Pain

= Pain = Pain is an epic poem written by an unknown author under the pseudonym T. O. Timothy. Written in iambic hexameter, the poem describes the heroic actions of an unnamed 16th century hero whom is responsible for creating the filler text "Lorem Ipsum." The book was published on January 21, 2021 and has recieved multiple awards, including the Pullitzer prize for literature. It ranked #1 on the New York Times Bestseller list and was Amazon's #1 Bestseller in the poetry category for 58 days.

Background
The poem was originally written in July of the previous year and was distributed on a Minecraft server as a joke. The book imitates the style of the late renaissance authors such as John Milton and William Shakespeare. In an interview, Timothy stated that the book "was entirely satirical in nature" when asked about the accuracy of some of the claims in the book. After self-publishing his work, it was a commercial success, quickly rising to the top of Amazon's bestseller list. Within a month of publication, the book reached the top spot on the New York Times Bestseller List, and it sold 1 million copies internationally by February 28 of the same year. As of March 2022, the book has sold over 3 million copies to 158 different countries. He was also listed as "one of the most influential... authors of the century" by the Washington Post, despite only having published one book under this pseudonym.

Content
The poem comprises of six acts and the introduction, which comprises 5780 words. The original introduction was published on several Minecraft servers, including 2b2t. The introduction prefaces the poem stylistic of a manifesto, which is listed below:

"There is nothing quite so powerful as pain itself, which is the direct cause of all suffering in the human mind. Having been made clearer by the actions of the wars seen in history, it is to be known in its entirety that pain is a sixth sense. Such is not the fairness of nature, so eloquent and serene. This contradicts the fact that pain is the direct result of an obdurate nature conflicting with the ideals of man. The greatest authors of antiquity wrote on pain and it has become more famous by the advent of movable type; completely unrelated yet so impactful was the advent of this. The printing press only causes pain if used improperly like any piece of machinery, however the strange truncations of Cicero caused by errors in the 16th century created the most famous piece of filler text in literature. Strangely truncated indeed this text will be, which already is written to look like a direct translation from Greek or Latin. This should be suggested by a former colleague of mine. It needs to have rapid and free-flowing ideas such that it gets off-topic at an expedited rate. A good filler that is in the English language is hard to find. That is the simple reason why I am writing this myself. Writing yourself empowers you in ways that we will not expect. Just look at the abysmal tense agreement in that last sentence: Grammar is irrelevant. I can use pronouns whenever I want you. Like Latin, this may become famous in the next two thousand years with an odd back-translation to which nobody will have been able to locate the original source text, which I am writing thus. Just keep writing. It’s needed now for my own purpose except for the obvious fact that it is not."

There are several references to Lorem Ipsum, a filler text which was based on a passage from Cicero about pain. The introduction in its unabridged form does not contain any major grammatical errors, although there are some present in the original.

Identifying T.O. Timothy
To this day, the true identity of T.O. Timothy has not been identified. Timothy is shortened to "Tim" in the English language, which makes the author's name sound like the word "Totem." The author's IGN is FlamingBird101; their skin resembles a Totem of Undying from Minecraft. This name is most likely an allusion to the fact that the book was originally posted in Minecraft.

FlamingBird101 has confirmed through in-game dialogue and through NameMC that he does have a Discord server. In it, he uses a lot of the same elements of humor and speech patterns found in his book, including an emphasis on analogies and figurative language. In the server there are several posts referencing him being a male resident of the state of Kentucky. Through the interviews, he seems like a middle aged man, although his Youtube channel shows videos from before he was famous with a much younger voice.