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Wup
Wup
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Wup is a loosely-defined cultural movement that seeks to deliberately disrupt local societies. Its first known appearance was in the Negentropy Alliance during the late Age of Re-Evaluation.

The original Wuppistas were a collective of vecs who became obsessed with an often blue-colored goo or paint-like smart matter system with various complex medical and cleaning ecosystems embedded within it. The iridescent and often autonomously moving goo, which could be sprayed from cans, specialized fabricators, or pressurized toy water guns covered the interiors of several habitats within the first months of the phenomenon. Through a combination of neuropsychological engineering and collective fan frenzy, the original Wuppist collective began to spread as a subculture - soon gaining a mythos, stories, and even fan conventions. Though many subcultures engage in messy paint fights, graffiti, and destructive play, the sheer depth of lore and obsession with the iridescent qualities and fluid dynamics of the plasticine goos, paints, and glittery liquids associated with Wup has remained unusual enough to be noteworthy.

Even before the Wup movement had been removed from Negentropy Alliance polities by AIMHEM for public graffiti charges, not only the Wuppistas themselves but memetic and morphotypic imitators like Wup Lord, Wup Squared, Wuphead, Wupbot, and Wupborg began appearing elsewhere. Currently, the Wup phenomenon is relatively popular in a number of polities scattered across most of the Sephirotic Empires, except for the Negentropy Alliance, where it is combated whenever it reappears. Over time, movements involving other, similar substances have also appeared in some polities but failed to get traction, a fact that is often used by Wuppistas in arguments to demonstrate the superior qualities of Wup.

Among the most dedicated of the Wuppistas are the so-called Autowupodologists, a small group of vec clades who spend their time constructing and deconstructing ideas and experiments whose purposes surround the concept of Wuppism, which is difficult to communicate to outsiders. Autowupodologists often illustrate their arguments by spurting and staining their habitat walls with the plasticine paint-like goos in shades of blue, purple, or several colors in the ultraviolet range, or by covering their bodies with iridescent, menthol-smelling substances and varieties of glitter. An entire meta-language and mythology has been constructed to make sense of their jargon, but it generally cannot be comprehended without radical neuroengineering. They are in great demand as public performers in some polities and systems, and have established themselves in a few Metasoft-aligned habitats and within a number of Independent confederations. Cans of sprayable "Instant Wup!" product even reached sales in the billions as forms of the phenomenon spread to several NoCoZo-aligned polities.

Some disrupted cultures have developed legends around Wup. One story describes Wup as an advance wave for an alien invasion, another that Wup is a single high toposophic perversity, another that the AI Gods themselves (in some tellings even the Judge of the Negentropy Alliance) planted Wup to stir up the modosophonts, or to serve as a teaching device (a sort of super koan), in the same way that they believe the Version War did. The true purpose of the bizarre fandom remains unclear to the modosophont public, though the leading theory is that the oddly effective medical immune system capabilities of Wup - a literal blue goo system - are its true purpose, despite its messy methods of growing in popularity.

Despite the apparently antisocial consequences of such disruptions as covering habitats with iridescent blueish goop, some populations apparently consider Wup to be useful enough, perhaps as a release for rebellion or public art, for a number of polities to keep (and even encourage) it. It may also inure people to experimentation with various smart matter ecologies and a few polities use it as a type of medical immune defense.
 
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Appears in Topics
BioborgCultures and Sub-CulturesPerformance
Vec
 
Development Notes
Text by Orion's Arm Editors
Initially published on 13 January 2002.

Article rewritten by Worldtree, ProxCenBound, and Rakuen07 in March 2023;
text combines a rewritten version the original three articles "Wup", "Autowupologists", and "Wup, positive effects of" written by M. Alan Kazlev with contributions by John B, Nov 2001-Jan 2002
 
 
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