PART I: Setting the stage

Imagine, if you will, a blankness. Not a darkness, not space- not anything. This was the before time. Before amogus. Before anything.

And then, quite suddenly, there was light. There was movement. There was *energy.* Was it God? Was it Consciousness? Or merely the physical processes of minute particles, forever hidden from our humble eyes? One can only guess.

Though there was now energy, it was yet to form matter. Millions of years passed, with the ceaseless dissipation of energy ever expanding, growing- but not creating, not yet.

Millions more years swept past, the endless march of time barely noticeable in the blackness. But a force was at work, a great and terrible force that would one day give rise to all that we hold dear. *Gravity.*

Gravity pulled things together. Like the accumulation of players to the hit game “Among Us” in 2020, the bigger things got the more *stuff-* mass they attracted. And the more they attracted, the bigger they got. A viscous cycle, the accumulation of materials building, building… building what? A stage my friends. A stage.

Stars formed- balls of fire burning brighter than a tablet under the covers at 3am. Planets were created, rocky or gaseous progeny of these celestial guides, ever orbiting, ever turning themselves- a perfect gravitational harmony in the black void.

And around one star, that would come to be known as *Sol*, a planet, one of nine formed. Not so close to the sun as to boil it’s oceans, but not so far as to freeze them. A place of balance, of creation. Earth.

 PART II: Life Begins

Earth’s vast oceans were filled with chemicals. Amino acids, sugars and metals swirled in the turbulent waters, under a sky that was toxic and choking. The exposed continents were wind-blasted and more lifeless than electrical after an imposter. But in the depths, things were changing.

Quite how, we do not know. But chemicals began to organise themselves in such a way as they could be replicated. DNA allowed information to be passed on to copies, producing more and more- the first cells. Mutations in DNA allowed small changes in these copies, and those changes that were advantageous got passed on themselves.

Soon, cells began to organise into *multicellular* organisms- like the crewmates in Among Us, they worked towards a common goal. Simple mats formed, then tubes, then fans. Some evolved to absorb light and create oxygen. The skies turned blue. A new age was dawning.

Life grew ever more complex. Worms and armoured trilobites were succeeded by fish and arthropods. Fish colonised the land- the amphibians were born. Soon they too were overthrown by the reptiles- scaly beings that relied on the ocean no longer. There were tragedies, of course- meteors from above and magma from blow claimed many a lineage. But time moved ever on, and life kept changing.

Some creatures grew fur, and learned to control their own temperature. They were able to survive the climactic changes more readily than their giant brethren. When the great dinosaurs had fallen at last, they were left to inherit the Earth.

Endless suns and moons passed in the blue sky. The mammals diversified much like the reptiles had. Their more developed brains allowed greater comprehension of the world around. One group moved to the trees- their claws became mobile and articulate, able to manipulate branches with ease.

But, as the wheels of time again turned, these creatures once again left the trees. They grew upright, and walked on two legs. Their claws were exceedingly precise. They could create tools. They could communicate. And they would change the world more than any species had since. The age of man had begun.

 PART III: The Age of Man

Man is a curious creature, but most notable in his quirks is the fascination with fire. This fascination drove our species forward. It created weapons great and small. It warmed our hearts and lit our eyes. It sustains us. It allowed us to create art.

Little did those Neolithic painters know, when they daubed depictions of buffalo and elk on the walls of caves, that they would be taking the first steps down the long road of art

For art is, was and always will be among us.

Time droned on. Humans built and built. Our lives grew ever more complex. Farming, metal, the wheel. The horse was tamed, and the world grew. Civilisations rose and fell. Battles were fought and monuments built.

Gunpowder came from the East. The battles of the world were wreathed in smoke. Great ships were built, and Empires conquered the world. Tragedies great and small, but also inventions, fantastic beyond the reasoning of those before. The printing press, the airship, the lightbulb… all were built, and all further connected humanity.

And through all this progress, art remained consistent. Whether it was stone monuments to fallen gods or intricate paintings of the beauty of nature, the passion to create rang through the very *soul* of humanity. Tibetan monks chanted meditatively in the mountains. Aboriginal Australians daubed intricate creatures on the warm red rock. Epics of poetry were written and performed in the crowded cities of Europe.

From Stonehenge to Ananse to Michelangelo’s David, art was electricity flowing through human veins.

Electricity! This force, once tamed, *transformed* humanity. The world grew smaller, the telegraph allowing instantaneous communication. Wires were laid over ocean and land, the Earth enshrouded in a web of energy.

Computers arose in the mid 20th century. The world was healing from fire and blood and nuclear fallout, and in this atmosphere and promise came the first bits, heralds of a future to come. While primarily calculating behemoths the size of houses, the computers would shape art in a way no other medium would.

 PART IV: The Videogame

Consider a blank screen, bisected by a vertical line. On either side of the line, short paddles move up and down. A pixel bounces across the void, reflected from paddle to paddle with uniform speed. This seemingly unremarkable vision was *Pong,* the first videogame. It was remarkable not as an artform in the visual context, but in the sense that it could be *played.* Pong could *respond* to your touch.

Videogames would only grow from there. As transistors and motherboards improved games grew more complex. The game grew with the computer, as synonymous with the information age as the internet or telephone.

Asteroids, Galaga, Pacman. Games grew first in complexity of play. They formed characters, stories. The 80s rose and fell, and games transferred to personal consoles. The growth was exponential. The 90s brought 3D games, the 00s brought gaming online.

Ah, online. While games had been developing their merry way across pop culture, a behemoth of communication and shared human experience was growing in the shadows. As young Kevins and Rachels sat playing a rented Super Mario 64 from Blockbuster, they had no idea that the next big change was looming over.

No longer was the internet a gimmick for rich corporations and nerdy programmers. The personal computer brought the world wide web *to you.*

All of human culture and history was available at our fingertips, and what do people do when faced with a new medium? They create *art.* They create *ideas.* In other words, they meme.

 PART V: The Meme

The first memes were crude. simple phrases repeated back and forth, a token that you were “in the know”. All your base are belong to us. They could be posted on any chat board, and get at least a reaction out of someone there.

Memes exemplified emotion distilled. The rage comics provided grotesque caricatures, symbols of human emotion to complex to portray over text. Trollface. Me Gusta. Forever Alone. These characters were ancestors to the reaction meme.

Many memes remained as references, often to music. Carameldansen , Gangnam Style… these ideas have persisted, through We Are Number One and Crab Rave to Megalovania and Xue Hua Piao Piao. And of course, Among Drip.

As time passed, memes became more and more abstract. Even a person seeing a meme for the first time could tell you what Success Kid was trying to communicate. Could anyone but the most terminally online decipher Dat Boi, or unencrypt the mysteries of the Comically Large Spoon?

Like proteins, memes folded in on themselves, mutated, self referenced. Layers of irony filtered humanity’s humour. Our culture is a hall of mirrors.

And through it all, games and memes were ever entwined. The meme is the melody, the game the instruments. Nyan Cat, Undertale, Skyrim…Among Us: these games are like organs to the internet, pumping the lifeblood of memes through it’s electric heart.

So, the human passion for art, the ever-complexifying culture of memes, the popularity of online gaming. The fuel had all but been laid for amogus to burst into effect. All it needed was a spark.

 PART VI: The Virus

Humans adapt. Such has been our history: through all adversity, we triumph through our malleability. So when a deadly virus began to seize the world, we did what any sensible species would do: retreat inside our homes and wait for the worst to blow over.

But as the months dragged on, so short in the grand scheme yet so long to our fleeting human hearts- we grew bored. Memeing the virus had become stale. Animal Crossing was growing dull. We needed something, and needed it fast, lest we go insane.

And so, from the depths of 2018, a game was dragged up, a simple multiplayer of Crewmates and Imposters, colourful spacemen in two-legged suits. A cute murder-mystery sim the whole family could enjoy.

Among Us.

Like a Virus in it’s own right, Among Us spread across the globe. Twitch Streamers, the priests of the Meme Age, distributed knowledge of the tome among their disciples. Children played hurried fragments in their breaks in online school. And, like everything the internet touches, memes flowed out of Among Us like honey from a hive.

In the first few months they were honest, earnest. Cute even. Relatable situations involving the game. But Among Us grew. It grew bloated, swollen in popularity. People tired of the juvenile audience, the incessant chattering among iPad-fixated children. And so a new meme was born.

Sus. The wheels of irony were set in motion.

Sus became repeated everywhere. Short for suspicious, it was a common abbreviation within the game. But it’s overuse had *become* a meme. And that overuse contributed to more and more. A viscous cycle of sus. A viscsus cycle, if you will.

When the imposter is sus: a corruption, a bastardisation. The once wholesome reaction images replaced by a hideously grinning face. The charming Among Us-related scenario usurped by a tautological parody.

Among Us was taking over the internet. Everyone who had access to at least a smartphone knew what an imposter was. But then it began to invade the real world.

It started off slow. A trashcan might look like an Among Us crewmate. Maybe a certain logo. But then mania took hold. Among Us was among us. In the sky- the clouds were sus. A lake with an island. The Letter “A”. Nothing was safe. When the imposter is sus. When the imposter is sus.

Then these ironic memes became overused. Another layer of irony was added to the pile. Among Drip, for when Among Us being cringy wasn’t a joke enough on it’s own. Make it cringier. Combine it with Supreme- already an ironic meme in its own right. It became warped. A tune was added. That fucking tune. You know it.

Memes reached a breaking point. Everything was Among Us. Irony, self parody were’nt enough. Even this meme is yet another layer, an exaggeration of an exaggeration. A copypasta in a sea of others, a reference of a reference of a reference. Alas, it never ends. And probably wasn’t that funny to begin with.

Then, one final blow came. An edited comic swam to the surface of the internet, breaking through the scum of data and into the public consciousness. A small white stick figure stares at a creature in a dome. He utters a single word. It is enough. That word, is the end. The event horizon has been reached, we are past the pint of no return.

A M O G U S

The universe has aligned. It has given us all it can. We are one.