math festivities

2022-12-25

on december 17th 06:00 utc, the record label server mentioned here

=> /enanthate.gmi

started the #math channel.

@everyone We at [] Records LLC are proud to announce our collaboration with Popular & Intellectual Selected Solutions (P.I.S.S.) to bring a whole new world of fun to LEARNING!

While most students are on break, you have the opportunity to earn GILBERT POINTS by solving math problems in the #math Channel! A new problem appears approximately every 10 minutes, and the first person to solve it wins a GILBERT POINT.

specifically, 1 problem is sent between ##:#0 and ##:#4

The person with the most points by Midnight EST on Crimbo Eve will receive a $30 GIFT CARD, valid on ANY [] ORDER! Wow!

We hope you enjoy the P.I.S.S. Initiative as much as we do, now get out there and do some math! B)

thank you [] records, i really did enjoy the initiative as much as you do!

this server is primarily 13-19 year olds* (but id say the mathers were averaging 17), so they wanted something accessible for everyone**, so the math was evaluating integer addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division problems. nothing beyond, there wasn't any solving for variables. the server has had its own bot ever since the death of public discord music bots, and it was also used to send math problems. i think it's hosted on a premium student repl.it account lmao, and it frequently crashed which made some problems just not show up. the main person working on it i will call portland. portland forgot to uncomment the division problem code so it was just addition, subtraction, and multiplication for the first 6 days, in the format of # × # +- #

i missed the beginning of #math, but i finally saw it a few days later. originally, the numbers were all just positive integers. approximately [0,14]×[0,14]+-[0,25] with maybe a 2% chance of [100,500]×[0,6]+-[0,25]

people were answering them correctly. they weren't using calculators because of how fast they were and a mod sent this:

if you use a calculator you will be banned from math forever and we will feed your GILBERT POINTS to the beast

but the first messages i actually saw were people en masse failing on questions. someone i will call quitter wins almost all of the questions from almost the very start. quitter wore the math champion role, an orange color with a crowned calculator. portland then decided to add negative integers, quitter continued to win. community members saw this and started obliging themselves to give prizes to other places, as it seemed quitter will be 1st place at the end. namely, a donut from canada for 3rd.

a new challenger appears, sweden. sweden earned 1 point on the first day, then lurked for almost 2 days, but decided to switch it up and fully participate. they could beat quitter's speed some of the time, and they were a very interesting competitor because they live in sweden. this meant they're awake when me, quitter, and 95% of other contestants normally sleep, so they could get at least 9 hours of fully uncontested gilbert points a day. i couldn't tell how fast they exactly are at this point because portland hadnt yet added the feature showing the amount of time it took to solve a problem. when i came in, 11 hours after sweden, this was implemented, people were chit-chatting, canada (who is a mod) announced a surprise question and did a -remindme 3hrs for it (other people follow). at this point, the leaderboard looked like:

Math Leaderboard

1. quitter: 125 GILBERT POINTS 👑

2. sweden: 39 GILBERT POINTS

3. : 23 GILBERT POINTS

4. : 12 GILBERT POINTS

5. : 9 GILBERT POINTS

6. : 8 GILBERT POINTS

7. : 5 GILBERT POINTS

8. : 5 GILBERT POINTS

9. : 5 GILBERT POINTS

10. : 4 GILBERT POINTS

(the 3rd place at this point will never earn any more points and doesn't seem to even open #math anymore.)

to me, this looked like a clean quitter SWEEP, and that seemed quite pathetic. like, arent you peaking at integer +-×÷ with simple numbers as a high school student? and it only gets worse from there?

i tried for a question, but sweden immediately took it. i tried to evaluate the next problem but already quitter had taken it. hmmm... i need to speed up! i took the next problem. i started split-screening discord on the left and picross on the right. so i always got to see when a new math problem showed up. after a few hours of this alternating, a problem appeared as normal. i solved it. but this was not from the automatic 10 minutes. no, it was a -math command from canada! people arrive from their remindme and are confused. they missed the surprise question. canada then revealed that their reminder was for them to congratulate themselves on their awesome surprise question. i was the only person to congratulate them. from here on, -math would show up on occasion when individual mods felt like it.

i got to 3rd then 2nd quite easily. i wanted the donut but also wanted to answer more math questions. i tried some other games to split, but they aren't that well-suited to alternating. i stayed up to 06:00 my time mathing, and then went to sleep. i woke up in 3 hours and continued mathing. took a break to watch bocchi, and then did math, and then had work. it was quite terrible because i couldnt think the last 30 mins of work and almost gave up on my shift lol, but it was soon over. i saw that some friends were watching romantic killer so i joined in and popped the stream out, pinned it to the top of the screen, and sized it just enough so i could see the math problem in full but actually watch the anime. it was quite a decent setup, better than games. someone wanted to make a collaborative thematic album and people set up a server for that. i decided to sleep normally and give up on math because i already had the donut locked in. maybe 16 hours passed without me answering any questions (sweden got to Math Gaming). but then i wanted to, so i got back to mathing.

i reached 2nd place for the 2nd time when the leaderboard looked like this:

Math Leaderboard

1. quitter: 229 GILBERT POINTS 👑

2. me: 126 GILBERT POINTS

3. sweden: 125 GILBERT POINTS

4. : 23 GILBERT POINTS

5. : 17 GILBERT POINTS

6. : 12 GILBERT POINTS

7. : 9 GILBERT POINTS

8. : 8 GILBERT POINTS

9. : 6 GILBERT POINTS

10. : 6 GILBERT POINTS

due to some sqlite sort shenanigans, whenever i am tied with sweden, sweden shows up a place higher than me, so i have to gain a point to become first. it's not alphabetical, or based off user id, or who got to that point the earliest. someone hypothesized it was who was added to the database (needs 1 math point) the earliest. on one occasion, i was scared to shower because of missing questions but i showered anyways. in the middle, i though, shouldnt there be a question right now? and turned it off, got out. a question popped up seconds after, i solved it, and went back to showering. other times i just showered normally but with dread.

on the 22nd, i had to go to the bus and be on the bus for a while to get home. for about 3 hours, i was in a hell of having to either do math in an uncomfortable position because i'm using my laptop on the shitty fold-up desk of the chair in front of me or looking out the window. it sloped downward and doesn't hold my laptop well, i had to get into a bad posture to slow my laptop's descent. my only 2 choices. i then did poorly in math. there was also a severe glare so i couldn't see anything but the problem with its white background and black text. sometimes i couldnt even see what time it was so i was just unsure of how long it would take for the next question and just stared at the screen for 10 minutes. very uncertain and strange environment.

after i got back, i had my friend stream bocchi and we finished. portland tested out division and longer problems (# x/ # +- # +- # x/ #) but we didnt like them so he changed them back. he also added super-easy questions (# + #) and halved the time between questions because we were approaching quitter:

1. quitter: 268 GILBERT POINTS 👑

2. me: 230 GILBERT POINTS

3. sweden: 218 GILBERT POINTS

and he wanted to see her (quitter goes by he/him she/her) dethroned. questions now show up during ##:#0 - ##:#2 and ##:#5 - ##:#7.

portland forgot to make sure it doesn't divide by 0 and went to sleep. quitter went to sleep because of school the next day. sweden was supposed to sleep but had no obligations so they did math problems for about 24 hours straight. i couldnt let them go uncontested, they would get at least 96 points if i were asleep, getting far ahead from me and quitter. so i stayed awake and got 1st place. i got the special math champion role and quitter was stripped of it. i saw her red role and character icon for the first time. then went to sleep.

i woke up in about 4 hours and saw this:

1. sweden: 295 GILBERT POINTS 👑

2. me: 284 GILBERT POINTS

3. quitter: 280 GILBERT POINTS

can't have that.. 'i actually want to get a huge lead so other people have to try for a long time to get in a good position, but i also want to get 3rd place. maybe stopping at 420 and letting the remaining ~250 points be fought for by quitter and sweden will work.'

also portland fixed the division by 0 by just removing 0 from ever showing up as a number.

then, when i got to 5 points away from 1st, sweden hit me with this:

i have a proposition

how about we both take a break for like an hour and then continue this

i don't need a break but i think it would be mutually beneficial to touch grass

blatant lie i know how long you've been awake i can convert to sweden's timezone in an instant.

me: no i took a break earlier and im good rn

sweden: fuck

caught you.

1. me: 303 GILBERT POINTS 👑

2. sweden: 302 GILBERT POINTS

3. quitter: 280 GILBERT POINTS

sweden underperformed hard due to lack of sleep and i had a ton of successful mathing. quitter awoke and got annoyed and demoralized by the state of things, did a few problems, and stopped. sweden finally went to sleep and i had almost no one fighting me. at this point, i was often able waste 2 minutes after a problem without answering because of the lack of people. sometimes people got them though. quitter came back again and we competed for problems but i was awarded the points to the problems 80% of the time we fought in this hour (the leaderboard when he comes back:)

1. me: 356 GILBERT POINTS 👑

2. sweden: 311 GILBERT POINTS

3. quitter: 297 GILBERT POINTS

and he sends 'I give up'. fuck, my plan of letting sweden and her compete amongst themselves and get me to 3rd was probably not going to work. this didn't feel like an 'i give up for today, but tomorrow i will try for 1st again.' but i still kept my plan to stop at 420.

i got my friend to stream them doing whatever they wanted to entertain me in the short downtime. they just watched complex analysis videos. i shared to my friend that i was lost on what to do after math ended because of how key it was to my life, but i then listed things i could do. read books, play hades, make music, etc. then i got really sleepy and made goals for myself to get to 420 while sweden wasn't there. 'i need to stay awake for 5 more hours, i need to stay awake for 4 more hours, i need to stay awake for 3 more hours' etc as i got 10-12 points each hour. i started laying in bed with 2 hours left. i started napping and waking and napping and oh fuck sweden got a point when i was asleep. but then i got to 420, and went to sleep for real. a few people i havent mentioned came out of the woodwork and got some points.

when i woke up, sweden hadn't beaten me yet.

1. me: 420 GILBERT POINTS 👑

2. sweden: 395 GILBERT POINTS

3. quitter: 297 GILBERT POINTS

i continued to not solve any problems and sweden revealed their intent to stop at 420 as well, because they would show up as first and it's a good number to stop at. but portland made us do a final showdown, originally scheduled at midnight est, but i had to go shopping so i said i was probably not going to be available and we had it right then and there. portland forbade anyone but us from answering. 10 + 3. 13. 1.57 seconds. i win! sweden had to resist the urge to answer any later problems. we then discussed how pavlovian our response was to white rectangles and how fucked up our lives have gotten with literal 3 minute breaks from math at a time. the thematic album was finished and people streamed it in vc twice. it was ok, people had made original songs and mashups. quitter came back and got 3 points to get to 300 then stopped.

people in the lower places started fighting for points and places, especially 7th place, as the prize was a pound of thrift store cds from portland. they annoyed each other in dms, they bickered and expressed annoyance in #math, they commanded each other to get points. they gave up on their goals and switched to wanting less contested places. it was a very direct and much less subtle manipulation than all the previous actions the top three were doing. i didn't see all of it because of shopping but it was sorta entertaining. quitter noticed that in the -help of the server bot, there was a command named -theendofmath (description: shhhh) and triggered it. #math was closed and the bot listed and pinged all the users from 1st-10th place and their prizes in paragraphs, firstly congratulating me for winning. this command was supposed to be restricted to mods. -math still sent new problems though, more -theendofmath's still worked and continued to ping people, the bot still sent questions every 5 minutes it was chaos. portland fixed it after about 10 minutes and deleted all the related messages in math.

although i know sweden stated their intention to stop answering questions because i won fair and square, it was surprising to see the server admin and record label founder congratulate me for winning in the announcements channel pinging @everyone 2 hours before midnight est.

in the last hour, quitter was answering questions and canada was summoning questions. the final 10 questions were purely answered by quitter. i thanked p.i.s.s. for this incredible opportunity. final top 10:

FINAL Math Leaderboard

1. me: 421 GILBERT POINTS 👑

2. sweden: 420 GILBERT POINTS

3. quitter: 318 GILBERT POINTS

4. : 28 GILBERT POINTS

5. : 26 GILBERT POINTS

6. the person who was originally at 23: 23 GILBERT POINTS

7. : 23 GILBERT POINTS

8. : 22 GILBERT POINTS

9. : 22 GILBERT POINTS

10. : 20 GILBERT POINTS

although i don't get the donut, i'm quite happy with this arrangement. i don't really have a place to keep vinyl safe at home but i can in my dorm. i don't think i'll buy a player, i'll probably ask this one student co-op if i can play a record there, or the person i played board games and saw waveform* with. this restructured my life a lot. and it feels kinda good to get some form of payment for 90 hours of being on #math even though it's supposed to be a fun, non-job activity.

*if someone is found to be under 13, they are immediately banned. also, there are rules that make it a really safe environment for community members.

**a friend told me they only learned their times tables in 8th grade because it was required to culminate.