 If you spend enough time working for the SCP Foundation, you're bound to get asked the question. And it's funny, I think, that the SCP Foundation employees are the ones most likely to ask you the question. Although, if you think about it, nobody else probably could since they don't know what the SCP Foundation is. But no matter what, the question will come up. Maybe around the lunch table when you're trying to eat on Friday's pizza day, or maybe a long night where you have to monitor an anomaly that's going to explode and destroy the entire site, and everyone's just a little bit too nervous to go without speaking for a long period of time. Why did you decide to join the SCP Foundation? It's the big question. And then we all have to kind of struggle with after a time because, well, let's face it, there aren't a whole lot of really good reasons. The pay is alright, it's not terrible. The benefits are okay, but in the end you don't even come out of it with job experience you can use anywhere else. And trust me, the retirement package here isn't great. It's mostly just take your amnestics and go. You don't even get to die with a sense of understanding that you've done something good unless you die on the job, which could happen. In fact, probably will. But we don't know any of these things until after we've already joined and, well, after we join we learn that the world is a lot different than we thought it was and we get this hero complex where all the stories that we believed growing up turn out to be real and it's our job to actually do something about it. You know, there isn't really a word for patriot, but for earth. There's just a definition of loyalty to all these little individual arbitrary lines that we draw. Loyalty to the continent of this or loyalty to the country of that. Or even loyalty to the schools you went to or the family that you belong to. There's really no one word that describes loyalty to the entirety of humanity, even if that's the most important thing that you could possibly have. When they asked me to join the foundation it was just to write a story for a gang to try and contain some weird creature that could only live in interactive media. And then I was done with that in like a month and they wanted me to find another place to work for them or take an amnesty and get the hell out. It's not like I was jumping at the opportunity to get my memory wiped so I took a job in the ethics committee. But we can go back to the origin. Why did I join in the first place? Honestly I didn't believe what they were saying but the money was good. For somebody just out of college with two of the most useless degrees you could imagine. English literature and philosophy. But lately I've discovered that the foundation doesn't really make those kinds of offers without a lot of homework being done beforehand. I have a feeling they probably knew me better than I knew myself at the age of 26. But it was impossible you know for someone to tell me that I had an opportunity to save the world if only I'd take this job. You know you you feel a morbid curiosity when someone says something like that. And like even if you don't believe it you still want to go investigate it and just double check to be sure you know. I mean if you don't believe in ghosts or monsters but you still hear a weird noise you still go check it out even if you don't think you're going to find anything. And then suddenly you're in and ghosts and monsters really exist. And it really does become your job to stop these monsters from eating the innocent or destroying the world. And it really does test your loyalty to humanity. Because what does loyalty to some arbitrarily drawn national borders mean if you're dealing with a cake that's going to double itself when it's not eaten? Eventually such a thing would probably end up consuming the entire solar system in a weird ball of cake. I mean that is what we're dealing with here right? The absurdity is only really met with an equal measure of danger. Frankly it's surprising to me that the world hasn't already ended. But the SCP foundation does its best to ensure that that time is at least delayed. That's the thing you're always going to end up getting asked eventually what made you decide to start working for the foundation. But once you've worked here long enough people stop asking. There's a weird sort of hero worship I think of the people who have been here for more than five years and I know that doesn't seem like a lot but there's a lot of risk involved in this job and most people understand that. So if you've been here for longer than five years most people treat you like you're some sort of a hero. But of course we're not. We're just loyal to humanity. And if you think about it that's not even all that much of a serious commitment. Oh what's that? You'd like to save the world? Well I would hope so. You are also someone who lives in it and as I start getting older I've started to think about these things and why we are who we are. Why does the foundation do what it does? Let's forget the individuals. Why is it that we as an organization are the ones who are tasked with trying to save the world from itself? Because that's what we're doing. These anomalies aren't outside of the world they are of the world much like we are. Just a bunch of chess pieces being moved here and there and everywhere trying desperately to take each other's kings. And sure the more material we capture the more pieces we take off the board, the safer we feel but inevitably the game is going to be over. And that's sort of where the chess analogues in because when the game is over that's it. We're done. And the best we can hope for is that we can look back at our lives and I guess our time at the SCP foundation and think it doesn't really matter why I joined it just matters that I did and that I did the best I could. But understand this because you're new and you know I feel like it's something that you should learn. There's no room for heroes here. You're not going to be a knight in shining armor. You're not going to save the world from some grand universe altering threat. What you're going to do is you're going to come into work you're going to do your best and you along with everyone else together might actually accomplish something worthwhile but no one will ever remember that you did it. Your name will be lost to the annals of history. If you go downstairs there's a wall side 88's lost heroes wall it's filled with stars no names a little bit like some of the intelligence agencies do just a star for everyone who's lost their lives at the SCP foundation. One day you will probably be a star on that wall maybe today maybe tomorrow but one day that's going to be you three years ago after I'd been here and finally gotten settled in that wall went from just a few dozen stars to several hundred and the day it happened was nothing special there was no reason for it to happen I don't remember any of the people who were gone I don't know why 300 stars showed up overnight I do know that there were a lot of empty offices but there were no names on the doors no names on any of the paperwork inside left unfinished just blank gold stars that is why you joined the SCP foundation not for glory not to be remembered certainly not for the money just to do your best anything less and you don't deserve a star anything more well you're one of the lucky ones today I didn't write anything down I just kind of improvised a little bit of a thing maybe I should write it down so I posted up on the wiki at some point but yeah I literally just improvised a thing in character as Dr. Sumerian hopefully it was enjoyable if you liked it scroll down and hit the subscribe button and then hit the notification bell next to that so you'll be notified when I upload new content and if you really like this content and want to support it that includes the versus series which I know I didn't do any of today but we'll get there the you're wrong about series the harsh critique series or even the dank memes from site 19 series head on over to patreon.com forward slash de sumerian and pledge at any level at five dollars or higher you'll get your name on this board right here no gold stars for you at ten dollars you get a review of an article you've written for the scp wiki so that I can give you some feedback at twenty dollars I offer a full co-authoring assistant so check it out pledge at any level you don't have to take those services if you don't want to if you just want to support the channel that's perfectly fine too and I'll very much appreciate it thank you for letting me know that I'm not alone out here and I'll see you all again on Tuesday