Night ops as a standalone community was founded by a specific type of person and geared toward a specific type of person. If you're here as someone with an honest interest in the hobby/skill, then I suspect what follows may resonate heavily with you either in the present sense or in your memories.
Everyone here has, at some point, been completely neglected by society and maybe even at home. You don't fit in. Life is like a constant competition against people who'd continuously try to keep dropping you down the totem pole for reasons you can't understand. Unlike many, you refuse to accept that. You're willing to do anything to struggle against the world that wants to bury you in obscurity. If you're beyond a certain age, you've seen what happens to the ones who don't struggle against it. You've seen them lay down and just take abuse without even a worse edgewise.
How your struggle manifests will come in different forms, but all of us have reached this commonality called "night ops". For me, it was a breath of fresh air to realize that back then, it wasn't just me. I couldn't have possibly put the feeling into words as I am now, but finding a group of like-minded people meant the world to me back then. I know this is the case for many of you, that's why operators meet up, why we stay in communication over the years.
The art itself to me at least was a means of empowerment when I began. I felt completely free from society and its bullshit as I perceived it. Suddenly, this door to a whole new world opened up and it wasn't empty. There were other people there, too. My personal world was ass, both for reasons out of my control but also because of my own negative reactions to it that only made it worse on myself. Believe me when I say I breathed night ops, I cared about it far more than the "real world". That world, the outside world, was just a constant battlefield with only my small circle of friends to fight against it with.
Because the world seems to care so little about many young operators, night ops really is as easy as breathing. Why would you feel guilty about potentially harming a person that, in your mind, doesn't give a fuck about you anyway? Really who cares?
And so it goes, oddly enough your fellow night stalker becomes your comrade because you both understand each other on this hard-to-word level that nobody else outside your NO circle could ever know. The "normies" won't ever understand. Your confidence goes up because you don't feel like a nobody anymore. You have some form of empowerment. Of freedom.
I realize this may seem a projection to some, but I suspect this applies to a majority. For many, this is purely a side hobby in an established life you already enjoyed growing up. Just want to state abruptly here that I do understand that as well. I'm mostly reaching out to the die hards.
Many of these comrades you get to know become best of friends in real life as time goes on. For some, intimate relationships form. Sometimes drama erupts as a result, but at least you're not the nobody you used to feel like.
If you're really, truly fortunate however, you find people out there in the real world with good hearts. Who are patient with you and accepting of who you are but make an effort to bring out the best that you can truly be. These people exist and I've had this good fortune even if I don't deserve it considering my past. You start to see the world more as it really is and less as your unfair, antagonistic scope ever allowed you to see in the past.
To reach this point and to see the interrelations of good and evil is truly a gift in my mind. To know and understand the broken, to see but understand the ignorance of those torturing the broken, and to see those who just want to bring everyone together.
As a result though, I'm no longer the cutthroat "Psychlonic" willing to do anything to accomplish the mission. To use force against someone who couldn't possibly understand who I used to be. Night ops to me, personally, was more than just the community back then but a means to an end. A tool to take back from a world that only seemed to want to take from me. Now, I realize the whole world is just fucking broken and confused and I no longer have the heart to add to the insanity.
It is my realization here and now that I project this ideal now onto the forum at large on people who haven't yet reached that turning point in their life (that I hope all of you are lucky enough to find), who are still fighting the battle against a cold, uncaring world. I won't disrespect that feeling I remember all too well by trying to preach to you.
Rather, I just want to acknowledge we're not all at the same point in life and perhaps take a step back from things. I still have a fascination in stealth itself so I'll be around, but going over old posts has made it clear I'm not exactly a good representation anymore of our demographics at large. I would fashion everything entirely differently, so much so that those looking for their fellow strugglers would no longer find them in my vision of a stealth community.
I wish you all the best and I hope you win your battles without making catastrophic life mistakes. That you find peace in a world that has denied you.
Stay in the shadows, hold onto your light.
