I worked at the SCP Foundation
The SCP Foundation is perhaps the largest and longest running community writing project of all time.
Image Credit: DALL-E
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In 2012, following a sweat drenched session of the latest Slender clone, I typed “scary games” into YouTube and clicked on an innocuous let’s play video. What I encountered was bone-chilling: SCP-087-B — a first-person horror game based on an online creepypasta. Its design was simple, a player slowly descends a staircase with eerie music fading in and spooky faces popping out. I didn’t realise I was on the precipice of an entire universe.
The original SCP-087 was like nothing I have ever read, and had a cold layer of authenticity only afforded to police interrogation footage. What separated it from other creepypastas was its unique structure: a classified research document with an Object Class (indicating difficulty of containment), Special Containment Procedures (methodology of imprisonment), a Description (details of anomalous properties), and Exploration Logs. Its warnings of top secret material made me feel as if I had stumbled upon something I shouldn’t have — that men in black would come to my door for even glancing at the page. I had no idea it was just one small nook in a mountain of other stories, all written by other authors but all sharing the same universe.
The SCP Foundation is perhaps the largest and longest running community writing project of all time. Thousands of articles, hundreds of authors, all writing about a mysterious international organisation that researches and contains anomalous objects, entities, and phenomena. Like many internet memes this was all birthed in 2007 with SCP-173, a statue that can only move when no one is watching it. Soon after, the SCP Wiki was born, a site where users could catalogue any item they desired. There were rules on how to write an article, but those rules could be broken.
The cold, clinical tone could shatter and become something poetic, horrific, or hilarious. Some were benign objects, some were jokes, some were world-ending Lovecraftian gods. One of my favourites from the classic series is SCP-055, an anti-meme that forces people to forget every encounter they have with it — how the Foundation even contained the anomaly is still a mystery to its own staff. One of the more poetic stories is SCP-348, a ceramic bowl that fills with soup when placed in front of someone with a minor injury such as a runny nose, with reports it tastes like their parents’ cooking.
I’m only scratching the surface of course — some stories would lift elements from others, mentioning specific doctors or groups of interest. An article about an anomalous chair with a vague nod to an unknown organisation could then catapult an entire hidden storyline, potentially birthing even more articles after that. Groups like the Church of the Broken God, the Unusual Incidents Unit, Nobody, the Factory, Doctor Wondertainment, Are We Cool Yet, The Fifth Church, Shark Punching Centre and Gamers Against Weed all emerged through the collective expansion of other authors’ ideas. If one idea clashed with another, it didn’t matter because it could spawn an alternate universe within the broader canon, all born from a communal spirit of creativity.
It’s hard to imagine a community on the internet continuing to thrive after more than 10 years — every so-called “great” reddit board eventually goes stale. The idea that anyone could post whatever idea they wanted led to problems down the line. The writing on the wiki evolved, and articles like SCP-239 and SCP-343 (while popular among new readers) didn’t reflect the complexity of other articles. New writers would often come to the site (including myself) and coldpost something that may have felt like a chilling short story to them, but is instead booed off the site. Getting your article accepted into the broader canon is one of the reasons the wiki has only grown in quality over time.
Before your first draft, you must get your idea greenlit, then seek feedback from your peers. If enough people approve your article (after what could be countless revisions), only then can you post to the site. Once posted, users rate your article and if enough people vote negatively — it will be removed from the site. You can then choose to either rework the piece, or go back to the drawing board.
Choosing to continue coldposting might get you banned. There are staff everywhere, monitoring what you say and do, and a disciplinary counsel can vote on your fate at any time. These staff are all volunteers, a part of the community that wants to keep the peace. They can be helpful at times, dismissive at others. All of them are working on their own articles too, getting feedback just like everyone else.
For a period of time I was a Junior Staff member and would give feedback to emerging authors — despite barely writing anything myself. I always wanted my own “classic article” — a deep exploration of lore, world ending scenarios, unexplored universes — but with that comes practice. Writing something that feels like a genuine part of the canon always felt like a bridge too far to cross — requiring extensive knowledge of Scranton Reality Anchors, Sarkism, or Broken Masquerades. The lore only grew from there, and it started to get quite exhausting. There’s only so many times I can read a whole article just to get to the end and have a random (seemingly important) character pop up, only to click a link and find that the story is actually the third part in a seven part mini-canon. New readers could easily be turned off by what the Foundation has become — clicking on a random article can turn into a steep learning curve rather than a simple short story. So I stopped reading and writing for a long time because I simply couldn’t keep up.
It’s been almost eight years since I last wrote for the wiki. Much like how this journey began I was browsing YouTube, and found myself watching a video on the Foundation when something jolted inside me. That sense of wonder has since returned. While not as obsessive as I once was, I’ve been trying my best to catch up on the longer stories. I’ve found new favourites in SCP-2922, SCP-3003, SCP-5322, and SCP-6002. Giving a summary of these works will never truly encapsulate the cosmic journey you go on — just go read them, and enjoy the cold wonder I felt when I first discovered them.
And for any aspiring SCP authors — you don’t need to be a master of metaphysics to write a good article, you just need to have a good story. Not sure if it’s good enough? Don’t worry, have patience, there’s a whole community happy to help.