As everyone knows by now Virtual Congress has had a long and storied history. In our 10 months as a server so much has been accomplished and so much has happened, however it came as a great shock to me and many others to learn that we were not the first Virtual Congress on the internet. We are actually the fourth version of the Virtual Congress idea. The first version was formed in the waning days of 2013, so long ago from now. It operated much like ours does currently but with many different and unique changes. One interesting change being that their Presidents served for insanely long terms compared to ours. For comparison the longest serving President, Francis Joseph Vita, only served for a single month. The first President of this Virtual Congress, Trepidhockory, served from September 12th 2013 to May 19th 2014, also an Independent like Vita.

One of the most unique things about this Virtual Congress is the medium from which it was established. When President Hickory took office Discord had yet to be created as a platform. The app which they used was called Show of Hands. It was an app where you could take polls of people’s preferences and ideas, and this unique idea gave way to the birth of the first Virtual Congress. It was very unique in the sense that all of its official business was run off of one account on the app. The sitting Speaker of the House had control over that account and was tasked with the day-to-day management over everything in regards to the community and Sim.

SoH VC spread far farther than I had initially expected. There were Twitter accounts and the entire websites dedicated to Virtual Congress.

However SoH VC was not without its flaws, and one of its most game breaking would eventually lead to its downfall. One day a man named ColinMatthew joined the community and was immediately fascinated by it. He grew more and more attached as the months went on and eventually became its fifth President on September 23rd 2015. However he would have one of the shorter terms in office as he only lasted to November 18th 2015.

As Time went on he became more and more obsessed with controlling the politics of the server. His need for power eventually grew too much, and he exploited a massive flaw from within the app, that made it far too easy to create an alt account to impersonate another member of the community. It would be true that he would come to manipulate the outcomes of many different important elections over the next few years.

Eventually he would be caught and he would write a manifesto admitting to all of his crimes. He would be tried by the Supreme Court and found guilty, and would be banished. They then attempted to move to a website of their own creation for better security overall. After disturbingly low engagement rates and activity they decided to move back. This only made things worse as the community would fall apart from there. The election of President FloridaPopulist would be the final nail on the coffin for Virtual Congress as he was a white nationalist. While still technically the incumbent President since August 25th 2018, on September 27th 2018 6:37 PM, the final Speaker of the House, NDAmerican declared the end the SoH VC, indefinitely disbanding it.