@New Eiffel Government
@New Eiffel Government or pinging Zed was an Internet meme of the MicroWiki sector that began on MicroWiki@Discord on 19 April 2019. The meme revolved around 'pinging' ("@ing")—a feature that sends a notification to the targeted user—the Discord account of Zabëlle "Zed" Skye on the MicroWiki@Discord server, which had the user handle New Eiffel Government. The most notable feature of the meme was a near-continuous[a] chain of pings on the server that lasted between 1 June 2019 and 18 November 2020, which consisted of over 11,000 messages.
Skye was ubiquitous on MicroWiki@Discord, having posted an average of 679 messages per day between 19–25 March 2019. On 19 April, Skye and his family went on holiday and he abstained from using Discord; after returning to the server in the evening, he noticed that he had received a notification and asked who had pinged him before immediately logging off. In response to his enquiry, Nicholas Randouler, Emiel Hardy and the user Sabermoose began repeatedly pinging his account as a joke before being told to cease by mononymous administrator Andrew. Skye logged on the following day to witness these 17 notifications (pings) and expressed bewilderment, after which his account was pinged an additional 25 times by eight different users throughout the day.
Skye returned home on 23 April, but the meme persisted and increased in popularity; he was either unbothered by it or possibly enjoyed the attention. By 2 May, the pinging had become centred around a single channel of the server, originally intended for the discussion of affairs related to politics. Another chain of pings was started on 1 June, which led to the channel being renamed to new-eiffel-government on 7 June with the sole purpose of pinging Skye's account. All message in the channel that were not pings were deleted by administrators. On 18 November 2020, following the (later cancelled) transition of MicroWiki@Discord into a directory for other micronational servers, the channel was archived by having the ability to send messages locked.
@New Eiffel Government was one of the most recognisable memes in the MicroWiki sector that arose in 2019, alongside the likes of the face of Leon Montan and merge. In the 2019 MicroWiki General Survey conducted by Statistic-Dime, the meme was voted as the most popular MicroWiki meme of 2019 with 15 votes (44.1%) out of 34 respondents. Despite this, the @New Eiffel Government ping chain was often criticised by users for taking up space on the server or being otherwise unnecessary, while others bemoaned the meme as unfunny, nonsensical or "forced" due to the administration deleting non-pings from the ping chain.
Start of the meme
Zabëlle "Zed" Skye joined MicroWiki@Discord, a server (discussion venue) hosted on the instant messaging social media platform Discord, on 7 February 2019. He created an account under the username New Eiffel Government, as he was the founder and Prince of the Principality of New Eiffel. Skye quickly became a ubiquitous figure on the server as he became immensely active throughout March, regularly averaging over 3,000 messages on MicroWiki@Discord every week with a personal record of 4,756 enclosing the week of 25 March—or 679 per day. He was the most active user on the server during that month.
On 19 April, he and his family went on holiday from their London residence to the Isle of Sheppey, an island off the northern coast of the English county of Kent. As such, he refrained from using Discord and returned later in the evening to see that he had missed a a ping—a feature that sends a notification to the targeted user—from a user on the server. He posted a message in the principal discussion channel (#cafe-dullahan) asking who had pinged him and logged off, after which Nicholas Randouler, Emiel Hardy and the user Sabermoose began repeatedly pinging his account as a joke before being told to cease by mononymous (bearing a single name) administrator Andrew. Skye logged on the following day to see 17 notifications (pings) and stated: "Wtf, I’ve been gone for 1 day," after which his account was pinged 25 times by eight different users at random points throughout the day.
He returned home on 23 April, but the meme persisted and increased in popularity; Skye was either unbothered by it or possibly enjoyed the attention. By 2 May, he had been pinged an additional 263 times by 17 different users (with Hardy having pinged his account 110 times alone), and the pinging became centred around a single channel of the server, #government-and-politics. It was originally intended for the discussion of affairs pertaining to politics and government. The sporadic pinging of Skye's account slowed down after 7 May, and by 31 May, Skye's account had been pinged almost 320 times.
@New Eiffel Government chain
Chains of pings would sometimes last for several days before being broken by regular conversations or users intentionally breaking it. On 1 June 2019, Simon White pinged Skye in #government-and-politics, followed three days later by Abrams I of the Kingdom of Ikonia. That same day, an additional seven users followed suite, including Skye himself. On 7 June, after having received 98 pings, the channel was renamed to new-eiffel-government with the sole purpose of pinging Skye's account—all messages in the channel that were not pings were deleted by the administration. The channel would be renamed every time he changed his Discord username. By the end of June, the chain had 628 uninterrupted pings; by 18 November, that number had risen to 2,476 pings. On 24 December, 164 pings were posted in the channel—the most of any day.
With the increasing number of server members, the pinging vastly increased; consequently, a one-minute slowmode was added in early January 2020, which stipulated that whomever sent a message in the channel would have to wait one minute to send another. After late February, the chain began to be more frequently broken intentionally by a small number of users, resulting in most of them being warned and some temporarily kicked from MicroWiki@Discord. However, this decision often received backlash from several users who viewed it as being too harsh. Methods of breaking the chain included posting a screenshot of the ping in the channel (rather than actually pinging Skye) or by editing past messages—both of which often went unnoticed by administrators.
By 22 April, the channel had over 5,875 pings. After mid-September, criticism targeted towards the chain's existence greatly increased, with intentional interruptions of the pings becoming a daily occurrence. Nevertheless, the 10,000th ping in the channel was reached on 17 September 2020 by Leon Montan. The milestone was posted in the announcements channel of MicroWiki@Discord. In early November, MicroWiki@Discord began the transition into a directory for micronational servers, and most of the server channels had their user messaging abilities revoked to become archives. The chain remained open until it was eventually archived on 18 November following backlash from users on the decision to keep it open despite more frequently-used channels having already been archived. Administrator Abrams I posted the final message, "That is the end of the saga // Thanks everyone." Upon its closure, over 11,000 pings had been made.
The channel's final name was user-z-luna-skye, in reference to his former MicroWiki username, Z Luna Skye. When the decision to transition MicroWiki@Discord into a web directory was reversed, the channel was not brought back.
Reception
@New Eiffel Government was one of the most recognisable memes in the MicroWiki sector that arose in 2019, alongside the likes of the face of Leon Montan and merge. In the 2019 MicroWiki General Survey conducted by Statistic-Dime, the meme was voted as the most popular MicroWiki meme of 2019 with 15 votes (44.1%) out of 34 respondents. The meme inspired several other ping chains on various micronational Discord servers, notably including a user known as Karlos who was disregarded as a troll during the North African Empire Defensive War and made the target of an equvalent channel on the Czech-language MicroWiki Discord server.
Despite this, the @New Eiffel Government ping chain was often criticised by users for taking up space on the server or being otherwise unnecessary. Others bemoaned the meme as unfunny or nonsensical, whereas many felt that it was "forced" due to the administration deleting non-pings from the ping channel. The meme was later cited as being a minor example of, or contribution to, the decline of MicroWiki@Discord. Jonathan I of Austenasia, owner of MicroWiki and MicroWiki@Discord at the time, had jocularly stated in response to critics that the channel "will be there until the end of the server." Though, following the arhciving of the channel, this proved to be false.
Administrative reaction
In October 2019, technical administrator Abrams I created a role called 'Zed Manager' which could be pinged whenever a user broke the chain, in order for an administrator with that role to be notified of this. On 21 April 2020, a technical administrator of the server wired a command to Dyno, a server moderation Discord bot, which could ping Skye by being commanded by an administrator. On 18 June, a new role called 'Zed Ban' was created, which would make the user given said role unable to send messages in the @New Eiffel Government pinging channel.
See also
Footnotes
- ↑ It is important to note that the channel did not have over 11,000 pings in a row due to users occasionally breaking the chain and going unnoticed by administrators, who hold the ability to delete messages.