear. I responded:

Ignoring the obvious grammar error, it was a pretty successful interaction. The next day in class Aaron asked me about modeling custom sabers, which I didn’t really know anything about, but later that day I linked him to a guide I found. We haven’t really spoken about Beat Saber since then, but I still think about this experience every so often.

Fifteen Cents

The fact that a thing I made got so popular it managed to loop all the way back to me as a guy sitting directly to the right of me in a school classroom is absurd. But what’s arguably even crazier is that it’s happened more than once.

First Nickel

Before my encounter with Aaron, a close real-life friend of mine was streaming himself playing Beat Saber on Twitch. He had like two viewers, one of them being me. I decided to pop in and send a few messages, and what does that one other viewer say? Something along the lines of:

I explained that the person streaming was a real-life friend, which seemed to be quite interesting to the other person in chat.

Third Nickel

I also had these stray messages sent in my friend group’s main Discord server not too long ago:

Which I replied:

I said “second” as in they were the second person I met in real life who played Up & Down, counting out the Twitch chatter.

Closing Thoughts

It’s so weird to think about the number of people who have seen something I’ve made, specifically Up & Down. I’ve randomly crossed paths with three of these people so far just by chance, and it might happen a few more times. I can only imagine the thoughts of these people, having realized that a person they know created something they just so happened to have enjoyed a while ago. I can’t help but think of the possible other people in my school and neighborhood who know about TheGoodBoi, but will never end up meeting me or realizing I live just a brisk walk away from them. The worst part is since I don’t feel like doing a face or location reveal anytime soon, it’s highly likely these lucky experiences will stay just that. Lucky.