Parahumans Online
Parahumans Online, abbreviated to PHO, is the "go-to" website about capes. The main website displays recent international news about parahumans, and it also includes a cape wiki, message boards with private message functionality, a chatroom, and other information on cape groups and events. Its URL was Parahumans.net.<ref name="2.2">Insinuation 2.2</ref>expand based on glow worm and others. Bow did a synopsis for a legal sock puppet account.
Cultural impact
Is the premier cape site for gossip and serves as the site of record for parahuman names. If one is not careful a name carelessly chosen or mentioned in passing could be misinterpreted. Long clunky names are simplified for example "Genocide by Scythe" becomes Genoscythe.<ref name="R1">Parahumans Online is something of a wiki that establishes names. If you don't pick and declare a name for yourself, someone else will (a la Skitter). If you pick a name that's stupid (superdude785) or offensive, the community will name you or strive to rename you (a la Bitch/Hellhound), depending.
Keep in mind that language is always striving to simplify itself. Long-winded names don't tend to get a lot of traction and will become nicknames, which eventually become the new standard. Someone names themselves Cyber Stealth Death Ninjaman ends up getting referred to as Cyberdeath, and that becomes their name.
Getting huffy and going, "But guyyyys! I'm Cyber Stealth Death Ninjaman, not Cyberdeath!" is a fast way to lose rep and have people move even faster to the short-form.
When a villain dies, their name is up for grabs, but if it's just taken without a second thought, then has a way of maintaining bad reps and picking up old rivalries with few of the benefits. That guy who always wanted to stomp Tailspin's ass might get some cathartic release from beating down Tailspin II. Sometimes very stupid villains take a name that's already taken, causing headaches for everyone involved, and invite beatdowns & contests over the name.
Heroes are far more likely to simply ask for permission to use a name. Unicorn III passed her name on to Unicorn IV, for example. - Wildbow on Reddit</ref> The community will also change or swap out different names until they meet standards.
It is unknown what other sites there are.
Message Boards
The message boards are the most seen section of Parahumans Online in Worm. The most in-depth look at the boards is seen later,<ref>Interlude 19.y</ref> which includes some of Greg Veder's posts, which includes sections of a Parahumans Online message boards thread.<ref>Interlude 24.y</ref>
Other characters seen or referred to using it are Taylor, Charlotte, Lisa, WagTheDog, Sveta, Weld, and Vista. Saint has also been shown to pore over messages from Parahumans Online through Dragon's information feeds.
Members
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Chatrooms
The Parahumans Online chatroom #116, 'The Holdout' is shown.<ref>Interlude 24.y</ref> On the refurbished site it was the meeting place of the Chatroom group.<ref>Glow-worm P.3</ref>
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Wiki
The glorious and noble art of online encyclopedias is followed in regards to capes. Pages are known to have warnings about dangerous parahumans,<ref>Shadow 5.6</ref><ref>The hyperviolent capes I’d come to think of as being the red-tagged, like the old capes on the parahuman online site who’d had the ‘do not approach’ banners across their profile. - Excerpt from Torch 7.8</ref> such as Hellhound<ref>A red box near the bottom of the page read, “Rachel Lindt has a public identity, but is known to be particularly hostile, antisocial and violent. If recognized, do not approach or provoke. Leave the area and notify authorities as to her last known location.” - Excerpt from Insinuation 2.2</ref> and Oni Lee.<ref>Topping it all off, Oni Lee’s wiki page had a similar red warning box to the one that Bitch/Hellhound had on hers, minus the bit about his public identity. From what they knew about him, authorities had seen fit to note him a sociopath. The warning covered the same essential elements: exceedingly violent, dangerous to approach, should not be provoked, and so on. - Excerpt from Insinuation 2.2</ref>
Weaver and the Chicago Wards vandalized Golem's wiki page, and other websites, in an effort to confuse the The Slaughterhouse Nine-Thousand about his power.<ref>Golem was walking on rooftops at the edge of the effect, and he was surrounded by a nimbus of whirling material. By Wanton. We’d already altered all of the data on the group, to imply by news reports and Golem’s powers on the websites that Wanton’s telekinetic storm was Golem’s power. - Excerpt from Sting 26.2</ref> Given the severity of the threat this is excusable.
Trivia
- Wildbow hinted in the comments that Parahumans Online may have been a side project of Dragon.<ref name="I19.y">Interlude 19.y</ref>
- Several of the usernames seen on the message boards are plays on usernames of posters from the site comments and elsewhere.<ref name="I19.y"/><ref name="U-SComment">Comment by user Undead-Spaceman on Interlude 19.y</ref><ref name="R-LComment">Comment by user Random Lurker on Interlude 19.y</ref><ref name="20.3c1">All of the people who appear in the (two) Parahumans Online installments are either commenters, forum-posters (in various threads on sites where people are discussing Worm) and people from the chatroom, with slight name changes. - Confirmation by Wildbow on Chrysalis 20.3</ref>
- Capes could have a Parahuman account and a plain cloths sock puppet account from when they were on PHO in their civilian identity.<ref>Their login process notes that her account is a 'cape in civilian clothes' account; they're a cape but has two accounts, and this is the one they switch to when they don't want to broadcast that they're a cape. A kind of legitimate 'sockpuppet' account. - Synopsis by Wildbow</ref>
References
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