Published on September 07, 2026

In 2020, there was an iceberg that covered up multiple notable events that happened throughout Etterna’s history. The community was much more tight-knit back then, so it was relatively easy to understand the majority of the entries. It is now 2026, and I don’t believe many newer players are familiar with what all of these entries mean. So, here’s a breakdown of all the stuff I remember from this list, along with my own interpretations.

Note that some of the entries are removed or blurred from this page as they unnecessarily targeted specific people for no particular reason.

Tier 1 - EtternaOnline logo

big step - Big step was a meme term coined by someone who was complaining about the toxic behavior surrounding the big name charters at the time. It was then perpetuated by those same big name charters as a form of mockery.

the stepmania chronarticles - An essay by Mina from 10 years ago that explained about difficulty in keyboard rhythm games. You can view an archive of it here.

read higurashi/watch symphogear - Some italian player who goes by the name Nixo became hyper-fixated on these two particular franchises, and that obsession eventually spread throughout the EO community.

:map: - They are called charts.

testaccount - Mina’s account on EO. Some people didn’t know it was him, and because Mina used to have some unbeatable scores at the time, they asked who was it.

cbrushing is literally meant for feet - A quote from a stream that was heavily circlejerked by Mina.

EO2 - EO2 was in the works since 2019, and all of us thought it was never gonna get out.

stepping is art - When you think about it, it literally is.

Etterna is a SM5 fork - Etterna is forked from SM5.

charting pseudonyms - It’s most likely referring to random names that people gave to specific patterns that already have an actual term for them.

Jachnical - A made-up term that connects Jack + Technical together. Today, it has gained more use by osu zoomers.

steppers intentionally make farm - They call this “stepper’s advantage”.

sklitter pack reviewbombs - I have no idea what this is referencing. But at the time, Sklitter was infamous for critically talking about charting, while releasing completely incomprehensible charts. Maybe this has something to do with people downvoting his packs as a result.

we luv lama is delay lama - Delay lama was used as a sample in We Luv Lama, so this is true.

Tier 2 - Etterna logo

secret files in packs - Charters sometimes hide secret files in packs as easter eggs / bonus content.

readmes in song folder - Charters sometimes include a readme.txt in the song’s folder to give some information about the chart, or the charter, or both.

etni - One time, there was a kid who mispronounced Etienne’s name and called him Etni. It all happened during a stream, and everyone found it hilarious. Shortly after, it became a meme to shorten Etienne’s name to Etni.

Icy X2 - A sequel pack to Icy X that has been in the works for nearly a decade and still hasn’t been released by Icy.

pinkyfrost - An alt made by a controversial person in the community who was larping as a pedophile.

kyz indirectly caused etterna - Kyzentun was a StepMania 5 developer who dismissed any type of feedback made by StepMania keyboard players, pursing strict beliefs that StepMania is a pad only game. This is one of the reasons why Etterna became Etterna.

[CRZ] - An “elite” rhythm game clan that consisted of only the top “prestigious” players. Some people said that in order to join the clan, you had to pass specific exams they’ve created. People meme’d the clan tag due to how exclusive and gatekeepy it was.

blacklist reason: @everyone - In the early days of EO1, there was a chart blacklist moderation tool. Each time a chart was blacklisted, it was pushed as a webhook notification on the EO Discord server. Discord webhooks at the time weren’t very idiot-proof. So one time, one of the blacklist moderators wrote @everyone as the blacklist reason, which pinged everyone in the Discord server. It caused chaos within the channels and he was shortly after unmodded.

CMod screencut gimmick - In SM5, if you set the BPM too high, the notes would stop rendering in CMod. Charters exploit this as visual gimmick effects.

invinsible mine noteskins - Some players, especially ones who came from osu, didn’t like the concept of mines. So in order to not encounter them in game (due to them being a visual clutter and what not), they would change the mine image in the Noteskins folder to an invisible one.

quotes.lua - Quotes.lua originally came from the StepMania version of Spawncamping-wallhack. It was a theme feature that collected funny and controversial quotes from different VSRG communities. It was unused in Etterna for a long time until it was revived for the Etterna version of the theme, and Rebirth.

see that bridge - “See that bridge over there” is a quote by Mina that sparked some drama on Twitter after it was assumed he was telling a new player to kill themselves for asking a question.

EO After Dark - A Discord server that “rebelled” against EO and its moderation for various reasons. It was an anarchy server where everyone had admin permissions and could do whatever they wanted. The server was deleted after like a month or two.

QueenAshy - QueenAshy was a lolcow who joined the FFR and Etterna communities, where they quickly filled both with tons of off-topic posts and conversations that irritated many people. They were eventually banned from both communities.

OpenChart - It was a promising, fully open-source charting editor that was intended to be an alternative to the closed DDReam and ArrowVortex editors at the time. It was abandoned very shortly after.

🔥🔥🔥🔥’s real name - Dugatee

steppers gatekeeping - Something about big name charters discouraging new charters from charting because they suck at making charts.

minacycle - Mina making angry noises that sound like a bike cycling. See Utae! in Minty zFarts 2 for more info.

FFR database breaches - It’s a meme about FFR not being maintained by its site owner, leaving the site vulnerable to exploits, which resulted in the site being breached twice - leaking passwords of all users.

PackMania - It was a proposed concept for an SMO-replacement pack archive website that would let you, in addition, to download individual files from packs. Nothing ever came out of it.

EO front page selectively picks packs - In EO1, you could tag forum threads to have them show up on EO’s front page. Most of the packs featured on the front page were chosen by Rop, so that entry on the iceberg was basically memeing “Rop’s bias toward certain packs.”

EO full voice chat event - As mentioned before, Sklitterbeer was an infamous charter in the community at the time who was actively being shat on for his incomprehensible charts. One day, Choof proposed streaming his thoughts on Sklitter’s newly released pack, which ended up exceeding the VC user limit of 30 people at the time. After moving his stream to Twitch, it gathered over 50 active viewers. It was the biggest VC event in Etterna’s history.

Tier 3 - Til Death original theme

Mina was a brony - He had a pony cdtitle and he used to watch My Little Pony, so it’s true.

Mina 5 - There is Mina 4 and there is Mina 6, but where is Mina 5?

Fullerne Shift 2 - It was a rumored sequel to Fullerne Shift that I think was real at one point?

NSFW gfx - No clue what this is about

EO country exploit - In EO1, you could change your country flag, and you could easily change country flags to non-country ones with a simple Inspect Element. Many people used this to create “country clans” and change their flags to Discord or Github icons, which were accepted by the website.

etterna code variable names - In Etterna’s code, Mina used to code with a lot of very wacky variable names. You’d often see things such as hidth and wodth for width and height, and other arbitrary variables like morty fart pogs.

Etterna Official Dans Project - In 2017, there was a Dans project hosted in the EO server that would combine some of the most popular etterna charts into specific skillset courses.

celeb cult - A term made by Sklitter after he believed Celebelian had a cult harshly critizing him due to his charts. It became a meme term later.

poco’s etterna themes - No idea what this is about

target blacklisting - I don’t remember this one, but it probably has to do with certain players getting their ratings nerfed due to blacklist mods disabling charts that they were explicitly farming on.

dour oxiclean apology - Oxiclean originally released as a meme with intentionally off-sync charts and an off-putting pack release thread. People got pissed with Dour’s foolish behavior, which made them make an apology post and release an apology pack (Oxicleaned) that fixed the mistakes of the original release.

wife v3 targeted nate - I don’t remember the details of this, but it probably has something to do with Nate (SillyFanGirl) manipping scores to secure an AA on top scores, where on WifeV3 they’d be converted to A grades.

beating in the hall of the mountain king - Zero idea what this means.

Etterna pausing program - Meme about a pausing program actually existing (maybe it existed once, I don’t know).

lofty created #charting-general - No idea if this is true.

JackStamina - An old skillset that was in Etterna before it was replaced with the Chordjack skillset.

EO #shitposting channel - When the EO Discord was initially launched, there was a #shitposting channel. It was more or less the #memes channel, but a lot worse in nature. The channel was eventually deleted from the server, and memes were forbidden from being posted for several years after.

Bend the Sky - It’s a pack by csenc that’s been in the works since at least 2017, and still is to this day. This is a really niche entry in the iceberg since only those who are close to him know about the pack.

VGMP4 hidden files - VGMP4’s secret files involved going on a meticulous hunt to find them.

mygfnirlffight - One of Attang’s old EO profiles that also used to be Top 1. Several people at the time thought it was an out-of-character profile for him.

# #er #est - Original StepMania music. You may know #est from the chart in HSMP1.

Tier 4 - The leftovers

midare is lofty - That’s like saying Lofty is Mina. Are you stupid?

poe15 - Poe15 was a personal Discord server that used to be the main hangout place for the keyboard StepMania community at the time. It was also one of the first servers you’d find when searching for “StepMania Discord” on Google. Many of the now-popular charters got their start in that server.

oxiclean 2 - A sequel pack to Oxiclean Stain Remover that eventually got replaced by Chordial Blitz.

Cbrushing is a mechanic - what do I even have to say about this one?

Copied from copied f - When you chart in StepMania, duplicating a difficulty into another one would add ‘Copied from’ to the Description (charter credit) of the file (for example, if you copy from Medium to Hard, it would turn to “Copied from Medium”). For every new diff that you keep copying from the last one, it would just keep adding it.

Rop uses Patreon funds for vape juice - Rop used to be a big vape guy. It’s a meme about Rop taking the Patreon money in order to buy vape juice for himself.

d7 skype chat - It was a private, “elitist” skype group that only consisted of the top D7 players at the time. This was back when D8 wasn’t a thing yet, and D7 was the highest skill ceiling for top difficulty play.

manually converting ffr files - FFR files are based on .swf, so there is no easy way to convert them automatically with a program. A few people in the community used to manually convert these files by hand into StepMania and it was a lot of work.

Borderlands 2 mission data in Celeb’s replays - Somehow, Celeb had that data in his Replays folder, which caused his game to crash. When the issue was troubleshooted, it was very confusing to figure out how it had gotten there in the first place.

creeper world 4 demo - No idea what this is about

vsrg minipack secret file - I assume this is talking about the secret chart in VSRG Charting Minipack 1 which is locked behind a password. It’s a chart that was promised to be unlocked (given the password) if someone AAA’d the entire pack. Password is loveanime btw.

11brendon worm trilogy - 11brendom was an anomaly top player in Etterna, and he loved worms. He made a worm trilogy video on his YouTube channel which was epic and cool. These videos don’t exist anymore I believe.

Windoze broke the pack listings page - On EO1, you could abuse the rating system with a simple Inspect Element. If you typed anything that’s not a number (I think), it would break the packs page.

Cmod is cheating - Cmod is generally a standard only in Etterna and FFR. In other VSRG games, X-Mod is the standard, and it is usually frowned upon to use during competitive play.

hitler the cat - IcyWorld’s first charting name.

Calc is targeted against charters - If so, what happened to the “Stepper’s advantage”?

Celeb runs EO moderation - Similar thing to the Celeb cult entry.

spread is actually called IVKAS - In the early days of Spread (the playstyle that everyone is playing today) it was referred to as IVKAS (4-key auto-scratch).

DDReam’s website is chinese hardcore porn - At some point, someone took the DDReam url and hosted chinese hardcore porn on it. It’s true. Don’t look it up.

Tier 5 - Him and the entire dump community are cancelled

Solo community is actively suppressed - There’s an Etterna server only for solo (6k), so that must be true.

hi19 6 - A lot of people waited years for hi19 6 to be released. The original hi19 6 from back then had a different pack title than the one released today, so it’s unknown whether the pack mentioned in the iceberg is the same one.

Game Time vinyl - No clue what this one is meant to imply. Game time did release on Vinyl.

snovers broken monitor graveyard - There was a clip of snover audibly breaking his monitor after he got pissed over a chart in StepMania. That entry probably makes a meme about snover breaking multiple monitors in his sessions.

anmao is nate’s non-manip alt - Anmao is an acc god, while Nate is a manip god. Did you ever see both of them in the same room? I don’t think so.

wife3 was stolen from DD - Before Mina worked on Wife3, DD created his own judgement version that attempted to fix the issues Wife2 had.

the curse of the 4th pack - It’s a belief that the fourth pack of the series is destined to flop and ruin the series after its release. The best example of this belief is Yolomania 4, which wasn’t particularly well-received at the time.

magicforce sponsors etterna - Magicforce used to be a very popular keyboard choice in the Etterna community.

hidden is a rytak alt - This is a very interesting one. Hidden was an Etterna Mac developer that didn’t play the game, but picked up on the project because it seemed interesting to him. Rytak was a team member on the Outfox team who was incredibly toxic and malicious against Etterna. They are completely unrelated to each other, so think of this entry as a Dr Jeykll and Mr Hyde type shit meme.

misterkister pack lore is real - In every MisterKister pack release, he would include a short story related to the pack. Do you think it is real?

secret chinese packs - No idea what this is about

rop guro fetish - Rop implied a few times before that he likes gore. Is it real or not?

mina always wins arguments due to precognition - I believe it

Providence is an AI created by the CCP - I also believe it

leftovers edited the divisions spreadsheet - The Leftovers group found a loophole in the division spreadsheet that let them vandalize the sheet and create new tabs to edit, and thus, they defaced the spreadsheet using that bug.

Tier 6 - Lily’s Memories

DWI is better than Etterna - DWI was the first ever DDR simulator released for PC back in 2000. It predates StepMania.

AZVW and Trance EX are the same person - No clue what’s the point of this one

poco’s leftovers files are malware - Poco’s lua charts could execute OS commands in your pc, so yeah, this is technically true. As of 0.74 these commands have been sandboxed and they do not work anymore.

“h” has spiritual significance - It was something that started by DourGent and has had influence in a few places.

ffr(lol) - It was a compiled pack of charts from FFR in their original form. It was given to Etienne, Lofty and Mina by a former FFR judge who was pissy about the website after he left.

IcyWorld’s hard drive - To explain it briefly, it was a myth about IcyWorld possesing a harddrive with CP in it which he accidentally gave to someone else, and them destroying it for not wanting to have it possesed in their hands.

reverse originally made the file play backwards - Not sure if this is true

scintill is an umbrella cdtitle for big step - This is probably true

void is the CEO of big step - Void was the one who coined the term big step after they were pissed off by the toxic big name charters at the time.

ODI is still alive - The people that were part of ODI are alive, but the place itself isn’t anymore.

he actually did insane - Reference to Nima’s “omg did insane” thread on FFR, which gained a lot of attention with mixed opinions about Nima’s legitimacy. And yes, ODI is based off of that thread name.

quotes in quotes.lua are all fabricated - Imagine if this was true.

the stepmania chronarticles were ghostwritten - Do you think really think Mina wrote all of the chronarticles on his own?

einar playtested all of his files - Einar files are generally stupidly difficult and unplayable. But, maybe Einar can play his own files so he’s technically a god at what he plays.

minty is a person - Who is minty though?

nvlm voice clips - NVLM used to host an online radio show website with himself talking. There are a few audio archives of the show that exist.

Tier 7 - Dour’s glitched Etterna client

mine only art files - Big brain charting. Instead of making art with notes, you make art with mines instead, and use absolutely no notes.

etterna arbitrary code execution files - Etterna used to support executing system wide commands via lua. One of Lofty’s charts in Minty 3 contained a batch file that would trigger once you complete the chart. It is now patched and no longer works.

every copy of game time is personalized - I believe it

NVLM is a time traveller - NVLM was the first person to pioneer dump charting. He probably knew this was gonna happen so he time travelled back in time to create dump charts before everyone else thought it was cool.

SM5 cryptominer theory - As the name suggests, it is only a theory.

_fallback contains pause code - In SM5 and earlier versions of Etterna, when your press Esc on certain themes, it would pause the song and open a menu with options to either continue, restart, or forfeit your play.

mrgreen is a real person - :mrgreen:

DDream source code - DDReam wasn’t open source, so it’s an urban legend that the source code exists somewhere.

index packs exist to keep new players at 16 msd - When you only play index stream charts, you aren’t progressing in other skillsets. We call this being trapped in Index Hell.

broken textures bug - It is a rare bug that completely glitches out your Etterna client, causing flashing textures, corrupted-looking textures and more. The picture for this tier demonstrates exactly what the bug looks like.

mental stamina is a myth created to trick players into playing boring files - This is the most realest thing ever said in this iceberg.

TempleOS build - Terry Davis worked on porting Etterna to TempleOS. Source: trust me.

keyboard manufacturers created 4k to break keyboard fast - Lol

til death is an osu skin - True?

Tier 8 - Ghost House

The calc is actually 100% accurate - Yeah.

the poe15 incident - I wasn’t in poe15, so I have no idea what’s the story behind this.

Minanyms are alternate universe minas - This might be very true.

Etterna v164 19/03/2002 (DO NOT RESEARCH) - What is the source code for StepMania from 2002 doing in my Etterna repository?

SMOC 1st - It is a long-lost pack from the Korean StepMania community that hasn’t been found to this day. It is rumored that it never existed in the first place.

Tier 9 - Access Violation

Access Violation - The Etterna crash error that nobody knows what it means.