DC: Then & Now

I’m a junkie—I need to watch all the movies, TV shows, read books, find stuff—not just on my hard drive, but on everyone else’s, too. Wait, no. I’m not some creep.

Believe me when I say that ignorance is bliss and that you can never go back once you know the truth. My first encounter with DC++ was when I heard the chaos before a short vacation for people demanding slots, shouting at their systems, at aliases they did not understand, people they did not know. Of course, after overhearing a chaos like that floating in, I laughed to myself and left it at that. I was definitely tempted to try this new, cool thing too — the so called DC++.

Temptation has a funny way of lurking in the back of your mind. Why not take a peek? It would be good for a laugh if nothing else. It’s not like this would lead to installation of cameras in my room or anything.

Nah. No. Eh, maybe—no, I shouldn’t.

I just wanted a better look to understand what I’d seen. I told myself I’d take one quick look and then be done with it. Nerves thrilling, I launched the DC++. They call the hub SuperNova—funny.

A bunch of little things I’d heard suddenly began to add up. Things on this hub were… crazy. It was lurking in the basement, lurking out of sight, and enjoying the sight. No one had any idea about who they were dealing with. There was \m/, DarkRoom, cracky, PapaRoach, sHadoWfaX, Pharoah, Hurdy Gurdyand what not. And each user was a deep well of data, of types one couldn’t even imagine.

But how did so much data come, and from where? Almost all the major IIIT users had shared whatever they had on their disks to everyone else, but for what? I am no quantum physics expert, but I knew by observation, that this was a crucial part of existence as well culture in IIIT.

The truth is that it was more than just an application, or a set of users—it was a… IIIT cult? IIIT Underground? IIIT Anonymous? Well, we’ll never know. Why would that be? Because truth be told, it’s dying. Another part of our ultra-pro-cultural college is dying. I remember vividly, the typeracer matches, the board craziness, insights from across batches about anything and everything, the endless beeping of the notification box, it was something that I rushed to when things got crazy in IIIT—which as a matter of fact they do, a lot.

But like every other thing in IIIT, the leecher mentality got to DC as well. Everyone wanted everything, the catch being, they did not want to contribute back, reshare content, help everyone else. Everyone wanted to hold onto things, for just themselves and that’s what got to the DC. That was the beginning of the end… one file not reshared at a time. Like a certain anonymous user confessed, and I quote, “It’s really simple, you know. You don’t have to design a fucking Mangalyaan. Just share as much as content as as you can, for as long time as you can. It’s that simple, for bloody Khaleesi’s sake!”

IIIT, where everything ‘official’ is emailed to us, where the virtual world definitely controls the real one—DC was one answer to Central Perk in F. R. I. E. N. D. S., or MacLaren’s in How I Met Your Mother, for us: a place to let go, chill out, hang out with friends you didn’t even know in real life—a place where senior or junior did not matter, doxxing was not allowed, where aliases mattered, resharing mattered, and having fun mattered.

There was a time while downloading the latest episode of Game of Thrones, the number of active, impatient users on the Hub was mind boggling to say the least, discussing theories, spoilers and what not. From DarkRoom to __killerMC, to Megumin to DeadSunrise, there are people who have worked silently for the hub without expecting any recognition for their work. Let us not take the DC hub for granted, like we take placements in IIIT.

When you put all the pieces together, does the whole add up to more than the sum of the parts. Yet still, I hope… that we don’t have to move to UltraNova from HyperNova, the way we moved from SuperNova!