AndreiXYZ
| AndreiXYZ | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Aliases | Andrei |
| Age | 16 |
| Socials | |
| Webpage | AndreiXYZ's world |
| Other general information | |
| Residence | Craiova, Romania |
| Date of birth | December 15th |
AndreiXYZ, formerly known as William Afton, is a Romanian user and world designer who joined OWOT on July 31st, 2020.
He is known for creating WOTDs using symbols for legacy computing. Currently, he is neither active on the site, nor the Discord server.
Andrei is a big supporter of /main, an art-centric subworld with stricter moderation, and believes that it should be used to advertise OWOT instead of the more toxic Mainpage.
He believes in stronger moderation in general, and thinks that FP should appoint more admins on both the canvas and the OWOT Discord.
He also takes a harsher stance on most user drama, usually advocating for the removal of OWOT's more undesirable users.
History
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Worlds
/andreixyz
/center_console_history and /mch_complete
/center_console_history is a world created by AndreiXYZ in order to document changes made to the Square of Publicity.
/mch_complete was created by Andrei to document changes made to /main's center console.
/Interview_with_FP
An interview conducted over Discord DMs in October of 2023, on OWOT's 6th anniversary.
As it is a greatly important piece of OWOT history, it is highly suggested that you read through the interview in its entirety.
But some interesting snippets include:
AndreiXYZ • 11:36 yeah, no worries okay, next question... 2. So, Our World of Text is going to turn 6 in a week, do you feel proud of how you managed to build this site from just the YWOT codebase? Do you think you were successful in, perhaps, changing the lives of some people for the better? I mean, my internet career has definitely evolved a lot, I've gotten engaged in more big communities thanks to the friends I've met on this platform. But I really like OWOT's concept, and pretty much all of its sister websites' too. I look up to you, especially since you singlehandedly made OWOT when you were 14, a feat I would never be able to achieve, I mean heck, you started development in mid-2016, when you were 13 years old. FP • 11:38 For starters, I did actually use part of the YWOT codebase when I first started with OWOT. As time progressed, the majority of the code eventually became my own and there was little to no sign of Andrew's code my original intention with OWOT was nothing inherently special. In fact, the story of my version of OWOT extends way back to mid-2016 [...] FP • 11:45 Eventually, I started my first successful iteration of "NWOT" in November of 2016, shortly after OWOP was released (previously known as YWOP). This iteration, as terrible and unstable as it was, continued up until mid-2017 when I lost interest in it; that was until I first started engaging in conversations with anon_guy and Dzeni on a private YWOT world. Even at that time, I still had no idea how git worked, so I would delete the entire repository and create a new one every time I had to make a new change. [...] FP • 11:54 Whether or not that was the case, I felt really sorry and wanted to make up for it to make up for it, my next best thing was to restart development of the YWOT clone and ensure the bug is present on that clone for everybody. This iteration of NWOT eventually became very successful and is what is OWOT today. However the story didn't begin there for several weeks, anon_guy ran this clone on his hardware and we talked on there, once more while I maintained the server. Eventually, InfraRaven caught notice that I was making a YWOT clone and wondered why I didn't tell him about it. He offered to run my clone on one of his spare servers, and the rest is history. I'll be back in a few minutes, feel free to come up with more questions during this time. AndreiXYZ • 11:59 that was really cool, thank you for taking your time to tell me this story fp also i already have all the questions pre-written on a file that i'm reading off of
AndreiXYZ • 12:22 yes and welcome back next question: 4. What are your next steps in improving OWOT's moderation? I mean, OWOT is meant to be free speech, but unfortunately, anarchy and free speech just... unleashes the absolute worst in people, whether it be spamming the hell out of everything, being a public nuisance to 90% of the userbase, having 9 year olds with unrestricted internet access do mindless things on OWOT without having any clue on what they're doing, I feel like it would certainly benefit a lot from an auto-muting system to at least filter out all of the spam while you're away, which I've been recommending for quite a while actually, so, I feel like that would be a big first step. FP • 12:24 I used to be the guy who tried to be as lenient as possible, which meant allowing people to do literally anything they wanted, no matter what. This included spamming as much as you wanted, speaking your mind, and taking down the server. AndreiXYZ • 12:25 b r u h FP • 12:25 Of course, I've changed a lot since then and I consider past me to be incredibly naive. Anyhow, as the community grew, I've realized that my way of doing things was horrible, to say the least. I've started to clamp down on spam, restrict porn on the front page, and tried my best to resolve any dispute between community members. Even behind the scenes, I still try my best to avert harassment attempts
AndreiXYZ • 12:56 dang okay, moving on to the next question which is kind of related to your story behind owot's development: 7. Have you ever felt that OWOT would go nowhere in terms of popularity while you were developing it, have you had any difficulties or burnout or wanted to make a feature but it was just out of your devskill's reach? FP • 12:59 back when I first started working on OWOT, I never anticipated anybody beyond my small group of friends on YWOT using it. Even during OWOT's first couple of months, hardly anybody ever used it. The community organically grew at a slow pace over the span of a couple years. By November of 2017, I was already burned out from developing OWOT and nearly dropped out of developing it. By sheer miracle, I picked up work on OWOT again and started refactoring the codebase here and there.
AndreiXYZ • 13:02 yeah, i've seen the big gap between late october and mid december in the commit history this next question is going to be somewhat similar to the one we just talked about: 8. Are you ever going to quit working on OWOT? Like, will you ever pass the torch to someone else, InfraRaven perhaps, as he's the one hosting the domain, or maybe some other staff member like Mr.Guy? I wonder how many generations OWOT will last, well, before getting a visit from the FBI for the actions the community has done there. I'm joking, of course. FP • 13:15 I plan on continuing to develop OWOT until the day I die. I'm not aware of any viable heir to OWOT since I'm not aware of anybody else who's as interested in OWOT as I am. By then, who knows? maybe there'll be people lining up to take my torch should the need arise. Maybe a competitor will spring up, leading to owot becoming too irrelevant for anybody to want to "inherit." This is surprisingly common in the software world - I've seen developers for libraries who still continue to maintain that library decades later.
Presence on the OWOT Discord
Andrei used to be one of the most active users in the OWOT Discord, having accumulated 105,523 messages since joining the server in March of 2021.
He is not as active today, however, but still keeps up to date with new messages and occasionally intervenes in drama.
Daily Activities
Nowadays, Andrei's most regular posts are daily updates for when he goes to bed.
OWOT Today
A Discord-based newspaper by Andrei, which would provide regular updates on happenings within the site.
OWOT Today was later succeeded by Lemuria's Our World of News, which has been criticized by Andrei for its heavily biased nature.
Related Users
Fern
Andrei has been friends with Fern for years and petitioned strongly for her to be made a moderator on the OWOT Discord.
He was also the first person in OWOT to learn of her transition, and playfully hinted at it for months before the big reveal.
Since her promotion to Discord admin, Andrei has stood with Fern on most moderation issues and helped her gather evidence against misbehaving users. Notably, however, he has criticized her for not taking action against Lemuria despite repeated cases of ragebaiting.
FP
Andrei once interviewed FP for OWOT's 6th anniversary. Generally speaking he has shown a great interest in learning about the history of the site.
Andrei is known to criticize FP for not appointing more moderators, thus allowing trolls to run unchecked on both the canvas and the OWOT Discord(which has become significantly more orderly since Fern's appointment in 2024).
The Manhatingzone
AndreiXYZ was historically the most vocal critic of the MHZ, and tried multiple times to get FP to delete certain sections of their worlds. He also caused /OWOTD to be temporarily privated after griefing it using scripts.
In response, the MHZ wrote numerous fanfictions(most of which were sexual in nature) about Andrei and even created an entire world to mock him.
As of 2024, however, Andrei has decided to stop talking about the Manhatingzone or its worlds. Similarly, the MHZ has become dormant and no longer attracts as much drama as it did before.
Polonez
"You gotta be really gullible to think that kid ever "changes" into a better person.
He's proven himself for a year straight that he's unfixable"
- Andrei on Polonez
Andrei is also a vocal critic of Polonez, a notoriously toxic user who planned to take down the OWOT Discord by reporting it for pedophilia.
He was extremely frustrated to learn that Lime.owot had started dating him in May of 2025.
Lemuria
Andrei used to enter repeated drama with Lemuria in response to his attention seeking behavior, in which he would bring up his obsession with niche Twitch streamers despite no one wanting to hear about it. Andrei also criticized Lemuria for the heavily biased nature of his newspaper Our World of News.
As of 2025 the feud has largely died down, and both users are largely inactive in the modern day.
Meimei
It is unknown if Andrei is aware of Meimei's ties to the MHZ — if any exist at all — but he has nevertheless shown admiration for her art style.
For Christmas of 2023 he made a custom Center Console for /main in the style of one of Meimei's drawings from /computer.yes.
On one occasion he pondered the idea of traveling back in time and showing Meimei's art to YWOT users from the early 2010s.
Jamel
In May of 2025 Andrei gathered evidence against Jamel for his transphobic and homophobic behavior.
Earlier that day he had also contributed to the case against Tatejo, who received a lengthy ban for abusing alts, being toxic and planning to take down the website.
Beyond OWOT
Andrei is active on the Discord servers for both of OWOT's sister websites
Presence on YWOT
From 2021 to 2022 Andrei feuded with a user named Jesse78 over emoji spam, with Jesse reacting to every message with the :bike: emote.
Andrei's main criticism was that the server had devolved into meaningless faction wars with there being very little discussion about the site itself.
It must be noted, however, that Andrei had previously cooperated with Jesse over his effort to react to every message with the :nobikes: emote. It is possible that he only turned on Jesse after he switched to being a bike enthusiast.
Presence on OWOP
In the OWOP Discord Andrei is primarily active in the #hell channel, which was created to contain misbehaving users.
He and another #hell user named Vvictor are currently the server's most active members and would consistently lobotomize themselves for public entertainment(i.e. shitposting).
Trivia
- There is a conspiracy theory that all Romanian OWOT users are secretly Andrei's alts