I would adore the opportunity to sit down with Zero4 to ask him how his experiences with XBand shaped the course of his life, how he feels about netcode, what it's like to be him. I'd like to pick Tim Willits's brain, and to interrogate him about his long history of involvement in game development, and how his experiences have shaped his approaches to and philosophies about productivity, game development, and life in general.

This won't be possible without some convincing. I spoke to SyncError for a few minutes today, and I get the impression that he feels as though offering any exclusive original content to ESR would be like Donald Trump accepting an invitation to a Bush family runion.

Can ESR show SyncError and id Software some love? Can ESR hold it together so that SyncError can remember that this community isn't composed 100% of relentless negativity? I feel as though there is a huge nonvocal majority visiting ESR that loves the community, id Software, and Quake, but that this nonvocal majority doesn't feel that it's worth the effort to participate in what are often combative, tiring, and, ultimately, useless exchanges between people whose idea of effective persuasion is hitting somebody until they turn around, even if the act of turning around is the result of the bludgeoned lifeless body spinning as it falls to the ground.

Can ESR dig down deep into the bubbling pus-filled blackened pits of its charred and brittle heart to dig out some small bit of love clinging to the wall of some jagged arterial stem harboring one final small bubble of nutritious blood that can be used to temporarily stave off the rampant infection of unabated hyper-criticality supported by years of dehumanization and depersonalization afforded to ESR users by the anonymity of the internet and the bitterness instigated by unmet expectations based on unchecked delusions and infantile egotism that create an unhealthy sense of self-importance that drives away anything good and friendly, like a bent old man howling at children to stay off his lawn, because he long ago forgot what it means to feel anything other than resentment toward anything that doesn't meet the unrealistic expectations inspired by his outrageously fragile safe-space of an ego?

Is ESR still capable of even remembering what love might have once felt like, before life beat it out of us? Is ESR going to sit around and give life the satisfaction of having taken our refuge in emotion without even trying to fight back against the apathy and bitterness that some maliciously hidden forces derive happiness from having us subjected to?