 The SCP-5000 contest is upon us, so let's start talking about how you are probably wrong about SCP-5000. If you've been paying any attention to the SCP Wiki over the last, let's say, week, you'll have noticed that a huge number, as of this recording somewhere around 80 or 90, articles labeled SCP-5000 have showed up. What is happening is that there is a contest being run because the 4000-4099 block is starting to run out of space. What's going to happen is that these articles are going to be ranked by how high their ratings are, and then they're going to be allowed to choose slots based on where they place in that. So the first place will probably pick SCP-5000, and then second place gets their choice of the next possible option, probably 5,001, unless they have some number that's particularly important to them, and so on and so forth. As a side note, if a fifth SCP doesn't get the 5-5-5-5 slot, then something is terribly, terribly wrong with the Wiki. Also, as of this recording, entry has closed on the contest, so no new entries can be made, and you would not be entirely surprised at how many of the sites established author base have actually posted an article. The one that's in the lead right now is Tanhony's, followed very shortly by Yasipassi, who created the meme that's on the screen right now, and who, by the way, is the guy who puts together my meme lists. So, you know, then there's IHPs, Pissols, Tuftos, Taffeta, Kirby, Magnus, Conwell, or Ard, Rounder, House, and Nico, Siegel and Warren, DJ Cactus' Megalomania, which is highly, highly controversial, but we'll get into that in a second. As well as a couple that aren't on this image, because they were posted a little bit later, the one that pops into my mind most is probably gonna be the one from Shaggy Dreadlocks, who also, I think he was working with some other people. I know Volgen was in there, Sherm, not me, because I'm banned from contests, which isn't the purpose of this video. Maybe we'll talk about that one day. I'm universally banned from all contests until the end of time, which is great. And I've read, I think, three or four of them. I was trying to read Sacrosanct, which is Yasipassi's, but I didn't. I got about halfway through it, and I got kind of distracted by something else. And I actually consider that in my evaluation of an article. It does lean me towards a no vote, generally. But if I am reading something that doesn't keep me engaged and I get distracted, and this is a wholly subjective evaluation on my part, because sometimes I'm just not very focused on that particular day or time, and I can't pay attention, but it leaves a taste in my mouth, and I'm like, you know, I don't know, it didn't grab me. I was reading Ten Honies, which is the one that's in the lead right now, and it definitely grabbed a hold of me for the entire article. It's quite a long article. There's a lot of long articles on this. There's also some short ones. But in the end it felt very, very unsatisfying. I think there was some stuff hidden in an image at the end of the article, but I couldn't even be bothered to really look it up myself. I tried editing it with a notepad, which is the best way to find out if somebody's hidden text at the end of an image. It didn't show up, so it must be an external program that was used to do it, which is, by the way, the least efficient way to do that, because then you force someone else to pick up an external program. You can just add it in with a text. Notepad is a surprisingly powerful tool for hiding text inside images. But I'd say the one that left the biggest impact on me so far has been Megalomania, which is an article about a demon that is, let's say, being contained by Donald Trump. Let's make that very clear here. So it's about a demon. No, it's a demon or a devil. There was a very specific, in this universe, I guess, one of them can feed off of chaos or whatever. But either way, it's a otherworldly being that is being contained by Donald Trump, I think, I remember reading the article and thinking to myself, that it's a lot better than its rating suggests, which is it's only plus 20 or plus 30 or something like that, which you're like a DJ Cactus SCP that's only plus 20 or 30? But it's because it's for two reasons, really. There was a downvote brigade, as soon as it went out, I assume from a variety of people, there's a group of people who believe that the SCP Wiki should be serious all the time. And that is a very wacky SCP. In fact, I would actually argue it is too wacky, but it's not so wacky that I downvoted it. Because that's my style, I like that kind of stuff. And I'm sure that there's a lot of downvotes on there from people who just don't like the fact that it makes fun of Donald Trump and his family. Which is something you learn to live with. DJ Cactus doesn't give a shit. I'm actually planning on having him on this episode, but it didn't quite work out with the timing. But I want to have him on for two weeks from now. We're gonna have a little episode probably called You're Wrong About DJ Cactus. So stay tuned for that. Assuming nothing goes wrong, which is a huge assumption. So if that's not what shows up, don't be too surprised. And I have a lot of opinions about how the SCP Wiki has kind of evolved over the years. I think the 4K contest was really a misfire. And I know, I believe, out of all the X000 entries, like 1K, 2K, 3K, I think the 4K entry is the highest rated of them all. But personally, there's something about each of the articles that wins an SCP X000 contest that sort of shapes what that series is going to be. Now, not every article in the series is going to, you know, adhere to some sort of a pre-existing concept of what it's supposed to be, right? So like the SCP 1000 contest, which ended up with, I think it was Bigfoot because the concept was Urban Legends, and that did inform the SCPs that were created in series 2 from 1000 to 1099. And then you had Science Fiction for SCP 2000, and that really did help. If you look at SE at series 3, there's a heavy undercurrent of Science Fiction in it. More so than the other Science Fiction on the Wiki before that, but there was more Science Fiction, I think, in series 3 than there is in any of the rest of the Wiki. Maybe, I mean, to be fair, I think that's set it up for the next. As things continued on, so series 4, series 5, are all kind of in the same vein. They also include more Science Fiction than came before, but Science Fiction's always been pretty strong on the SCP Wiki. But if you look down the list, each of these contests sort of shaped what it was going to be, and then we had the SCP 3000 contest in 2017. And the contest theme was horror, for example. Now the SCP 5000 contest was themed on mystery. And I've left 4000 out for a reason, because 4000 is very, very different. See, the SCP 4000 contest was about history. And as you can imagine, that's not a super, that's sort of a vague writing prompt. You might be like, well, so is Science Fiction. Yeah, it is. But when you see here Science Fiction, there's so many ways you can take that history. What does history mean? History of the SCP Foundation? Well, that's nice and everything. But it doesn't inspire, at least in me anyway, it doesn't inspire anything particularly, what's the word I'm looking for here, strong. There's no strong emotions I get from it. History, I mean, I love it. And I love history. I'm a history nerd. But the idea of writing about a history, and I freaking, not just am I a history nerd. I wrote an entire alternate history canon called Asus Nates, it's set in the Old West. So trust me, I know history, I'm just... And the winning concept was a taboo, which is about fairies. It just, it adheres to the theme of history as slightly as it could possibly do so and still, like, be eligible. And to be honest with you, I feel like SCP-4000-4099 was kind of all over the place and I think that is a very strong reason for why it was all over the place. So I think, I hope at least, especially looking at the entries so far, like even the ones I don't particularly like, like to Tanhones, which is probably going to win, or Sacrosanct, which I didn't finish and I didn't find it particularly engaging, or I didn't mention that Tanhones, I don't think I like it. I think I'm going to stay as a neutral vote right now, but I'm kind of wavering, neutral to negative. But when I look at them, I can definitely see them inspiring many, many more SCP articles, period. And of course, no article is going to be perfect, but I think the idea of using the X000 contests to kind of set up the next series is doing a very good job of driving the Wiki's content forward. It's one of the few ways that the SCP staff can actually shape the content on the Wiki, and I think, and I'm going to complain about it again, I think in the 4000 contest, they really screwed the pooch on that. What do you think? Do you think that each of the X000 entries or I should say winners and contests in general help shape the series that come after that, or do you think it's just entirely random what people are going to write? Let me know in the comments down below. Oh, and since this is incredibly unlikely, because I don't want to get a little... I've noticed I don't get a huge number of comments on my videos, but YouTube highly values engagement like that on videos. They value likes and dislikes. Don't get me wrong. I'm very happy to have those. They don't nearly value them as much though, as actual comments, because that's like a step above when it comes to engagement. So I'm going to start doing this. If this video gets to 500 comments, I will pick one at random and read it out loud. What would you like me to read? And in what voice? I doubt that's going to actually happen, but let's see if we can make it happen. In the meantime, scroll down, hit the subscribe button if you haven't already, and hit the notification bell next to that so you're notified when I put out a new video. And if you'd really like to support this content, head on over to patreon.com. Ford slash D. Cimmerian. Like everybody here on the screen already has. It's nice to know that I'm not alone out here, and I'll see you all again on Thursday. 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