Ulillillia - The Platform Master

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Chive Turkey said:
People tried their best to turn him into a lolcow for twenty years now and they've failed at every opportunity. His sobriety, self-awareness and desire to improve himself in spite of his craziness is a breath of fresh air on an Internet where even supposedly neurotypical people acting like anti-social narcissists is not just common, but considered to be the norm.

Lulz is in the eye of the beholder. Ullillilla might be crazy, but his personality and actions have made him the subject of empathy, rather than derision. He demonstrates that just having severe mental issues and an audience does not automatically a lolcow make. If that were the case, we might as well be making threads on literal Downies for the crime of having a Facebook page.
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I agree that he's not a lolcow, but on the other hand he's not nearly as cool or fascinating as a lot of people make him out to be either. To me he just seems like a relatively decent dude who happens to have a mental illness that makes him somewhat quirky. There's a small cult of autists that started fawning over him at some point over the years and if you listen to them he's some kind of supremely unique outsider artist, but the whole idea of outsider art/art brut is basically a pretentious form of gawking at a weirdo.
 
ScamL Likely said:
I agree that he's not a lolcow, but on the other hand he's not nearly as cool or fascinating as a lot of people make him out to be either. To me he just seems like a relatively decent dude who happens to have a mental illness that makes him somewhat quirky. There's a small cult of autists that started fawning over him at some point over the years and if you listen to them he's some kind of supremely unique outsider artist, but the whole idea of outsider art/art brut is basically a pretentious form of gawking at a weirdo.
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Oh, I definitely agree. The guy has had a mildly heartwarming story arc, but some of his more dedicated followers have been revering him as some kind of autistic savant yogi, and it seems like an entirely different universe from the far more nunerous casual observers who just like to hear that he's doing alright from time to time.
 
God damn, I love seeing Uli so happy after all these years. Back when I was a freshman in college I was going through some rough times and honestly reading his website over and over was comfy af and helped me through a lot of it. Sad to see that it doesn’t exist anymore. I should really get around to ordering my own copy of TLOTTEM.
 
I think of all the "internet people" more of his lexicon had entered me and my friends for the longest time than any other. "Top favorite", "compatibility level", degreasing pizza, stuff about mirrors, "let's go mountain climbing" from Bubsy 3D, etc.

It was pretty awesome to see him get better over time. When he posted those pictures of himself in the lake it was like humanity achieved something.

This doc is bringing so many feels.
 
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ScamL Likely said:
I agree that he's not a lolcow, but on the other hand he's not nearly as cool or fascinating as a lot of people make him out to be either. To me he just seems like a relatively decent dude who happens to have a mental illness that makes him somewhat quirky. There's a small cult of autists that started fawning over him at some point over the years and if you listen to them he's some kind of supremely unique outsider artist, but the whole idea of outsider art/art brut is basically a pretentious form of gawking at a weirdo.
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The concept of outsider art literally was Dubuffet looking at artists working outside the art world such mental asylum patients and prisoners ho had no art training (usually) was were so able to create artwork free from the constraints of the closed off art world at the time which excluded outsiders who werent trained at art schools. Now outsider art is co-opted by the art world into its own box and gallerys which has its pros and cons. When people were talking about Nick as an outsider art they were talking about the sheer strangeness of a book written in the format of a computer RPG with its own consistent rules written with no regards to the reader and written purely as a form of self-expression for Nick.

I found the book for you to read as well
 

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Chaos Theorist said:
The concept of outsider art literally was Dubuffet looking at artists working outside the art world such mental asylum patients and prisoners ho had no art training (usually) was were so able to create artwork free from the constraints of the closed off art world at the time which excluded outsiders who werent trained at art schools. Now outsider art is co-opted by the art world into its own box and gallerys which has its pros and cons. When people were talking about Nick as an outsider art they were talking about the sheer strangeness of a book written in the format of a computer RPG with its own consistent rules written with no regards to the reader and written purely as a form of self-expression for Nick.

I found the book for you to read as well
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I already understood the concept, I just don't buy into it even in its original form and especially not in relation to Nick. I've seen excerpts of the book before too and I'm not impressed by it. I like obscure and avant garde fiction well enough, but the idea that Nick did anything that unique in any genuinely interesting way with his book is nonsense to me. Using hex codes for every color and describing actions as game mechanics with an obsessive level of detail isn't some sort of otherworldly oddity or revelation, it's just a gimmick at best even if it's supposed to be the way he actually sees the world. And it's just fetishism to fawn over that quirk because the idea that it's a product of OCD and video games is the selling point rather than the resulting work itself, which isn't all that different from a lot of crappier things you might find on fanfiction.com once you get past the specific nature of his stylistic quirks. I've written all sorts of shit myself, including a book with no protagonist or overarching plot and another book where none of the characters recur from chapter to chapter or even have names on top of that. Those sorts of deviations from the norm can also be dismissed as gimmicks or quirks just as easily regardless of my intent.

Just writing a novel isn't hard. It's more a matter of persistence than talent skill or an awareness of/adherence to standard elements of storytelling. The end result won't necessarily be good or worth reading at all, but I'd say anyone can write a book if they really want to just to say they did. I don't have anything against Nick or how he expresses himself, but I don't buy into the idea that it's some sort of example of "pure" or "naive" expression, especially since it's so heavily influenced by his obsessive relationship with video games, which are themselves a man-made entertainment product. Legend of the 10 Elemental Masters isn't something an average author would write, but then there's already so much more to fiction than conventional storytelling if you move past airport fiction, bestsellers, and pop culture that there's no reason to even care about the "average" author without having to look for people like Nick to gawk at. I can't see anyone other than a fetishist obsessed with the mere idea of eccentricity genuinely being in awe of Nick's writing.
 
AirdropShitposts said:
It was pretty awesome to see him get better over time. When he posted those pictures of himself in the lake it was like humanity achieved something.

This doc is bringing so many feels.
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Him snorkeling in blue water and being happy about it, even saying that he was completely wrong in the past, was great. It's like Charlie Brown finally kicking the football, it doesn't make him the greatest football player of all time, but you're happy for him.

He also said something along the lines of him regretting that his fears made him waste so many years of his life.
 
I haven't been keeping up with him at all. Glad to see he's still around. Looks like he's lost weight, too.
 
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