Mainpage

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Many roads and trails in all directions expanding from the center, roads and lines mainly in cardinal directions, but there are also diagonals and chaotic lines that dont go a specific direction
Large screenshot of the Mainpage by Anonymousellama21, edited by LiquidVicinity to make certain details easier to see.

The Mainpage/Frontpage/Homepage, also accessible via yourworldoftext.com/~andrew, is the default world of YWOT.

Users can also access a variety of subworlds by adding characters after "www.yourworldoftext.com/".

Geography[edit | edit source]

Spam Central[edit | edit source]

The dense, chaotic area surrounding [X:0 Y:0].

Spam Central is the hub for the bulk of the site's day-to-day activity. It is constantly subject to edits and changes, whether it be art, spam, erasure or regular messages.

The Mainpage's center, while being a hotspot for obscene content, is also a good place for users to meet, talk and even collaborate on projects.

Nothing lasts long around the Spawn Point, but the likelihood of any edit being overturned decreases the farther you get from [X:0 Y:0]. To this end there are a variety of roads and trails that radiate outwards from the chaos of Spam Central.

Spam Central

Cardinal Roads[edit | edit source]

North Road

Massive trails that run North, South, East and West, extending for thousands of coordinates. The Cardinal Roads are the primary hotspots for activity outside of Spam Central, with generation upon generation of users leaving messages/art along them in lengthy pilgrimages.

Each Cardinal Road begins as a scripted ASCII highway made of block alt codes(░ ▒ ▓ █). The scripted roads usually run for a few thousand coordinates before ending abruptly, opening the room for travelers to continue the path with their own hand-made trails. User-created trails tend to be much more simple, often consisting of a single character, but can run much longer from the sheer will of the builder.

Cardinal Roads, along with all trails in YWOT, feature a multitude of cities and landmarks along the way. Major settlements tend to appear first every 100 coordinates, and then every 1000 coordinates as users travel farther and farther away from Spam Central. Hubs of user activities may also exist at certain unique coordinates like 6969, 666, or 1337.

The most popular landmark along every road is always at 1000 coordinates away from Spawn, with settlements like Sky City and Deep City serving as the end goals of most travelers. A few dedicated users, however, may choose to continue beyond these points, after which the "final destination" is usually a 10,000 coordinate landmark(Ex. Nirvana).

Instances of users scrolling 100,000+ coordinates are rare but not unprecedented.

It is important to note that a good portion of messages at distant landmarks are always from users who teleported there using scripts. However, there does exist a dedicated(though hopelessly disjointed) community of travelers who scrolls manually to reach remote locations. Along each sizable trail you'd see a unique cast of users leaving messages for each other. These messages tend to be spaced months and years apart, however, and it is rare that any two travelers get to talk directly.

East Road
Northeast Line

Semi-cardinal Lines[edit | edit source]

Popular lines that run Northeast, Northwest, Southeast and Southwest at a slope of 45 degrees, with the x and y coordinates having the same absolute value. Semi-Cardinal Lines are the second most popular trails in the Mainpage and are akin to less active versions of the Cardinal Roads.

Like the major roads, the diagonal lines of YWOT begin as scripted staircases before being replaced by hand-made trails(most often scattered breadcrumbs of letters, due to the difficulty of making a continuous diagonal line).

For the vast majority of the site's history, the Semi-Cardinal Lines have been woefully underdeveloped. All but the Northeast Line would become completely silent after two or three thousand coordinates. It wasn't until 2022 that the Northwest and Southeast Lines were populated by explorers, who acted as pioneers and made messages all the way to [X:-10,000 Y:10,000] and [X:10,000 Y:-10,000].

To this day, the Southwest Line remains desolate after the first thousand or so coordinates. As of September 2024, not a single soul has scrolled to [X:-10,000 Y:-1000] along the intended path. Though that is not to say that nobody has traveled there legitimately. In 2022, a prolific explorer known as Mandrake reached 10k Southwest by scrolling left from Omega City.

Miscellaneous Lines/Trails[edit | edit source]

SPLATOON

The Mainpage is also home to a diverse collection of miscellaneous trails that travel in every conceivable direction. There are some that run straight and others that bend and curve, some that are hand-made and others that were generated by scripts.

Many of these more unconventional trails are short and unpopulated, ending abruptly without there being anything interesting along the way. Others have slightly more activity, and others yet rival the Cardinal Roads/Lines in popularity. The True Diagonal, for example, is one of the most famous journeys in all of YWOT. And likewise the SPLATOON Line has one of the most fascinating backstories in the history of the entire site.

It is important to note that only a few active travelers are needed to make a path seem lived-in. Many trails and lines in YWOT are populated by messages from only one or two users.

Rainbow Road

The Void[edit | edit source]

As an infinite canvas with no**** limits, the vast majority of the Mainpage will always be Void: complete emptiness isolated thousands of screens away from activity.

Past 1000 coordinates, all you need to do to see true silence is scroll a few screens off the beaten path. Along the roads of Mainpage there are numerous existential ponderings about the sheer size of The Void(Not to be confused with the black Void, which is a popular form of spam).

Closer to Spam Central, however, you are bound to run into something if you scroll about the emptiness for long enough. And even in the most remote reaches of the page there is bound to be a few unreachable secrets planted by teleporters or bored travelers.

The Mainpage's Void, as seen in /~fp/photographWorlds. Sparse fragments of text can be seen littered around the emptiness.

World Limits[edit | edit source]

The limit past which YWOT will no longer load seems to be 2,251,799,813,685,248 coordinates on any side, which is same as the world limit for Our World of Text(except OWOT will actually save the edits you make there).

The first person known to reach the limit was Anonymousellama21, who teleported there on July 19th, 2023. Upon reaching the edge they were met with an unyielding wall of grey chunks.

536,870,911 coordinates, on the other hand, is the farthest you can go before the server will no longer save your edits. Many users have left messages at this distance as part of the YWOT Stamping Tournament.

The tournament to sign your name at 536,870,911, the farthest distance where edits can be saved.

Maps[edit | edit source]

Multiple users have attempted to create maps of the Mainpage.

Their efforts can be found here.

Map by Mandrake


Mainpage Snapshots[edit | edit source]

Left: Taken by /~fp/ in 2017.  Right: Taken by anonymousellama21 in 2023. Both show 1000+ coordinates on all sides. Edited by LiquidVicinity to make details more visible.

Large-scale snapshots of the Mainpage have been created by FP and Anonymousellama21. One of these images serves as the background of this wiki.

The largest of these captures show 1000+ coordinates in every direction, but Anonymousellama21 has expressed interest in making one that encompasses 10,0000 coordinates on all sides.

FP's collection of Mainpage screenshots can be found at /~fp/photographworlds. Anonymousellama's 1k screenshot can be found here and enables users to zoom in extremely close(almost enough to see individual text), provided that their computer can render the image. A lower res version of the screenshot can be found here.

Mainpage Archives[edit | edit source]

YWOT has been reset more than once.

The previous world was not the first.

-Fang, March 4th, 2011

Andrew Badr creates an archive of the Mainpage each time he resets it(Ex. in 2009 and 2015). It is important to note that not every archive is necessarily accompanied by a reset.

A snapshot of the 5th archive by fp. The black areas are all spam of various origins.

A list of archives.

Evolution[edit | edit source]

  • As the Mainpage draws its users from all corners of the web, the archives serve as time capsules for Internet culture as a whole.
    • Messages from each archive reflect the memes, events and pop media of their respective time periods.
  • In the beginning users would leave their emails for others to find. As of 2011 this tradition was largely replaced by the sharing of Reddit accounts. By 2024, however, Discord has long since become the dominant means of communication between YWOT users.
  • Spam was much more prolific in earlier iterations of the Mainpage, owing to a larger userbase along with fewer protections against scripting.
    • The "ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US" copypasta seemed to be a particularly timeless presence, being spammed excessively from 2009 to 2015.
    • In 2013 there was a campaign to alleviate this problem by making the Mainpage member-only.
  • In its initial state YWOT would use up a massive amount of memory, such that scrolling just 200 coordinates used to consume over a gigabyte of RAM. This made it so that any amount of traveling was a logistical nightmare and users would minimize their screens in fear of crashing.
    • Lag seemed to be particularly heavy as well. The first big city in Northern YWOT was named "Lag City" in order to commemorate this(it was located at roughly Y: 130, which was a monumental pilgrimage at the time).
  • In the olden days, YWOT used to have a different coordinate system. In the very beginning, on the other hand, it had no coordinates at all.[6]
    • Y:74 in old coordinates translates to roughly Y:130 in current coordinates.

Current Mainpage Retrospective[edit | edit source]

The current Mainpage turned 9 years old in July of 2024 and is the longest lasting iteration by far. As a result it also has the most content, though the userbase that built it is now largely inactive.

The "Golden Age" of YWOT seemed to be between 2011 and 2013, in the era after Vsauce mentioned YWOT in a video.[7] This period suffered from mass spam, however, as a result of the booming community. Andrew has since updated YWOT to block out most scripts.

There have been a few instances of mass spam in recent years, such as Kubex300's exploits and the Among Us Virus. All of these damages were restored by FP, who has a backup of the entire Mainpage.

More notably, the Mainpage was locked for five months from August 10th, 2020 to January 6th, 2021. During this period the YWOT community was forced to either leave the site or seek refuge in subworlds like /~public or /forexample, which served as replacement mainpages. It is believed by many that the 2020 Lockdown had a disastrous impact on YWOT's already meager user count. And indeed, multiple users(such as the ManHatingZone faction) have either left the site or migrated to OWOT during the period where Mainpage was frozen.

Currently, YWOT is likely at its deadest state since before the Vsauce shoutout. The upside to this, however, is that new users will get to explore the culmination of 9 years worth of contributions; and fortunately in a period of relative calm.

2b2t nether map

Trivia[edit | edit source]

  • It has been noted that snapshots of the Mainpage bear close resemblance to a map of 2b2t's nether.
    • Both feature a dense, roughly square shaped center with lines branching out in (semi-)cardinal directions.
    • Both have grids that run through the void.
    • YWOT is frequently compared to 2b2t due to it being an infinite, multiplayer sandbox where users can build, explore and grief other peoples' creations.
    • Along this line of logic, 2b2t can be seen as a model for what YWOT would look like with a larger userbase(user factions, dedicated griefing campaigns, detailed art projects, generally more chaos).
    • It is important to note that YWOT was created in August 2009, making it over a year older than 2b2t[8] and just a few months younger than Minecraft itself.[9]
    • Users on the Unofficial Discord have joked about getting Andrew Badr to make a YWOT Minecraft server.
  • Some users exclusively spend their time in subworlds and pay little attention to the Mainpage.
  • www.yourworldoftext.com/~andrew redirects to the Mainpage, suggestive that the Mainpage is Andrew Badr's userpage.
    • /~andrew has at least one subpage in the form of /~andrew/wotd, which can also be accessed via www.yourworldoftext.com/wotd.

References[edit | edit source]