One slow morning in August, a shrill cry could be heard in the online ant colony: “Which one of you pesky six-legged punks found where I hid my Oreos? I went to get one and y’all were all over it.” All hell broke loose. The responses ranged from offers of sympathy to confessions, accusations, innuendo and veiled threats, with the accusations ranging from blasé to outlandish. Among the comments: “Nom nom”, “Selfish, and “Nobody gets to hoard Oreos unless The Queen permits.” Written in capital letters, which gave them a shouty quality, these comments were posted on a wildly popular Facebook group page titled “A group where we all pretend to be ants in an ant colony”. An ant army of administrators and moderators maintains order over the almost 2 million ant colony members. The ethos is simple: “In this group we are ants. We worship The Queen and do ant stuff. Welcome to the colony.” Though a closed group, anyone can ask to join. Members must promise to abide by 10 rules. The first few are predictable: they pertain to courtesy, a strict policy of no drugs, alcohol, sexually explicit material or violence, no hate speech or bullying and no promotions or spam. But rule six says: “The Queen: The first letters of the words ‘The Queen’ must always be capitalised.” The page’s banner picture is a line of worker ants silhouetted against the slogan “All Hail The Queen”. Rule seven warns members to refrain from “antarchy” (ant anarchy), and rule eight determines members’ names. “Your Ant Name is just your name with Ant in front of it. Ex: Ant-Joe. Please only refer to each other by their Ant Names.” The Facebook groups that help keep Hong Kong mums sane The group has a “no human politics” diktat, with an unusual rider – “At this time, we are removing all posts and comments regarding Covid-19 ”. The sheer unexpectedness of the group and its idiosyncratic conversations – ant puns rule – appears to be the quintessential sugar lump, drawing people in droves. The page began innocuously enough. In June 2019, Tyrese Childs, 21, a choral music education student from North Dakota in the United States, noticed different role-playing groups going viral on social media. “They were all very crowded and hard to interact with, so I figured I’d make my own for fun,” says Childs. “The ant theme, however, pretty much came out of nowhere. I was leaving work, saw an anthill, and the rest is history.” He has anointed himself the “Personal Antsisstant to The Queen” and goes by the name Ant-Tyrese. The page soon began attracting users in a steady trickle. By March this year, there were about 100,000 members. And then the pandemic struck. People looking for distractions and listlessly scrolling on social media landed on the page. Role-playing as ants and serving a fictional queen by foraging for food and following her commands seemed like the perfect solution. Numbers kicked up in April and the Facebook group continued to balloon in size. The runaway popularity has surprised Childs, who began building his online ant colony mostly for friends from home and university. “I didn’t really expect anything to come of it. I was just trying to add a little bit of fun into our lives,” he says. Sometimes it’s nice to run away from screaming news anchors and work emails to be something, or someone else, even just for a few moments Himaja Dave, economics student Nearly 100 role-playing groups are estimated to exist on Facebook including those where members pretend to be boomers , anteaters, cows, work in the same office and even characters in the Marvel Cinematic Universe . Users have turned to these role-playing sites during the pandemic in search of social connection and interaction. “It’s an escapist experience,” says Sydney-based Himaja Dave, an 18-year-old economics student at the University of New South Wales in Australia. “Sometimes it’s nice to run away from screaming news anchors and work emails to be something, or someone else, even just for a few moments.” The apparent purpose, camaraderie and kinship covered in a veneer of wackiness is strangely addictive. A collapsed tunnel had 30,000 colony members rushing in to dig and rescue, while 12,000 responded to a member stuck in a droplet of water to “sip”, “drink” and “prevent drowning”. As many as 5,000 were ready to chase away a wasp and tear it limb from limb. And when The Queen calls for a march, they diligently fall in line. It’s a group that treasures the work ethic. A battalion of fearless commandos called Bulldog Ants protects the colony. Other departments include the QPS (Queen Protective Services). Then there is ADOT (Ant Department of Tunnels), FDA (Food Delivering Ants), DA (Department of Antucation – tasked with bringing up the young), AIA (Ant IntelligAnt Agency) and MAS (Medic Ant Services). This online ant colony is fun, but it might be useful as well. “Any small step to keep ourselves socially active in times such as these can be immensely helpful,” says Manoj Chandran, head of White Swan Foundation, a non-profit mental health organisation in India. “However, we need to be mindful of the fact that this is a virtual platform and we must act out some of these good practises in the real world too. Conversations on the page seem to suggest that the sense of belonging among the members is strong. However, it is difficult to tell whether the sense of belonging that is displayed here plays out beyond the ant world into the real world.” Some of this ant-identification does carry over into the offline world. “My favourite part of this group is the sheer dedication that some people have to it,” says Childs. “People will get ant-themed tattoos and spend hours painting ant queen portraits, and it just really brings me a lot of joy.” The page has recently started to sell ant merchandise, and says profits are donated to charity. “Role-playing is a way of escape for people in these difficult times,” says Simantini Ghosh, an assistant professor of psychology at India’s Ashoka University. “That anxiety seems to be manifested in pretending to be ants. Ants are very social insects and people seem to think this is a safe community to be a part of.” The sense of fellowship is central for members. Camille Theresa, in the US state of Colorado, divides her time between being a student and working as a barista and she says the page has “relieved the stresses that Covid-19 brought, including emotional, financial and social burdens ”. She doesn’t post often but reacts every day. “The best thing about the page is people of all colours, background and heritage come together to be ants,” she says. There’s no telling what form the ant-happenings will have. A picture of a few larva-like things on a human hand popped up a few weeks ago accompanied by the frantic message: “Fellow ants they stole our children what shall we do”. Hours of frenetic activity followed. Members banded together to “bite”, “dismember”, “attack” and “kill”. Messages were sent to Ant-man. Finally, the UN was invoked: “This is war crime, report to Hague”. And then it got vengeful: “Steal human babies and raise as own.” Ant drama can be absurd. Many ants have numbers, and tunnels are numbered – #43039 and #43040 were caught under debris in tunnel D8437 one unfortunate morning. The Queen can choose to be benevolent: one day, she showed up in tunnel 473 to give away make-up. Ants watch Romeo and JuliAnt , Much Ado About Ant , HamiltAnt and Book of MormAnt . They can be silly too: Ant-William accidentally landed on a Möbius strip (an infinite loop) and is still walking. And ants can be sad. When Ant-Tom sent out a cry for help with this soulful question – “Having an existential crisis. What if there’s more to life than Bite and Lift?” – more than 16,000 responses flowed in, mostly empathetic and comforting. Childs is gratified by the good deeds of the group, and its apparent benefits at a time of crisis. “I never thought that it would grow to be this big,” he says. “I truly thought only my friends would want to be a part of it, but clearly, I was wrong. It was meant to be a fun idea, but it evolved into something a lot more meaningful.”