A World of His Own: Ulillillia

Cartoon characters from my childhood in poses they should never be put in.

I watched a 30 year-old man slow dance with an inflatable sex doll.

All these moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.

Time to die.

I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe.

Oh, how I wish I could forget, sometimes.

My years exploring the internet have burned things into my mind that are impossible to erase. Though many of them have been amusing, a thread of madness and depravity runs through most of the lot, a sort of sick, guilty pleasure. Despite the nature of the beast, I find myself frequently enthralled, head shaking and mouth agape.

When researching Short Circuits, I often have to dig up these images all over again to share with you all.

Therefore, when the time came to write about Ulillillia, I was relieved.

You see, Ulillillia is the good kind of weird.

Even the pleasant kind.

Unlike many of our previous subjects, Ulillillia is hardly a lolcow at all.

He gives some laughs, sure, but he is ultimately endearing, fascinating, and wonderful.

Even, dare I say, a genius.

The Lowdown
Ulillillia, real name Nick Smith, is a 28 year-old man who lives in Minot, North Dakota.

He is an amateur game developer, published author, and math savant. Recently, he was the subject of a documentary called The Platform Master, due to be screened at film festivals later this year. He was first discovered on Something Awful.

Ulillillia has crippling OCD and numerous phobias.

Naturally, they inhibit his ability to function in certain ways.

For instance, he is extremely particular about the food he eats, preferring only pizza that he degreases. He wrote a guide on how to do it. He is fond of altering the speed of his music, which consists mostly of video game themes. He plays these on loops for a…very…long time.

Take a look at his playlist:

Even crazier, this picture is from 2007.

Video games essentially define who Ulillillia is.

He claims to have struggled with a chronic addiction to them as a child, and they may have contributed to some of his fears and compulsions. For instance, he has a fear of “blue water” versus “clear water,” as most games in the 90s used blue to represent water. His published novel, The Legend of the 10 Elemental Masters, is told using video game terminology. His primary enjoyment of video games comes from exploiting them for glitches. Some of his favorites include drowning Tails in the Genesis Sonic games and reaching the highest possible altitude in games like Bubsy 3D and Super Monkey Ball.

Uli says he doesn’t play games as much as he used to, but there is one exception: his mind game.

This is a game that he plays in his imagination, with graphics beyond any real game and the freedom to go virtually anywhere. Uli has used it to visit favorite places from his childhood as well as places he has never been.

A primary mode of transportation in the game is flying and reaching the greatest height possible, similar to how he exploits real games. His frequent “mental drifts” into the game are his primary reason for not getting a license, as he sees his unfocused attention as a hazard to other drivers.

His own attempt at game development, Platform Masters, is arguably his masterwork.

It is a side-scrolling platform game developed entirely by Uli. The point of the game is to reach the goal at the end of the level, but really, it seems to serve as a sort of prototype for Uli’s mind game. The player has the ability to fall and jump great distances at very high speeds, which the game measures in painstakingly exact quantities.

The Milk
Ulillillia’s personal website details virtually everything about him.

It consists of numerous pages documenting every aspect of his life: daily routine, diet, history, fears, art, writing, and the “motive system” he uses to make decisions. I encourage you to explore it. Set aside at least an hour to really get the most out of it. Here you can see various patterns that run throughout Ulillillia’s creations and behaviors: rainbows, extreme organization, exact detail, and a weird pseudo-90s aesthetic. Even his page’s source code, obviously done manually, is organized to the point of absurdity.

A particularly interesting section of the website is his dream journal, a poignant and revealing collection of over 921 dreams Uli has experienced since 2005. Many of his dreams are about video games, but he has also picked up on other running themes such as mud, flight, and water.

Uli also has a YouTube channel where he posts guides for popular RPGs, game glitches, and videos documenting the development of Platform Masters. All of them show a man who is humble, intensely curious, and completely devoted to his interests.

Indeed, Ulillillia is so into his own world that he is practically untrollable.

He responds to any questions promptly and with extreme politeness, and interacts daily with his fans on YouTube. His ignorance of certain things – namely sex, drug use, and other “adult” behaviors” – comes across as adorable and sincere. Despite being on a level most of us cannot aspire to, he is friendly, gracious, and helpful.

The Big Picture
Ulillillia represents an important lolcow mutation. The laughs from him are very different from those of A-Log or ADF, in that he has nothing about him worthy of ridicule. He is not a reflection so much as he is a portrait, a wholly unique individual with a worldview all his own.

That shirt is pretty dope.

In a time when the internet encourages self-affirmation through social media and the idea that all of us can suddenly have a voice, Ulillillia is a refreshing dose of humility. Despite his website essentially being a huge personal blog, it serves more as a documentary. Ulillillia does not desire attention or recognition, merely to share his way of thinking with others.

The window into his life goes both ways.

Since high school, he has rarely left the house, and has no real friends. There’s something poetic about his desire to fly, or speed through the world, or his recurring dreams of being stuck in mud. For Uli, his world begins and ends with Minot, but the internet lets him become something greater. It’s the closest he’ll ever get to being in his mind game.

Uli keeps dryer sheets over his keyboard to avoid sweat and block dust.

This kind of interdependent relationship is an important characteristic of lolcows and their trolls: they both need each other equally. A troll can get off on a lolcow’s frustration or anger, and a lolcow gets the attention they seek from trolls, even if it’s ultimately negative. Uli obviously doesn’t have the same personality, but the dependence is still there to a lesser extent.

If he couldn’t share his games or videos with the world, would there be a purpose for their creation? Probably. The very concept of Platform Masters is the manifestation of everything Uli loves, so it is arguably self-serving. But surely, sitting on the floor of his bedroom late at night in his small Midwestern town, Uli sees his internet fame, or the supportive comments on his videos, and once in a while bends his mouth into a smile.

And if the internet can do that for anyone, then it is a positive force.

Al Gore, glad that his invention could help someone.