This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Maleficent_Team_8883 on 2025-07-07 18:06:49+00:00.

I used to be a normal person. That word — normal — we toss it around without really knowing what it means anymore.

I had a remote job at a mid-level tech company. Backend dev. Some cybersecurity contracts. Mostly asynchronous. I was the guy who cracked dry jokes in Slack standups. “Comic relief,” someone once said. I played the part well.

But outside of that, I lived alone. Ate microwave dinners. Scrolled through news apps like it was a second job. No partner. No real friends. Just ambient playlists and podcasts talking into the void.

People laughed at my jokes. But no one ever called just to talk. Eventually, I stopped reaching out too.

⸻

The Disappearance

It started with deleting Instagram. No farewell post. No subtle story. Just gone.

Then Twitter. LinkedIn. WhatsApp. One by one, I erased myself.

At first, no one noticed. Then one friend messaged: “Bro you okay?” I replied: “Yeah. Just need space.” That was the last message I got.

I didn’t quit my job. But I asked to go freelance — contract basis. No meetings, just deliverables. They agreed. I picked up a few short gigs here and there. Backend work. API cleanup. Security audits. Ghost-in-the-system type of stuff. Enough to keep money flowing, nothing that tied me to a name.

I cancelled every subscription. No Netflix, no Spotify. Some weeks, I didn’t speak out loud at all. But it wasn’t depression. It wasn’t escapism. It was a clean, methodical disconnection.

⸻

The Writing

Once the noise stopped, I began to write. Not novels. Not blogs. Just… fragments.

Observations. Ideas. Questions no one around me ever asked.

I posted anonymously in subreddits, obscure forums, deep web wikis. Things like:

“What if being forgotten is the only true freedom?” “What does silence do to identity?” “How many people would follow you if they didn’t know your name?”

I didn’t expect engagement. But people found me.

Quietly at first. A message here. A reply there. Then a thread I wrote — “How to disappear in a connected world” — went viral in some digital underbelly. They called me “Normal.” Not a name. A descriptor.

It stuck.

⸻

The Cult (I guess)

I never asked for followers. But they came.

They started quoting me. Reposting my words with black-and-white graphics. A few began wearing plain masks in public — cheap, featureless ones — and tagging it #NormalWasRight.

Someone made a Discord server. Someone else wrote a zine. A girl DMed me:

“You saved me from suicide. I’ll do whatever you ask.”

I didn’t reply. But I kept writing.

Then one night, I looped a Porcupine Tree song — “Last Chance to Evacuate Planet Earth Before It Is Recycled.”

The sampled Heaven’s Gate speech in the end?

“Whether Hale-Bopp has a companion or not is irrelevant… You must follow me, and do exactly as I say…”

I listened to that last line on repeat. Then whispered: “Why not me?”

The Bank

That night, I felt a shift. Not rage. Not chaos. Just an impulse to test limits.

I posted a riddle on a private forum — obscure, symbolic, nothing direct. It referenced a well-known private bank and a possible vulnerability in its public-facing API.

I didn’t say, “Take it down.” I just said:

“If the system is a lie, what happens when the teller goes mute?”

Next morning, their servers were down. ATMs locked. Online portals frozen. The news blamed “technical glitches.” But in the Discord server? People knew.

They spammed:

Normal was right. Normal knew. Normal speaks — and the machine chokes.

Now

I never told them to meet. Never organized a rally. No cult robes. No mass suicide. That’s not the point.

But they act — and the world reacts.

One follower tattooed my entire forum post on his back. Another renounced their family and sent me proof.

And me?

I sit in a tiny flat with blackout curtains and fiber internet. I type in silence. I press Enter. And somewhere, something moves.

I used to be a normal person. Now I’m Normal.

And they listen.