Blaseball Now Has Lootcrates

After an exciting Round 2 of the Coffee Cup, while Late Night Blaseball was in full swing, the Commissioner nonchalantly dropped a new piece of canon.

Uhh? Who is “lootcrates”? Or, what is “lootcrates”? For a few moments. Blaseball Twitter was utterly in the weeds with the “lootcrates” thing. Until Blaseball Prospectus discovered the existence of Lōotcrates, the “Official Historian of Internet League Blaseball.”

…

Wait. What?

Long Live The Commissioner

Before we answer that, we need to figure out how we ended up at that question. Let’s start with the Fantastickal Death of Parker(s) MacMillan.
(If you took a break from blaseball during the Grand Siesta and are just now reading this, welcome! A lot has happened. It’s okay.)

During the events of the Discord trials, Mills v MacMillan III (and Other Miscellaneous Related Suits), one thing lead to another and Ump Pope Sunman tried to incinerate a bot that was simulating the Commissioner, Parker MacMillan III. On Twitter, the Commissioner’s account (@blaseball) went blank.

Shortly thereafter, the account would be run by Parker MacMillan IIII. Facts around the succession were sparse, but this new Parker was everyone’s best friend. We accepted the change in Commissioner. He even got to play for Real Game Band in the Coffee Cup. Until…

Parker disappeared from the game, and from Twitter. The next morning, we were greeted by Parker MacMillan IIIII, whose Commission-ing style seemed a little rough, initially. He was still doing a good job.

This succession of Parkers created a lot of discussion in the community around the nature of the Commissioner. What ever happened to Parkers I-III? Were these distinct individuals with coincidental names? Was there a collective memory? Was Parker an AI who got a new version each time he had to reboot? Was he like some sort of being who regenerated as a different personality, but retained memories of previous iterations? Did he come from the field of eggs?

When one blaseball journalist poked at this anthill, he would accidentally discover something (or someone) else entirely.

The Discovery of Lōotcrates

It started innocently enough with my colleague and fellow Blaseball Prospectus writer, Ace Analyst, simply using a phrase that had been coined by a previous Parker. During Round 2 of the Coffee Cup, there were brief issues with the blaseball.com site, and Ace let everyone know the site was working properly again. In doing so, he accidentally stumbled upon A Thing™:

As far as we knew at the time, the various Parkers MacMillan were distinct individuals who inhabited a shared role. There were theories as to what relations one Parker might have to another, but this particular interaction required a follow-up. Was Parker IIIII indicating that Ace was taking over a duty/phrase used by folks in the Commissioner role, or was Parker expressing a memory that could only belong to a previous Parker?

Not content with that answer, Ace asked the Commissioner something in a previous Parker’s own words.

Because this second follow-up occurred as the Coffee Cup was heating up, these queries went unanswered for hours. We’ll come back to them.

…And now a brief interlude of related things that happened prior to that question’s fateful answer…

During the intense excitement of the second round of the Coffee Cup, @Paranundrox mused about how vital the work of SIBR, wiki admins, and the work of similar individuals is to the current meta, community, and narrative of blaseball.

(As an aside, I wholeheartedly agree with their thoughts. What I do as a blaseball journalist is fundamentally built upon these resources. Plus, the discussions they generate are intriguing, and the interactions that result are delightful.)

A number of folks on Twitter chimed in around this thread. One response, in particular, will seem more than just a coincidence for what happened later in the evening.

…This concludes the brief interlude of related things, now back to…

The Discovery of Lōotcrates

After the dramatic conclusion to Game 5, Ace decided that the events of earlier that evening needed to be teased out:

Naturally, this restarted the discourse around the nature of Parkers and the possibility of a collective Commissioner consciousness, among other theories. It was then that Parker IIIII returned to that question from many hours earlier, providing a response. “Before what?”

This, in turn, prompted another round of discussion amongst Late Night Blaseball, which was starting to go to bed. It was after midnight, in the Eastern time zone of the U.S. Then, an hour later (after 1:00 am EST), the Commissioner posted something completely unexpected.

The shockwave of confusion rippled across Twitter. Notifications buzzed, BNN came back online, folks paused in their bedtime rituals to say one thing, the thing that we so often think but especially at this moment:

When the confusion reigned, ILB Ambassador Cat Manning made a self-deprecating joke that would prove prophetic:

Only a few minutes after Parker name-dropped someone or something that seemed out of nowhere, Dallas Steaks’ assistant coach August Mina discovered what Parker was getting at. Lōotcrates was a someone. Probably. Or at least a Twitter account.

There it was, in all its resplendent blue-checkmark glory. They had no tweets, followed only the Microphone and the Commissioner, but had seemingly been there for a while. Lōotcrates.

The Morning After

The immediate aftermath was still one of confusion, but a more canonical, “oh I get it (I don’t get it)” style of confusion many of us were used to. As people woke up (or never went to bed), questions began to be asked. Pieces began to be put together, more or less. First up, before we go back to bed: Ambassador, that was an oddly prophetic joke earlier. DOT DOT DOT

Are you sure? That joke seemed REALLY on the nose. Right, SIBR?

Okay, good to know it’s just your run-of-the-mill Ambassador Cat cursed to utter true prophecies.

This is about the time that we recalled the tweet from Stephen earlier in the night, the one about “working on stuff”? How long has Lōotcrates been lurking on Twitter?

Excellent! That answers, well, nothing really. What else do we know about this suddenly-official historian, anyway? What’s their style?

One last thing: is there anything else we should know about Herodotus, who seems to have influenced Lōotcrates?

Okay then. Let’s see if we have this straight:
In a blaseball era where we now have a line of successors as Commissioner, and an ancient Coin leading the operations, we now have an Official Historian who cops their style from an ancient source. This lurking Lōotcrates has not tweeted, we know nothing of their true function, and we were alerted to their presence by asking the Commissioner about remembering “before.”

Everything’s fine.

It’s probably fine.