What Does It Mean for Something to Matter?

In the grand scheme of things, none of the games I played on Hyper Dash really mattered. No lives were at stake. We just made up everything, the league existed because a few people decided there should be one, and the only reason any of us tried getting better than each other was because we chose to. Maybe we just had nothing better to do.

But I don’t think that makes everything meaningless. I think that most things we say have meaning are like that. We decide something matters and then other people decide it matters too, so it just does. A few players can get in game to play a match that means absolutely nothing to almost everyone else in the world and yet still have their hands shaking just because of how much they care about winning.

That was both one of the best and worst things about Hyper Dash. Caring made winning feel better, but it also made losing kinda hurt. I started expecting myself to always perform well and there were times when the pressure I put on myself made the game less fun. And even after all these years, there are things I expected from it that I never got.

There are some things that I wish I had done differently. But at the same time, I don’t think those are the things I’ll care about when Hyper Dash is gone. I think what I’ll remember more is everything that formed around the competition. The community.

Communities are made from people choosing to come back the next day. Someone starts a league. Someone makes a team. People start meeting every week. Someone you met randomly becomes someone you talk to every day. Some stupid joke become a reference that people repeat for years. Things that didn't mean anything eventually mean something.

When you’re inside a community like that, it seems like it will never end. Some people will leave but then there are new people. A team will die but then a new one comes and replaces it. One season ends and then another starts. The community is just always there, continuously changing, and you don't really take the time to think about how someday it wont be.

Until it finally happens...

Small online communities are very special, but they unfortunately don’t leave many traces of their history behind. Eventually, the Discord servers become inactive. Some videos get deleted. People just remember who won which season. Who was the strongest player. Meanwhile, the smaller things that made those years actually feel special just slowly disappear.

I don’t want what I experienced to end up like that.

This isn’t supposed to be the entire history of Hyper Dash. I wouldn't be able to write that. I only saw one small part of it, and everyone who was there would probably tell the story differently. This is just what it looked like from my point of view.

And even that view is affected by knowing everything I know now.

Looking back, everything just seems to make sense.

Everything becomes a story.