post #10.2: The erosion of language: FNAF

Writing this while very dehydrated and exhausted, on a moving train, so we'll see how this goes. (That i want to try to write regardless should say something about something, and hopefully not just about my foolhardy-ness)

     *Note at the top: I'm not linguistics person. I don't know much of the technical ways for thinking about these kinds of things. While I don't know how exceptional fnaf is for the things i want to talk about, it seems to me a very evocative site, and so I want to use it as an example. I have vague understanding of linguistics which has been produced by watching linguistics YouTube -- and more recently yt shorts -- over the last 5 or so years (tom scott. Jan misili, etymology nerd, other guy, k klein, etc...) see also indigo f and elf on shelf plural video. Anyways, here I go.

     Motivating this is also the eternal way In which I struggle to speak in ways that are understood by others -- in typing or in speaking out loud. (For various reasons; disability or not). Because I struggle to be understood, I'm interested in sites where language is mutated, eroded, or butchered (mutilated).

[^^ sketch depicting an image of relative language (version two) ^^]

      So, yes, now to fnaf. I've complained in many essays now about what I see as problems within the fnaf community (ways people communicate, trends in methodology, whatever talesgames and the whole book debacle counts as). While I probably stand by most of what I've said, i find that in retrospect I am not always as charitable as I could be. One thing that has been especially irksome for me is the way people are releasing videos every week saying they "SOLVED" FNAF, and then i click on the video and it's nothing, and I'm like, "??? wdym solved ??? This does nothing to address x, y, z." While i think my agitation here is valid and instructive in that it highlights, something, the reality is that the word SOLVED (even if in all caps and on the thumbnail with an arrow) doesn't have to mean the same thing for other people that I idealize it as meaning for myself. One way of moving away from my internalized understanding of the term (which associates it with, for example, solving a detective case -- ordering conclusively a chaotic narrative space) would be to think about the contexts people use the term. As indicated by an earlier parenthetical, one major context that I think it's worth giving mind to is that the word's use emerged from an especially online context, on YouTube. While FNAF has not been the only text that the word is applied to, it has a stronger relation to it than most other genres on YouTube. As a result, it can be useful to consider what FNAF is, now and in the past, and see when, where and how people are using the word for to talk about FNAF.

     In 2025, FNAF exists as a lucrative media mix, that is, FNAF doesnt exist as a singular text, genre or medium, but as a robust, interlocking system of media and genres. FNAF is two anthology book series published by Scholastic, FNAF is 2+ VR games published by Steel Wool Studios, FNAF is a series of exclusive licensing rights owned by Funko, YouTooz, etc. Etc. I use these terms to illustrate the ways FNAF is connected with capital. FNAF can't exist as a media mix unless people monetarily engage with FNAF the media mix, and so people do, see the many FNAF figurine reviews or the playthroughs of the Steel Wool era FNAF games.

     However, it's not enough to say that FNAF's relation to capital ends with the production of official FNAF-branded texts. The community and their labor are crucial elements of 2025 FNAF. While there are community members who engage with FNAF just because they like it (e.g., making fan art in their spare time), the largest pillars of the community are people who have a capital relation to FNAF. Theory videos are published on YouTube and earn money via AdSense. People stream on Twitch or YouTube and get ad money, but more often get money from donations. Even ignoring audience donations, though, FNAF is still historically lucrative. This profit (primarily im talking about ad money from youtube) then informs the culture. SOLVED signifies this. I guess clickbait would be a word to describe the phenomenon im talking about, but my image of clickbait has more negative connotations than what I mean to suggest. But then I think it's important to clarify that solved doesn't gain it's 2025 meaning over night -- it's meaning is the product of the iterative relation between people making videos about FNAF and the responsive growth and development of the FNAF media mix (thereby increasing the amount of things we can say solved of). The first several Game Theory videos about FNAF, for example, engage with the series much differently than the most recent Game Theory videos about FNAF. Whereas FNAF may have once been the trendy horror game of the season, FNAF grew to occupy a space of it's own and thus it's own media ecology (granted, it's still connected with external systems -- don't catch me with any of this hermeneutics shit,, not yet at least).

     What FNAF means to a given person at a given point in time is extremely contingent and bound to change. Therefore, even though the language that is used to address it (here, SOLVED) may stay the same, the meaning this language holds will inevitably change. The same word, SOLVED, can at different points signify an address to the past, the present or the future. For example, in the Johnny the nightmare video about SOTM (the one from before the trailer came out), he clarifies that when he uses SOLVED in the title that he has a specific working definition (which he explains) and that basically he's using it as evocative shorthand for to describe his synthesizing known information to guess what the upcoming game will be about. Other times, solved will be used for to order the chaos of the past or to steady out the tides of the present.

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     In saying all this, one thing that's interesting about the FNAF community, and maybe certain types of internet community in general, is that the community is, functionally, virtual. Virtuality informs communication. Where as communities that meet in church, for example, can see each other and communicate through speech or body language and other kinds of physicality, the virtual spaces the FNAF community primarily exists within privilege written and spoken communication -- the audio of theory videos and the written text of the comment section and title and description. Visual elements play a part too, but I reckon they are most relevant in how they manifest via thumbnails (thumbnails being a space where written text and visuality collide). These technologies and sites of communication inform how and what people communicate, something seen most readily by reemphasizing the importance of clickbait for to make money as someone posting videos about FNAF. The phrnomenon of clickbait incentives people to use easily legible and evocative language over arcane or mild language. Technically, someone could title a video "I wonder if it's relevant to the narrative of FNAF3 that there's seemingly a parallel to the Happiest Day minigame in one of the endings from the 2024 interactive novel, Return From the Pit." While they could do that -- and I honestly think that's kind of a heat title -- the demands of YouTube as a platform would vastly privilege the same video being titled "RETURN TO THE PIT SOLVES FNAF 3!?", for example.

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     However, I don't think clickbait is enough of an explanation for why the FNAF community has such an affinity for nonnirmative communication. Aside from solved, for example, the words "canon" and "continuity" are highly discoursed (and therein polarizing) within the community. As much as people may try to wipe the slate clean and go back to what these words mean in their dictionary definitions (no but seriously I've seen like 4 or 5 videos doing this), the ways the FNAF community uses these words is at once removed from their otherwise technical definitions and so ingrained within the community that linguistic intervention is all but impossible. By this i mean that at various points people have suggested other words be used instead or that people try to be specific when they use the terms so they don't mix messages, but then the tide comes back in and it's a removed chaos again. To clarify what I mean, canon generally is used outside of FNAF in two contexts -- for referring to biblical texts or for referring to the agreed upon standard suite of texts, such as what books are taught in high school or what Shakespeare plays are important to know about. (See: zoe bee's video about the complications embedded in demarcating the literary canon).

     For FNAF, canon means something like "official" or "certified." The term is evoked for when people try to determining which fnaf texts could be said to exist within an identical diegesis with which other ones. For example, the first fnaf game and the second fnaf game are generally both said to be canon -- even though they take place at different times, they ultimately exist within the same fictional world and are thus canonical. *to note, the question of canonicity is only really concerned with determining which texts (or parts of texts,,,) exist in the same world as the first fnaf game. With all of this being said, though, the term simultaneously has a different meaning which refers to anything that is within a Scott-authored FNAF-related diegesis. This definition is ostensibly the one that Scott uses-- in any case, he has a number of posts where he uses it in this way which people often reference back to for to recenter the conversation around.

     While this prescriptive use of the word was offered by the text's author, it is not the way the term is most frequently used (which is the first definition i outlined). Scott offers the word "continuity" to roughly mean what fans use canon to mean, i think-- though I also vaguely sense that people use it for to refer to what "Scott" uses canon for to refer to. The reason why these words are so contested is because canonicity in the first fnaf-related sense is very important to some fans. That is, because fnaf exists as such a media mix, and there are so many genre and media that fnaf coexists within, the series is not always precisely congrats with itself. For example, in the first fnaf book series, William afton doesn't have three children whereas most fans generally say that in the games he has three children, Michael, elizabeth, and the bitevictim (jury is out on what his name is). Fans say, then, that both of these can't exist at once simultaneously, and so one must be canon and the other, non-canon. The complications come, as I said, in that fnaf exists as so many different things from so many different authors. And so, canon, which essentially asks for there to be a singular author, can't contain everything that is fnaf (however this also means that it's never purely black and white what is canon and what isn't as the series' main author has also authored undeniably non-canon works -- such as freddy in space 2 and 3).

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     I think the language used by the fnaf community is interesting because it demonstrates the limitations of prescriptivism, and shows just how volatile and fragment language can be, or rather, truly is. The dictionary or encyclopedia claim to enshrined meaning, centralizing it in certain forms -- saying X means Y -- but then time and society and culture and people step in and the whole charade falls apart. At the same time, the fnaf community demonstrates that people generally don't communicate with meaningless signs. People try to communicate something specific-- people try to say what they mean. And sometimes that means inventing words. And sometimes that means making words yours. And sometimes that means that only a handful of people will understand you. And sometimes that means your future self won't understand you. And sometimes...

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     Yes. Invented words. This is another interesting face of the fnaf community. Because theory is such a big part of the community, people inevitably communicate about theories. And generally theories are complex -- they usually take the length of a youtube video to explain, after all. And so in order to signify the meaning of the theory without having to explain it everytime (and for to concentrate and calcify meanings within the community; invented language as a form of social control), people developed acronyms and shorthand names for referring to various theories and/or events/characters/elements from the series. Starting with the first FNAF game, people refer to the event the easter egg newspaper clips talk about (where five kids went missing at the pizzeria) as the MCI. 11 years later and there's now a bunch of acronyms -- some last and some are flash in the pan; some are widely used and some are niche. Aside from acronyms, the second kind of theory terminology is the shipname-style nomenclature people use to signify given theories. For example, TalesGames is a popular theory right now. It says that the tales from the pizza plex anthology stories happen within the games' timeline (i.e., are canonical in the first fnaf sense). While TalesGames may have had a specific meaning at first, it has since splintered into where now it's basically a bunch of different gremlins all bumbling about under the same trenchcoat that is "TalesGames" -- "why yes officer, it's just me, one person, no one else here.. why do you ask?"

     To explain: while it's true that the theory is that the tales from the pizzaplex anthology stories occur within the games' timeline, what this means is contested. Some people say all of the tales stories are canon while some say that only the short stories, "the mimic" and "the storyteller," and the mimic-related epilogues are canon. And then beyond this, people vary minutely in all manner of ways -- going back and forth on this and that short story. People use these theory names as shorthand in conversation with each other. I know mostly what the various theories are and where they came from but inevitably (since the fnaf community is so big), someone will use a theory name i hadn't heard before and I will be all taken out of it. Like, "???? I have noclu even what the words r that u r talking about." The most frequent culprit is "MoltenMCI Alter-S" -- like i legit have no clue what this is about and it's name is like three or four levels deep of fnaf terminology coalescing. The peculiarity of theory terminology motivated me to start working on a quiz show / trivia about them ,,, which I will finish one day. It's just so fascinating, no? (Prospective name for the quiz is "WAS THAT THE BITE OF 87!?").

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     While it's fun, in a certain way, to point at the peculiarity of how fnaf fans communicate about the series or their theories, it's important to remember that it comes from cultural and temporal contexts which inform what it looks/ed like and how it develops/ed. The phenomenon of ship names, for example, is an important context to bring in when making sense of how theory names look the way they do. Ive done less work thinking about theory terminology than "solved," so I can't as confidently point to all the factors I think may be informing what the communication looks like (and what it communicates). That said, it's hard to imagine that similar contexts of youtube as a platform for communication and that legibility on the internet can coincide with experience-- these likely also inform this language.

     Or, to put it more harshly (aka tl;dr):

     Words lose meaning. Become so fractured. Niche into niche. Subcultures that don't even know they are living together, using the same tongues... Issues of both direct, prescriptive intervention and also a lack of prescriptive intervention... Ideas become embedded in words so violently that the ideas are shredded away and the words stand alone. And then those words become ideas and get embedded elsewhere, etc.

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this is the second part of a duo of posts discussing etymology in the wake of modern cultural movements. for part one click here