 So this is a trustee guide, the story of Ulilia. Apparently, this is something to do related to Washington. So let's let's get into it. The Internet is full of unique people who have put their personality on display for potentially millions of spectators. Some are celebrated, some are mocked and even hated. Some have a certain wholesome charm that make them unique. Some have experienced the whole spectrum of public opinion. But one individual who rose to Internet fame in the early 2010s serves as an example where the initial exposure was so peculiar that many didn't know how to interpret it. But there's another unusual thing. Not me wondering, what is this hero about? He seems a bit odd. But as the Internet grew to know this person, his creativity and outsider thinking, what was once mocked began to be respected, admired and even considered inspirational. Originally, I had the reinspaced one eighth of a scaling unit all the way out to two scaling units without you know, where this tree right here is approximately take a little bit. This is the story of Nick Smith, also known as Alulalia. Alulalia, at first glance, it seems rather unusual. The story of Alulalia began in the early 2000s when the satirical site, Something Awful, was one of the most popular online forums. Serving as the breeding ground for some of the Internet's earliest memes and inside jokes. Often, forum members would discover an obscure website deep within the Internet, which might include potentially bizarre or comedic content. And these forums would discuss and analyze them in the irreverent way they became known for. In December 2001, a thread popped up centered around a troubled high school student. I mean, the the inception of this this website or at least like the time that they've been using it. I was probably like three years old, three or four years old. Never, never really was exposed to any of this. Went by the unique name of Alulalia, although his real name was Nick. His website, an early Internet Angel Fire blog, not unlike what many similarly aged kids of the early 2000s were creating, featured the writings of an alienated young man who was clearly retreating into his own fantasy reality in order to cope with problems of fitting in. I'm currently in 11th. That's that's that's a really interesting thing, because I know that from talking to a lot of autistic people, that there is a trend of us somewhat, especially when we don't know that we're autistic. For me, I knew that I was autistic, but I still had this. But like the fantasy aspect of. You know, it's kind of retreating from the experiences that you're having, particularly like around secondary school, high school age. Middle school, maybe if we're in America, I can't remember what the age range is. Yeah, we we tend to experience a lot of difficult things. And for some of us, we can sometimes truly believe that we are like aliens or supernatural creatures or, you know, anything really that that kind of helps us understand the situation that we're in. You know, it can be it can be really difficult sometimes. Great, his about me section read. I have over 60 bullies. There we go. Bullying bullies actually give me some valuable rewards. I have a massive defense value that is more than 50% above average. I've taken so much damage and recovered so often that my defense raised an exchange to being more resistant. I absorb insults. All insults have a positive effect on me. The worse the insult, the better the effect. There's something awful for. That's that's that's weird. That's kind of like a strange. I don't know if the right word would be like say, though that's a good stick kind of like thing. If that if that's how we got through that that period of time of his life. I can understand, like, I mean, definitely when I was in school, I was bullied quite a bit, both like harassment wise and just like bog standard bullying. I definitely did not have the the social tools, awareness capabilities to protect myself at that time. So I can understand, like, trying to have a different perspective on it to to lessen the impact of it, I guess makes sense. To have their own particular code of conduct that some may have seen as chaotic and many of the initial responses to Nick were that of ridicule. Posters mocked him. Some even spammed his guest book with obscene pictures. However, as more of Ella Lillia's webpage was brought into the discussion, the tone pivoted. What this individual lacked and the ability to connect with people his own age, he was clearly able to replace with incredible quantitative reasoning, imagination and creativity. In a page titled My Color System, Nick provided an in depth explanation of how he saw colors in hexadecimal format, factoring in luminosity and distance, even how to adjust for environmental factors such as fog, complete with animated examples Nick made himself. An overview for something nicked up to his status system was laid out on a different page. Using his proclivity for numbers and his interest in video game character statistics, Nick had found a way to break down each attribute in his life he wished to improve upon. That's really, really, really interesting because I feel like what Nick is trying to do is he is trying to provide an air of certainty and logic to events that are not so much like that. Like that's definitely something that I can relate to to some degree. Trying to turn negative into a positive, good intent, you're damn hard. In school, I just hid in a computer lab and music department. After I was bullied, I stayed away from the people that competing teacher just let you play computer games. Yeah, library for me. That was where the computers were. I mean, I stepped on now and again, you know, and I had some instances, particularly as they got a little bit older going through secondary school, where I did like stand up for myself and it did go well. And I stood up for other people as well. But for the majority of it, it was just kind of like dealing with it, you know, or avoiding at some degree. Be it short story writing, his reading comprehension for the novels he was assigned in class to even doing the dishes in mathematical formulas, which he used to measure progress. Everything he did would grant him experience points. As if he were a role playing game character leveling up in a variety of skills. Nick had essentially figured out a way to gamify his life. On another page, Nick detailed something called his mind game, which was an ongoing open world experience he played purely in his imagination. Illustrations of all of its menus, character parties and controls were provided. And according to this write up on forces of geek, his tendency to slip into his mind game at unpredictable points throughout the day is why he chose to postpone obtaining his driver's license. A dream journal organized into categories and often accompanied by Nick's own animations was listed on another page, along with some calculus to explain the dream physics and numeric representations of what he called the fun factor and scary factor of each dream. Nick had even begun making a video game based on his dreams. A 2D physics based platformer called the Supernatural Olympics. This is a hundred mile an hour. And if you think business fast, of which you can't go any faster in this version, try answer to teleport nine thousand mile an hour. There was no denying Nick was exceptional, although the unique way his mind work didn't come without its disadvantages. He'd restricted his diet. That is amazing. That's that's really, really, really interesting. Like I can I can see myself possibly doing something like that if I didn't have the interest that I had when I was younger. You know, it was my taekwondo. That was my science, you know, I was really interested in those things. But it's it's it's interesting in isolation when we go through, particularly through hardships and, you know, just being a different person. How how we conceptualize and understand the world around us. The way that he does is very, very curiosity sparking, very interesting. It's to a handful of unhealthy foods such as cheese pizza. Say foods. He had a self admittedly irrational fear of blue water due to its causing death for many of the early video game characters of Nick's childhood. And this was far from being his only irrational phobia. His fear of mirrors led him to make this diagram of a department store color coded with danger areas were walking through the sight line of a mirror couldn't be avoided outlining a strategic path. Nick would take an order to pick up the items he needed. Certain six letter words beginning with the letter P, such as person, gave Nick feelings of unease and he would often scratch them out of a school papers. I used to I used to have a fear of reflections. It was caused by watching a particular episode on Doctor Who. This this lady appeared on the TV and she would like jump out of the TV and like suck people's faces off and then they would just have like a blank face. That terrified me so much that for like the next two or three years I had to cover up my TV in my room with like a dressing gown because I just couldn't stand to have like the TV just like it wasn't even on. It was just a blank TV, but it just terrified me so much. And the same with those goddamn weeping angels. My God, like the nightmares that I got for that kind of stuff. I also had a heliophobia when I was younger, so I had a fear of the sun. I don't know. In my brain, it just felt like a lot more painful than it then it was. I saw that particularly like the feeling, to be honest, but in my brain it kind of translated as being painful because I didn't like the sensory experience of it. Members were inclined to suggest traditional help, family intervention, therapy and medication. Others argued this would destroy his creative spark and what he truly needed was nurturing and direction. Many wanted to reach out to Nick and some even began emailing him. But they were urged to stop by others as it wasn't known whether such attention would be helpful or hurtful. One user summed up the entirety of the discussion by writing the following. It's been fascinating watching the mood of this thread go from scorn and ridicule to stark fear and bewilderment to a cautious empathy to outright sympathy and now to righteous guardianship. The safest course of action, many agreed, was to simply observe Nick to interfere as little as possible and see what he did with his creative energy. And over the years, they witnessed Ella Lilia go on to make some of the most unique artistic creations the internet has ever seen. Well, while you're away, I took note of your walking and I noticed you have about a one inch bounce. I have one inch bounce. Yeah, every step you make, your head goes up and down about one inch. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Neutral. It wasn't long after the initial set. OK, I'm going to tell this story again because I find it absolutely hilarious. There is a particular, just from my personal experience, I don't want to put this out there and be like, OK, this is how you tell that someone's autistic, but I can very often look at the way people walk and have a pretty pretty darn good guess at whether they're autistic or not. Just about like the way that they carry themselves, like the perhaps the bounce in their walk, perhaps the what they're doing, what they're looking at, you know, if they're like looking at the floor for vestibular input to counter out the lack of vestibular input. I was talking to my mum about it when we were driving somewhere. I think we're going to get like a coffee or something. And I said, OK, I can do this. And she was like, no, no, you can't do that. You can't do that. It's not it's not something that you can do just by looking at somebody. And we're driving past this guy and this guy was kind of in his rucksack and had some like headphones on. And I was like, hmm, they said they seem to be a bit autistic. The way that they're walking. And she was like, no, it's not it's not how you do it. Tell me you can't say that. That's that's bad. And she looked at this person and realized that they're one of her ex-pupils. And she's a special needs teacher. So she like she confirmed it on the spot. I was like goals there. I've done it quite a few times as well. It's very it's very strange sometimes what like my autism radar is like. Um, sometimes it's quite difficult, especially with late diagnosed individuals, particularly women in my experience, but there you go. The bounce, the bounce is sometimes something that happens. It's like the, you know, like some autistic people they like to rock back and forth because they like the pressure on their ankles because it kind of it's quite soothing to them. You kind of get a similar sort of I get a similar sort of experience like bouncing as I walk. The awful thread that Nick's YouTube channel was discovered. Luckily for those who were interested, the channel provided a very thorough documentation of his day to day life, which he lived alongside his parents and sister in the small town of Minot, North Dakota. Brony's society's harrow. It included projects he was working on. If you look closely, you can see the trees here, although they kind of blended in with the Cameron Monkeys fairly well. But to get the best of you up so easy. And how he spent his leisure time. I'm having fun gathering orbs to the infinite. One could get a complete picture of a la Lilia if they were willing to spend the time watching. Although the sensory play in the day provided evidence that Nick's imagination and ability to channel his focus could produce some interesting projects. What this website had failed to mention was that in 2000, he'd written a novel. I'll be at the Twin Cities Book Festival offering my book, The Legend of the Ten Elemental Masters for sale. $15 per normal copy, $18 per autographed copy. The story is based on what Nick described in his website as the Ten Elements, along with the chart describing how each element either strengthened or weakened the other. His prose uniquely his own reflects the way Nick's mind operates, assigning numeric values to nearly every detail. So interesting. Characters give height and weight descriptions to the decimal point. Colors represented in hexadecimal format. Ivan is a 14, two-third year old eighth grade student who is a sports enthusiast with an above average muscle mass. He is a 152 pound Native American, 70 inches tall. He wears short, white socks, medium priced, fairly old running shoes, an orange cotton t-shirt and dark blue violet elastic silk capris. The capris have holes, one 16 inch in diameter, forming equilateral triangles spaced a quarter inch apart. And like many of Nick's creations, reader confusion was unacceptable. And so he'd created visuals to accompany the text. But perhaps what's taking that that miscommunication out of the equation. Love it. This guy's just this guy's a really interesting person. But the majority of attention was that Nick had continued making video games. Years after the release of the Supernatural Olympics, Nick set out to expand his original game to create a fully playable representation of his mind game, which he called platform masters. The coding self taught us it is leaves no detail unpolished. As the character moves, Nick's use of parallax scrolling maintains a realistic perspective to the trees in both the foreground and the background. The purpose of the game was to land on the gold platform before the time ran out with enemies and collectibles along the way. But what made this game unique was the nearly limitless freedoms which the game granted the player, most notably the height in which characters could jump. Easily see the Earth curvature going on and the stars should easily be visible. With over 300 levels and many beautifully rendered worlds, this game was to be Nick's opus. Unfortunately, Nick's focus was not as singular as one might hope. As evident in many of his uploads, his affinity for spending countless hours playing video games with the sole intent of uncovering bugs and glitches often ate up large amounts of his free time. This addiction was so rampant that Nick's obsession with one video game in particular, Bubsy 3D, a mid 90s PlayStation 1 platformer in which he spent 500 hours and level two alone was what he began to be known for. These are some secrets and the second level of Bubsy 3D. I know this game extremely well. Did you know that even this isn't the highest possible place you can stand on in this level? Years passed and although Nick continuously po- For me, I really enjoyed a game called Croc. Don't know if you guys have ever played Croc. It was a PlayStation 1 game. Obviously Croc, Spyro, Crash Bandicoot. Great games, loved them. I think that the release like the new version of it, I think. I was really young when I completed that. It was also a Crash Team Racing as well that I played. I don't know if that was on PS2 or PS1, but I managed to complete Spyro. I was quite young as well. Like I remember playing the end game like the nasty gnawk boss sequence like so many times and then when I actually came to play it in adulthood when the like the HD graphics version came out. First time, got him. Sayre, Crash Bandicoot, first time absolutely destroyed the boss. To progress reports on platform masters, many began to worry that he may never release it. Otherwise, Nick seemed to be doing alright. Although his personality quirks were still on full display, he'd managed to find workarounds to some of his more harmful lifestyle habits. Using his typical mathematical approach to self-improvement, Nick shed 80 pounds of body weight by simply degreasing his pizza, as shown in this tutorial posted to his channel. Each gram of fat is 9 calories. Each gram of carbohydrates is 4. Protein is also 4. However, one thing to note is that when food is very warm, fat tends to be a liquid. And thus you can use paper towels to soak it up. By the early 2010s, a lot of... So this is an interesting thing because I think I mentioned a little bit earlier about like safe foods. A lot of autistic people have a condition called ARFID, which is avoidant restriction, avoidant restrictive food intake disorder. It's something very, very common for autistic people. Basically, it just limits you to a certain amount of foods that you can tolerate eating. I can imagine in this case it would be pizza. I know some people who can't stand certain foods and will literally just be unable to eat them. Like you can imagine why they can't eat them. In terms of the thing that happens after they eat them. But it's an interesting one. I mean, it's not really something that I have experienced. Mostly because my family was quite... At least my mom was quite diligent in getting me to try new things. I do actually have a podcast where I was talking to her about these types of things. Even things like sports and social events and things like that. She would just always have the attitude of, OK, we try it. If we don't like it, we don't have to. And basically they did the same with my diet. And when I got a bit older, when I learned a little bit more about the brain, I think it's something clicked after watching the Inside Out movie about disgust being around, helping us to avoid poison and decay and things like that and unhealthy, unsanitary things and also people, I think. But that analogy was really helpful to me because I could be like, oh, OK, so what is the best way to train my brain into realizing that something's not poisonous? Of course, making forcing myself to eat it and not being ill afterwards. Inversely, I've had the inverse kind of the reverse experience with chicken korma, it gave me food poisoning. Or like a bear gram at Donald's that gave me food poisoning. Still got to eat either of them because the association is just so strong in my brain. But for other things, particularly around mushrooms, couldn't stand mushrooms. It was mostly because of the canned versions of them. But once I actually had the proper ones and I made myself have a couple of mushrooms wherever I could, eventually I started to like them. Like that disgust aspect of it kind of went away. And I'm not saying this is a fix all. Like I can imagine that there's a lot of people with with Arthur who really struggle. And, you know, I definitely do have safe foods, which is a concept that some people have come up with, whereby there are particular foods that we will default kind of go towards and consume if we have the choice. And I definitely have a few of those, but they tend to rotate, change. And if I have too much of one, one thing I tend to, you know, it's kind of a feeling of overindulgence. And, you know, I have to switch something else. But I have a problem with texture when it comes to food. That is that is the thing that I struggled with the texture. Cherry tomatoes can't stand them. Can tomatoes like with something else or tomato sauce or anything of that nature? Great, brilliant. But like new potatoes, cherry tomatoes, like can't deal with it. Yeah, tuna tuna is one of those things. I like tuna steak. I can't stand the can tuna. It's too too strong of an input into my my nose. Yeah, I have become a full blown internet celebrity with many popular forms actively following him. Articles about a la Lilia were being published on pop culture websites. The something awful forces of autism with them all these years decided to reach out to Nick to see if he'd be willing to do and ask me anything. Now that Nick was an adult in his mid 20s, there wasn't much resistance to the idea. And many had been curious to get a deeper insight into his unusual thought processes. One of the first questions centered around Nick's music preferences for years, he'd been listening to only a handful of songs, mostly video game soundtracks, but it shows him to make different variations of the songs by increasing and decreasing the beats per minute. He claimed this was for a variety so we could get 20 man's deep in the hyper fixation. You know that you're obsessed with something when you play like the soundtrack to something like I get. I got that sometimes in movies as well, like I just want to put myself back in the movie. Every night I would go to sleep with the movie playing in the background, you know, good times. I didn't really have anything like that at the moment. I really need to find myself like a really good comfort show to watch just at the end of the day, you know, different songs out of one. Someone asked if he had any friends either online or in his home life. He answered in classic Nick fashion, defining friendship as those who coexist somewhere on the compatibility scale, with 6.25 to 25 being an acquaintance and 100 to 400 being a best friend. He's only had three people in his life to ever reach best friend status. It's pretty good. When asked about the unique name of Ella Lilia, he responded that he chosen it because it contains the word ill twice and he considered himself to be mentally ill. Many just wanted to offer encouragement and to let him know they couldn't wait to play his game when it was released. But as the years continued, a release date for platform master seemed as far away as ever. Nick was a perfectionist, constantly improving things about the game, reworking graphics, expanding levels. Kind of the luster's redesign is now complete. And wow, is it way more detailed than it has ever been before. And being a one man production team for a technically impressive game with over 300 levels and no budget whatsoever, even an estimated release date seemed like too much to ask. And in 2011, these fears were compounded when tragedy struck Nick, his family and his hometown of Minot, North Dakota. Okey dokey. This morning, the center of mine on North Dakota is filling up with water. And over the next week, that city of 41,000 people expects its worst flooding in history. The flooding of Nick's hometown caused the relocation of over a quarter of the city's population. Streets had to be navigated by boat. The National Guard came to assist with evacuation and the city's infrastructure, businesses and private properties saw more than a billion dollars in damages. But the timing for Ella Lilia couldn't have been more unusual, as this was when a film crew had traveled from New York in order to make a documentary about his internet celebrity. The film was to be produced by a group of three filmmakers who formed the company Everything Works. Over the course of six weeks, they followed and interviewed Nick and his family as well as the citizens of Minot gathering footage for the film. Early the following year, they released This Trailer. Hi, I'm Nick Smith, aka Ella Lilia. Welcome to Minot, North Dakota. The excitement for this upcoming documentary was substantial and perhaps it's got some things on his got a bio, whole bio out there. LinkedIn profile. The pressure to release something worthy of the attention it had been getting overwhelmed and stalled the team of filmmakers. Time passed with the documentary still an editing limbo and its supporters growing increasingly restless. Finally, in April of 2013, Everything Works producer Trevor Dewan released a statement on his blog explaining the delay. Apparently they had toured a draft of the film to various unnamed festivals where it was poorly received with their confident shake and the team decided to begin a complete re-edit of the film. Nick would never release his game until it was good enough to meet his high standards and attention to detail, Trevor explained. And I refuse to betray our honor. I can relate to that. High standards. My God. Affectionism. Cripples. Cripples people. Nick's legacy or the audience that has waited anxiously. You deserve a great and interesting documentary about Nick and you are going to get that. Although many understood the missteps of inexperienced filmmakers and agreed that a delayed film was better than a bad film, the lack of updates following this statement left fans of Ola Lilia with waning hope. Many attempted to reach out to the filmmakers even offering to buy the raw footage in order to edit it themselves. But with over six years since the last communication from the filmmakers, coupled with the fact that everything works seems to have disbanded, the intimate glimpse into the life of Nick Smith may tragically never surface. Due to Nick's diminished online presence, his internet celebrity has faded in recent years, although he still seems to enjoy interacting with the fans and friends he's made throughout his time. Gotta do the animated run. In September of 2016, a YouTube channel called Alex Yard and Knuckles appeared, featuring interview footage of Nick speaking about his new job, moving out of his hometown of Minot as well as some classic Nick topics such as his dreams. My dreams are kind of foretelling the future such as airline flights, I would have never thought I'd do that back then or that I'd go swimming in very clear, very blue water which is something so wanting to do these days. He still writes fiction and released his second novel, The Secret in the Basement, in 2015. Although we still haven't seen a finished version of Platform Masters, the video game he's been working on for over a decade, it seems he's still fine tuning it to his version of perfection and perhaps one day he'll be ready to release it to the world. It's because everything's going by at 192 mile an hour. Of course, this isn't the only world with this kind of traffic either. At 35 years old, it's likely that Nick still has much more to show the world. And although the glimpse into his life, he's allowed us to see shows of mind fraught with challenges, it also shows a peculiar, yet at times, inspirational individual. From his artistic creations, his analytical and mathematical modes of thinking, his approach to self-improvement, to his methods of overcoming his phobias, Ola Lillia has cemented himself as one of the most fascinating characters the internet has ever seen. Blue water kills you. Or at least that's what I would have said 21 years ago. I wouldn't have even touched a rain puddle of all things. And yet, here I am, sunken up to my neck in it. And it's about as blue as it can ever get. How blue? I'll dunk the camera under and show ya. That is a nice video. Thank you to fellow YouTuber, Homestore Runnertron, for recommending this topic to me. If you're interested in checking out their channel, I'll link it in the description. I'd love for you to share them some support. And a big thank you to everyone who continues to recommend video subjects. If you enjoyed this video and look forward to similar content, please consider subscribing. If you'd like to support Nick and I highly recommend you do, I'll leave a link to his two novels in the description. And thank you to all my patrons who helped make these videos possible. If you'd like to support the channel, stay up to date on channel news or participate in the- I have enough of that. That has been the story of Ola Lillia. By a trustee guide. If you have enjoyed this video, make sure to go over to them. I actually like the video. Maybe give them a comment, give them a sub, making this awesome documentary. Very interesting. Very good suggestion. I can't remember who suggested it, but good on ya. That was a good video, that was nice.