YMMV / Hypnospace Outlaw

• Accidental Aesop:
  • Always save the things you currently take for granted, because you never know when it might come crumbling down.
  • Above all things, remember the human. No matter how superficial, crude, whatever that someone might seem on the Internet, there's still a person on the other side of the page. This video essay argues that this aspect is one of the game's greatest strengths.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Why did you, the player character, take your job as a moderator? Do you genuinely care about making Hypnospace better, or did you decide to volunteer simply because you wanted something to do every night? And for that matter, why did you keep your Enforcer headband after the Mindcrash and the following product recall, when you would've known it was dangerous and nearly lethally injured you?
  • Was Dylan Merchant a genuine visionary who seriously believed his technology would change the world, or a reckless, immature punk who was too smart for his own good? Did he really think that Outlaw would help stop Merchantsoft from falling to their competitors, or was that an excuse for him to ignore more pressing issues with the service that might be much more to blame? Does he actually regret having caused the Mindcrash, or is he only feigning grief since he can't run away anymore? On the one hand, he makes an apparently-heartfelt memorial to the Mindcrash's victims, confesses to his involvement, and makes no attempt to hinder the Enforcer's investigation, despite presumably still having admin powers. On the other, he only joins the Hypnospace Archival Project after learning that somebody with a working Enforcer headband has actually gained access to the entire service, only confesses once he figures out that the Enforcer has him by the short-hairs with hard evidence, and let Tim take the fall for him for over twenty years.
  • The FutureRecycler page in Hypnospace Plus is difficult to pin down even after you figure out how to view it properly. At first, it just seems to be another wacky page in the Open-Eyed zone, proclaiming that the author has come from three decades in the future with zany product proposals for humanity to survive apocalyptic climate change or to prevent it entirely. The author thanks their nephew for the strange music on their page, though, which seems to contradict this narrative. Taking a closer look at the page, it starts to seem like the whole page is more of an activist art installation to encourage people to treat their environment better, and other citizens of Hypnospace seem to view it as such... except FutureRecycler is adamant that they really are from the future and are not joking about the product proposals. Are they just another kook? Are they trying to make a quick buck on eco-friendliness? Are they really from the future, like they claim? It pays to mention that tennis being subverted into trennis is the earliest point of divergence between Hypnospace's world and ours... and FutureRecycler knows that "trennis isn't really a tricycle", according to the song FutureWarmth Gamble playing on their page. Do they know because they have extratemporal knowledge or just because TruthAboutTrennis is in the same zone? And finally, could this all just be another prank from m1nx?
• Anti-Climax Boss: For all its buildup, the Mindcrash is incredibly easy to take down, as it only requires an easy-to-guess password that should be obvious if you've been following Tim and Tiffany's relationship. Even if you don't know it right away, it's on his FLST. By extension, this means the entirety of New Year's Eve passes by pretty quickly. Likely intentional, since it indicates that something doesn't add up about the Mindcrash, and leads to a more suitably challenging finale.
• Awesome Ego: Erick "Chowder Man" Helman may think he's the greatest thing to happen to rock, but the songs Hot Dad wrote for him are actually good. The commercial jingles he writes are incredibly catchy and his attempts at rock are solid, if laced with Narm Charm by Chowder Man's total lack of self-awareness.
• Crosses the Line Twice: An easy-to-miss detail after the helicopter crash is that the list of KRUNCHER's band members list changes to say "drum machine" instead of "'Kuff' Johnson on drums". For as horrifying and upsetting as what happened was, this bit comes off as a moment of deadpan resignation.
• Good Bad Bugs: After you complete Dylan's final version of Outlaw at the end of the game, your virtual pet may be dead when the game window closes and the credits start. This even happens if you set the pet to be immortal.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Abigail Lorne can come off as comedic. Her main role in the game is sparking a Gumshoe Gooper-flavored insurrection against Merchantsoft. If you dig into her pages on Hypnospace, her actions take a much sadder turn; she's outlived both her husband and her daughter, and admits that she lives for the kids she teaches. No wonder she reacted so badly to the Gooper Takedowns, since - regardless of whether the player personally targets them - all those drawings will get taken down by other Enforcers.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: By the end of the game, Hypnospace is shut down, preserved only in an archived form with none of its creative potential... that is, until the developers of the game released the tools for players to make and share their own Hypnospace pages, in effect making Hypnospace a living, developing entity just like the real internet.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • On December 31st, Counselor Ronnie's mailbag has a letter from a nervous kid telling him he's having a rough time at school and asking Ronnie to be his friend. Counselor Ronnie comforts him wholeheartedly, and tells him that even though he's a busy guy, the kid can always write him when he just needs to talk to somebody. This becomes especially so once you learn that Ronnie was really a Troll planted by the m1nx hacker group. Even they will look out for a bullied kid.
  • After the Time Skip, you learn that Tamara, the beleaguered English major who's been posting her poetry online in an attempt to cope with her dead-end job, has since become a successful children's book author and poet. She made her dream come true!
  • After the Time Skip, one of the quests is to hunt down a few demo tracks from a teenaged wannabe rapper because he's now extremely famous and successful and Tamara, an old friend of his, thinks it'd be fun to surprise him with them. They're every bit as embarrassing as you'd expect, but rather than make fun of him, Tamara and his fans think they're adorably unpolished and good reminder that everyone starts somewhere.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: If Zane doesn't get banned, Dylan's heartfelt eulogy talks about how Zane didn't get to grow up to be someone his mother was proud of. Cut to Zane, twenty-something years later, behaving exactly how he did in 1999.
• Jerkass Woobie: Even the most obnoxious people on Hypnospace aren't totally unsympathetic.
  • T1MAGEDDON is arrogant, malicious, and the cause of many of your troubles early on, but he genuinely cares for his friends, is as good as his word when the player buys a FLST password from him (even if he mocks them afterwards for overpaying), deliberately only makes "annoying" viruses rather than actually harmful ones, frequently shows remorse when he crosses the line, and certainly doesn't deserve to be framed for the death of several users during the Mindcrash, though it results in him Taking A Level In Kindness.
  • Zane is an arrogant dick who writes bad Self Insert Fics for his favorite Nu Metal band, crudely insults his classmates, harasses Tiff... but he's just a teenager from a broken home desperately trying to imitate the caustic critic he idolizes, and whatever his flaws, it's genuinely tragic if he isn't banned and his life is cut short by the Mindcrash.
  • Chowder Man, writer and performer of cheesy dad rock and advertising jingles with a very high opinion of himself. Also a recovering alcoholic who is genuinely heart-broken when he inadvertently causes the death of his friend.
  • And most of all, Dylan Merchant. Pointy-Haired Boss. Hypocritical music pirate. Dubious programmer. Spends more time on his video game side project than the job he's supposed to be doing. And in the endgame, he ends up accidentally responsible for several deaths and many traumatic experiences because he arrogantly assumed some code he hadn't properly tested was ready to be uploaded to a live Brain/Computer Interface. And yet, he truly does care about making Hypnospace not just profitable, but a great community, and the personalized letters of apology to those who died because of his negligence are entirely genuine and absolutely heartbreaking; though he was too cowardly to admit responsibility with such an easy scapegoat, the burden of guilt on his mind has been eating away at him for two decades. When the truth comes out, he makes no effort to defend himself and confesses everything.
• Love to Hate: Zane. Despite being a bully to both other users and the player, it is really funny to hear him gush about nu-metal and stroke his own ego. He's often cited as one of the most memorable characters in the game, precisely because he's such a jerkass, and players typically mourn for him if he dies in the Mindcrash. This contrasts with Tim and Dylan, who are arguably the "real" villains, but have ambiguous morals and justifications for their behavior.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • BWL.^ExplanationStands for "Bursting With Laughter." It's the in-universe version of LOL and other initialisms, and it's often used by fans when discussing the game.
  • Granny Cream's Hot Butter Ice Cream.^ExplanationA fake product page in the game's universe with a catchy rap song attached to it. The in-game site was popularized by Vinny of Vinesauce thanks to his enjoyment of the bit during his playthrough, and it saw even further attention after its jingle received an NSFW parody from SiIvaGunner.
  • I stand with Gumshoe Gooper!^ExplanationFans have taken to reenacting in-game events by both playfully protesting the censoring of Gumshoe Gooper and facetiously threatening to send copyright takedowns to anyone posting images of the character.
  • Bad car game.^ExplanationThis is how re3koning_inc describes Outlaw, which is jokingly used by fans when discussing Dylan Merchant and his failed ambitions.
• Moment of Awesome: Just about every event following the Mindcrash incident. In the present day, you log back into Hypnospace to find that a group of former users have come together in an attempt to permanently archive the janky-but-close-knit Hypnospace community. That's where you come in: it turns out that Enforcer-model Hypnospace kits inexplicably came with enough memory to store the entire service several times over, and you begin one last mission to save all of Hypnospace, in all three of its iterations, to your device. Soon, one of the archivists reveals herself to be a former MS employee, and she asks you to look further into the case of Tim, the teenager who supposedly triggered the Mindcrash with a virus. Long story short: the two of you put together enough evidence to conclusively prove that Tim was innocent all along; that the real cause was the lead programmer rushing an unnecessary feature without Q&A; and that he and the CEO knew about the headbands posing a health hazard but intentionally buried the report on it.
• Narm: One of the secret Discord backer pages has a That Was the Last Entry-style horror story, and it's pretty effective... except that the story's victims, named Jake Morgan and Elizabeth Wylde, are represented with photos of Adrian and Dylan Merchant. While it's unlikely the backer would have known who the photos were supposed to represent, it still makes it pretty difficult to take seriously if you find it after you finish the main game.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • While definitely much more downplayed than real life, some of the computer viruses and hacked pages can be a little creepy. Such as pages that have been hacked to feature a shock image of a realistic heart with staring eyeballs, while a low drone plays.
  • Throughout the game, it's hinted that Hypnospace's Brain/Computer Interface is not entirely safe. This comes to a head in the Mindcrash incident, which actually kills several people — just about all of them being people the player has gotten to know through their quirky online presence. And if that wasn't bad enough, you get to experience what they saw and are faced with HYPII desperately trying to save you from any damage it may cause by telling you to shut the headband off even as its own reality begins to fall apart around it.
    • Now think about this from Tim's perspective. The news report after the Mindcrash explains that Tim, a teenager who was ultimately just playing around, was tried as an adult and will spend six years in prison. Come the time skip to present-day, and you learn that he served his full sentence, and is haunted to this day by the thought that what he meant to be a harmless prank somehow killed people. Including one of Merchantsoft's lead programmers, an old woman in a nursing home, and the girl he had a crush on.
  • One of the Hypnospace Global Newsroom posts is a list of five wacky criminals apprehended in 1999... but rather than being goofy harmless scenarios like that would lead you to believe, it reads like an article out of The Onion, with mental anguish, grisly murders, and police incompetence wrapped up in a jokey package that tries to make light of the events. The main de-fuser for it is that the names are all developers, but without seeing the credits one is likely to just feel unnerved reading it.
• Paranoia Fuel:
  • T1MAGEDDON sets his status to imply that he knows you're watching.
  • A number of pages refer to you by the name you gave when you started the game, presumably pulled from the same headband metadata you can see for other users. Unsurprisingly, it turns out Merchantsoft isn't very good at keeping the Enforcers anonymous.
  • Imagine this scenario: It's been years since the Mindcrash incident. You're volunteering to use your old account to help catalog Hypnospace pages. You have decent reason to assume the Mindcrash was caused by unstable code in Outlaw, and this may be your chance to prove it. You then get Hypnomail about another volunteer from Merchantsoft who wants to help with the project— Dylan Merchant. Your blood runs a bit colder.
    • What makes it worse is when you submit the first half of the evidence you need, you get a thankful message from Samantha talking about how you're going to nail Dylan this time. Then Dylan sends you a message. He knows you've been using the Enforcer system, despite using it on an archive of Hypnospace, and even though there are no official enforcer servers you can connect to. It's not clear just how much info he got from the system, how he's even getting it, WHY he coded that despite leaving all the enforcer duties to other people, or what OTHER info he had, which makes it all the more unsettling.
• Play-Along Meme: Comments on YouTube uploads of the game's music, along with the game's Steam reviews, often pretend to be written by someone living in the game's universe, debating the various in-universe music genres like Coolpunk and Fungus Scene, and expressing exaggerated adoration or disgust for characters like Chowder Man and Zane.
• Realism-Induced Horror: Goodtime Valley is largely a light-hearted pastiche of Technologically Blind Elders with their own community, but it also contains several harsh reminders of the realities that come with age. Carl Parker, a lifelong biker, failed his license renewal because of his failing eyesight, and his wife Lisa passed away some time ago. Abigail Lorne lost both her daughter and her husband, leaving her with only the schoolchildren she teaches for companionship in the autumn of her life. Things take a positive turn when she falls in love with Reginald Roberts over Hypnospace, but if you don't get Carl banned, he dies in the Mindcrash. In a broader sense, the game serves as a harsh reminder that things you love and take for granted won't always be around. The abandonment of Hypnospace is a mirror to how Web 1.0, with all the individuality that came with it, faded into utter obscurity.
• Squick: Granny Cream's Hot Butter Ice Cream isn't the most appetizing-sounding product already, but the (incredibly NSFW) implications of the name "Granny Cream" only make it worse, as many have pointed out.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: The opening rap verse of Chowder Man's theme song sounds awfully similar to Epic by Faith No More.
• Tear Jerker: See here.
• The Woobie:
  • RebeRuthPin, a SquisherZ fan who's also a Christian who doesn't believe SquisherZ is Satanic. She enters a SquisherZ art contest... and wins! ...right before we learn via a farewell message on her webpage that she found out the hard way that her father DOES NOT approve of her being a SquisherZ fan, contrary to what she had previously believed, because another member of her church found her webpage and ratted her out. He throws her SquisherZ game away AND bans her from Hypnospace... before she can even learn that she won the contest. It's a heartbreaking moment, especially for anyone who had to live with parents caught in the grip of the Satanic Panic. The one upside to what happens to her is that this means she avoids the Mindcrash.
  • DarkTwilightTiff, who mostly just wants to use Hypnospace to create fun short horror stories, but receives no end of unwanted attention from T1maggedon and Zane, and her complaints are ignored by Merchantsoft's broken moderation system which pins the blame on her since they don't have a way to handle dealing with a victim's harassment claims, as their harassment report system will flag only the page where harassment appears even if the page is hosting a screenshot of someone else's inappropriate behavior. Making things worse, her reputation apparently suffers due to her proximity with Tim, and topping it all off, she ends up dying in the Y2K Mindcrash.

---