Wagner James Au / New World Notes

Above: From a video by Travingel

Camus once wrote, "One must imagine Sisyphus happy."

And the Internet replied: lol no

Remember Monument, the incredible VRChat world which has no other purpose than to gather together and build an infinite, Tower of Babel-like edifice into the sky? The construction is still happening now, but with an added (probably inevitable) twist:

Instead of fetching bricks, painstakingly climbing up the high tower, and placing those bricks at the summit… someone has figured out how to automate thi building process.

This according to VRChat player Travingel, who's been issuing updates from the scene on Reddit like, "Monument has a cheater for at least 2 days adding 6 layers every 14-15 seconds."

Again, Monument has no explicit goals and certainly no rewards. The sole point of building the Monument is to be with other VRChat players from around the world, engaged together in this task for its own sake. A work of collective art.

But now, that art project is being gamed. Even though gaming it also has no goal:

"The only reason to ever cheat in a multiplayer game, let alone a co-op game where there's no competition or rush is upsetting others," as Travingel puts it to me.

Perhaps because of this, VRChat players who were otherwise previously busy at this Babylonian task have departed the world. But the auto-builder, somehow, keeps building.

"When I jumped down for the last time from the tower," Travingel reports to me, "no pickaxes were being swung, no stone chiseled into bricks, no baskets being filled, no manual labor. Just the tower increasing in size by itself." (Which I have to say is also impressive, code-wise, were it not for them being an anti-Sisyphus buzzkill.)

More updates when I get them. I'm also reaching out to Monument creator Sylan Troh.