My Experience:

Since I began my journey with the Dahlia, I've seen many interesting things, and lots of people in the general community, and so I figured before id forget it, I'd try to share my experience over the past 2-3 years. However, please bear with me as I'm busy with real-life commitments, and so it may be a bit till this is finished. Starting off, it all began when two friends of mine told me they found a "cult" in vrchat. Of course, I was just thinking they were joking, probably just a group of people with the same avatar. But after some explaining/convincing, I joined them. It was the "Life On Mars" world, and from there my little search began. At the time, we didn't know about any other worlds, so we looked at all of Jacket+'s worlds at the time (if I remember, I think it was late 2020-earlyish 2021?) I especially remember loving the grandness and surreality of the "Hidden Dahlia" (although as of 30/4/2023 it may be back?) At a certain point, I began searching for other Dahlia worlds by searching with the Dahlia tag. I remember the first time I met anyone in any of the worlds. It was in the world "13e8qu", where I was with two friends when Intelligencer, a member of the Telos Initiative, joined us and warned us of the journey ahead. Following that, I found myself in the shutdown world, lounging with some friends waiting for the countdown. After about six minutes, Riffletuff, the creator of a different ARG, joined us and proceeded to enter the door at the end without waiting for the countdown to finish. I still am not quite sure as to how, since regularly, it makes you crash. My memory is quite hazy after, so apologies. Through exploring all their random worlds, I ended up meeting a lot more people and began all working together. It was quite nice having a group to bounce ideas off and share ideas, although most ended up losing interest, or continued exploring on their own.

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It was about a year? ago now that all the dahlia worlds were deleted so suddenly. I remember being told about it by a friend and rushing to check if it was in fact true. At the time, I was very confused as to why, and so I saw Intelligencer online and joined him to ask if he knew a bit of what was going on. "Apparently" it was planned, however they were supposed to be a different world uploaded as a sort of museum, with portals to all private instances of the now deleten worlds. Now I know, of course, even if it was planned, it never came to fruition, and definately wont now. A couple worlds were spared, most likely just because the members of those worlds, just didn't keep up with the rest or left. While saddening, it was a very nice opportunity to meet alot of other onlookers as many went to the remaining to grieve. The first place I remember going to afterwards was the church, where a bunch of people were sitting in silence around Jacket+'s grave. They were all mute, however one wrote with a pen (wierd to think of chatbox no existing then), they didnt have much to say other than how they were also left in confusion. It was then the Farewell world was uploaded, and it was set in stone for all of us that it really was over. Again, there were a lot of people there, an odd sight to see in a dahlia world. I think it was there I last ever saw the investigator and said my farewells.

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From then on I didnt expect anything else to happen and so I lost interest, not checking for a while. It was one day I decided to randomly check and I saw a new world was uploaded by @nectar "Another Version of the Truth" basically detailing how farewell was a lie, and that they need to take down dahlia 2.0 (check).

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This part skips forward as I just want to write this down before I forget, I will finish the beforehand when I can

Around June-July, quite suddenly, more worlds were deleted, notably "Another Version of the Truth" and "The Four of us are Dying". Since then, there haven't been any updates or signs from actual Dahlia members. With multiple members leaving over infighting, stalking, and other ambiguous reasons, this most likely is the ACTUAL ending. Quite bittersweet, I do hope they at least release a statement. Since then, however, there have been other worlds uploaded in relation from non-Dahlia members. First, the "Hidden Dahlia" was reuploaded by someone (Thanks to QuieterVR for bringing this to light) that was not a member of the Hidden Dahlia. There were some notable differences, such as, an updated version of their symbol replacing the old one, the bar was missing in the main hall, and the boards from beforehand used a different code. Deciphering these would say such things as -5/23/2023