Criticism against OWOT
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Since the start of the 2020s, many users have started to believe that OWOT is on a decline.
Some popular reasons cited for the site's downfall include an access of spam and a shortage of moderation, which has made Spawn a rather inhospitable place in recent years.
Many anons(and edgier community members) also attribute an influx of minors to the community's decline. It is a somewhat common sentiment that FP and other moderators are increasing censorship in order to keep the site "kid-friendly."
The "Good Old Days" of OWOT
Several anons have said that the site was a better environment either before or during 2020, though others have rebutted their claims by stating that OWOT was barely active back then.
d9eoead, who has been active since 2018, believes 2022 to be the peak of the community, describing it as "edgy, but in a good way." This was a period that was largely centered around the frontpage chat, before it was removed. He cited trolls like PinkiePie, ScarlettAnn, and Elon musk as important figures from that time. Notably, d9 reflected that he enjoyed this era so much in part because he himself was a troll at the time.
Anon/chat sentiment
"OWOT's community largely consists of faggots who behave as one large circlejerk. If you do not like one of their actions, opinions or ideologies, they'll group together to remove you and paint you as this "EVIL PAECE OF SHEET". The OWOT community is only becoming an echo chamber, where the circlejerk's opinions are the loudest.
OWOT is already destined to fall as the circlejerk faggots find less faggots like them, while they indirectly fend off any normal people off the site, thinking that the site was made for them and ONLY for them, and due to this lack of userbase begin to quit to other faggot sites. Due to this, OWOT will eventually shut down, and because of their crippling addictions to the site, they will cry and feel grief over such a fucking tiny event.. These "feelings" however, are natural due to their brains being 24/7/365 addicted to OWOT, and eventually they will simply forget about OWOT like as if it never existed.
Unfortunately, it is very likely that the circlejerk will make a new OWOT, just to furthen their addictions to the site, like how drug addicts seek alternative drugs to continue their addiction when their favorite ones are suddenly unavailable to them. Because that's what OWOT's "community" is, a bunch of highly addicted and terminally online faggots who talk about the same topics all year round while kicking out those who they find unfit for their circlejerk, but not before making fun of them even after they're kicked.
OWOT is going to die, and it will take down all the faggots with it. Any braindead jokes you make of this text are not funny at all and prove how fucking stupid all of you are, just like how almost all of humanity is subdued, illusioned, deceived, tricked and brainwashed by the government to make sure that those who are in power and in control remain as such, without giving a shit about the ethics (because to them, ethics is just a synonym for deception).
This will probably never go anywhere though, and I will only be dismissed as a crazy faggot, just like how people who know the lies and tricks of those up in the hierarchy are dismissed as conspiracy theorists (because that's what they want society to believe). Fuck all of you."
— A response left on a community survey by ChromicQuanta in June of 2025
Anons(usually those who have been on the site for a significantly long time) can frequently be seen voicing their opinions about the downfall of OWOT in Global Chat.
(Among other things) they tend to express a hatred for underage, transgender and/or furry users, blaming them for what they believe is an increase in censorship across all parts of the site. They describe these users as being part of a "clique," which the site's moderators protect by banning offensive speech.
/OWOTD
A world created by the Manhatingzone to document drama within the community. The world seemed to be most active around 2022 and received updates well into 2024, though it had become almost entirely dead by the beginning of 2025.
/OWOTD is filled with criticisms towards OWOT and its community, mainly coming from MHZ members and other anons. The page expresses hatred towards site admins and registered users in general.
Criticism of the OWOT Discord
The OWOT Discord has become significantly better moderated ever since the promotion of Fern in 2024. Previously it was filled with trolls and right wing users, most of whom were later banned by Fern.
tbd
tbd
Criticism of the wiki
Discord sentiment
Members of the OWOT Discord(which includes a large portion of registered users) generally attribute the site's decline to a lack of moderation. There is a strong push to appoint more moderators on all areas of the community, and to enforce stricter rules on trolling and hate speech.
Anti-TextWaller sentiment
Ever since 2021 there has been a sentiment that the presence of (predominantly underage) users from TextWall is corrupting the OWOT userbase.
"OWOT has gone downhill. Slowly, one by one, it was filling with peasants from Textwall and Trollbox. With clones of Bzuki that burst in tears when you insult them. With mentally deranged "clicking yes"-obsessed users. It just doesn't feel the same as how I know OWOT. And for that reason, I will be (somewhat) quitting OWOT. I will quit being on the frontpage. I cannot stand any more of these fuckers. These ruiners. They ruined OWOT. I will still be making worlds and shit, but I'm DONE with the main page.
I will only go on the main page and chat if there is a really important event. But until OWOT goes back to normal, don't expect me to come back to chatting there. Meanwhile on here, I'll mostly just lurk. I'll just drop a few messages occasionally.
To the Textwall/Trollbox users: Have fun ruining the OWOT experience even more than this. Just note that you have made a few users quit. "
— AndreiXYZ in December 2021
"yeah. the textwall immigration wave destroyed the owot userbase and the stain is still there. there's still a bunch of little kids or dumbfucks every once in a while but back then they were fucking everywhere. even if you uttered the word "fuck" once you'd get a handful of kids spiraling telling you that SWEARING BAD!!! U MUST NOT SWEAR!
they tried to... reclaim owot. transform its rules and already built community to fit themselves and what they wanted. selfish and annoying. parasitic, even.
and they are still here.
trollboxers are coming too, there's a few good trollboxers but the rest are the same as the textwall kids from back then"
— d9eoead in 2025
/lime.owot/i_hate_owot
On August 23rd, 2025, lime.owot released /lime.owot/i_hate_owot in order to protest the rampancy of spam and griefing on the OWOT frontpage.
This world is the dark reprise of an earlier page named /lime.owot/i_like_owot, in which Lime expresses all the ways he enjoys the site.
The contents of /lime.owot/i_hate_owot are as follows:
"hi, it's been a while.
and i'm kinda tired.
i've been through a lot this year, and i'm not feeling the best. all i really want to say here is:
i wish things were going better.
on the 2nd of february 2025, i moved lime.radio out of spawn from lack of motivation to continuously restore its surrounding structures. after that i had little reason to go back to frontpage. my mental state was crippling and having my art destroyed time and time again would have only made it worse. but back then i thought it would end soon.
i was wrong
these past few months, you may have noticed the site's main operator, fp, has started to become more and more inactive. and with this, the people who could do harm started doing more harm and more harm. roads started to become unrecognisable until 30 coordinates out. even the railway that used to be restored for nearly a year stopped, and the rest of the art above it was destroyed too.
some days, landmarks like pika city or plotsville would be targeted and unrestored for days. and after that, it seems like nobody wants to be on the front page anymore.
it's like it became uninhabitable. because it basically is.
a year ago, you could log into owot's front page and expect to see some beautiful landscaping every once in a while.
that's gone now.
gone were the days, where you could stumble upon someone on frontpage canvas and have a meaningful conversation with them, gone were the days, where you could see stick people fighting with guns and energy beams and sneaking around structures, gone were the days, where you could go north and not stumble upon an area overridden with spam within the first 10 coordinates.
owot used to be so much more engaging and that's gone now.
nowadays i feel like i'm a spectator of a dead canvas, helpless and unable to improve the situation. and i tried, and i'm trying, but i can only work for so many days in a row before i become exhausted.
i don't know how much longer owot will survive, but i don't have much hope. maybe this site's 8th anniversary will be its last before the 9th becomes a memorial instead of a celebration.
the best i can do is hope that the people that can do something about this start taking action. and i'm worried that won't be soon."
The world was advertised in the OWOT Discord, where it received 12 :fire: reactions from various users.
FP's response
FP would give his response soon after, offering hopeful words for the community and receiving 15 :fire: reactions.
"10 years ago, I would've said the same exact thing about YWOT.
When I first discovered the site, I saw all those things you mentioned. I had some funny conversations with strangers and came across creative arts as I traversed across the front page. That all went away by 2015 once spam got out of control. By summer time, it felt like I was the last man standing after hundreds of worlds got destroyed by a notorious spammer. The site felt like a ghost town. I was reminiscing the times of 2009 when it felt things were much simpler.
However, that was not the end of the YWOT story. It's ten years later, and YWOT has bounced back stronger than ever.
Our site has had many ups and downs over the years which is a testament to our ability to recover from destruction and adapt to new threats. By late 2021, I myself felt hopeless as OWOT's front page was completely destroyed and the threat of PinkiePie kept me on my toes. In 2022, we developed countermeasures and I additionally developed the time machine system for the first time which allowed me to revert the extremely big road spam from 2020.
As new threats emerge, me and our security team work to develop new countermeasures to make sure OWOT resists any roadbump that we encounter. These events are nothing but a temporary storm."
— FP's response on August 23rd, 2025
Antiswear/AntiOWOT
tbd