Bob

Bob is the patron deity of wormhole space

Bob is a fictional, player-invented deity that supposedly holds sway over wormholes and J-space. The character is often used tongue-in-cheek as a means of justifying players' actions, desire for PvP, or luck/unluck. While CCP recognizes and embraces the concept, Bob is not canon to the EVE setting.

Origins

As with any folk meme (in its dictionary sense), the origins of "Bob" as a wormhole deity are murky. Often, as an idea is shared, its history is eroded, lost, and reinvented. Sometimes the idea is claimed as invented by several parties, and given the drift of storytelling, this isn't always far from the truth.

There are several competing origin stories, but surviving documents and evidence are limited to just a few. What is generally agreed on is that the notion of Bob as an EVE-specific deity of wormholes probably arose around 2012, a few years after the introduction of wormholes in the Apocrypha expansion in 2009. By the mid-2010s, use of Bob was widespread amongst J-space residents.

One of the earliest surviving references to Bob is a primarily audio recording of a prayer to Bob:

“

All hail Bob: father, son, and magnificent bastard of wormholes. Let us play in your garden so we can keep you entertained with our sacrifice. Then for you we slaughter our enemies as ourselves, because only you find joy in all the wrecks that shall be on your intergalactic D-scan. In your wisdom rests chaos, and in your heart rages war. And forgive us our cursing as we forgive you the upwards deviation. So lead us to glorious [?] so we don't fall for [?] In the end, we may call your garden our haven, our sanctuary, a place where the only logical answer even in the darkest of days was and always will be, 'this feature is working as intended'. As you will be our master and our destroyer for all [?]. Please bless our doctrines, and may you keep us away from the endless class 4 chains, so we can always find [?] targets. So when the weapons cool down and the wrecks've been salvaged, only one thought remains: praise be Bob.

”

In 2015, gaming news site The Verge picked up the story and ran this article: EVE Online has a god named Bob which gave an oral history as described by a player named Proc Diadochu. This article is still one of the only mainstream references to the wormhole god and is still widely referenced today.

Several amateur Internet archeology attempts have been made at pulling together the history of Bob. Most have been met with mixed success, mostly due to the inherently chaotic nature of meme history and propagation.

Mythos

Sacrifices to Bob almost always involve player corpses.

Because of the decentralized, oral nature of its evolution, Bob has had many variations. Still, several strong themes are held in common:

• Bob is the patron deity of Wormholes and J-space. While occasionally being held responsibile for events befalling wormhole denizens operating in K-space, Bob's influence is usually restricted to J-space. Bob is almost always described as having a strong preference for J-space residents over non-residents.
• Bob is almost always depicted as having a lust for PvP. In some cases, this goes further, stating that Bob looks down on those who run PvE combat sites (killing Sleeper ships). In either case, Bob is usually thought of as bloodthirsty and eager for things to explode regardless of who they belong to.
• "Sacrifices to Bob" are a common theme. Typically, this takes the form of a corpse being jettisoned near the star of a J-space system and either destroyed or left in space as an offering. Sacrificing to Bob in this manner is said to bring luck in various wormhole-related actions: rolling a wormhole to where you want, finding PvP content, etc. The opposite is also true: bad luck is often attributed to insufficient sacrifice to Bob.
• Exclamations including Bob are often used as a means of celebrating good luck or warding away bad luck. "Praise Bob" is among the most common.

Variations and Derivatives

While Bob has historically used "he/him" pronouns (sometimes capitalized "He/Him", in the style of many real world religions), a few groups assert Bob is female.

Sacrifices to Bob can take a number of forms. Most are variations on the "corpse at the sun", for instance, "self-destruct [ship type] at the sun" or "duel at the sun" (when used explicitly in a gladiatorial sense where the loser is seen as the sacrifice in Bob's name, since duels at the sun are commonplace in Eve and do not implicitly have any connection to Bob). Many times, inadvertent failures or spectacularly bad losses in PvP can also be referred to as a sacrifice to Bob, usually post-hoc and often as a humorous attempt at brushing off a bone-headed mistake, poor decision, or just bad luck. For instance, rolling out a HIC on a crit wormhole (a very low-probability event that is attempted frequently in J-space) could be referred to as becoming a sacrifice.

Some wormhole corporations, often those with a strong role-playing lean, have taken the 'Bob' idea much further. In these cases, Bob might become the justification for fleet action. Some have even made it part of their corporate or group identity, like the wormhole mercenary corporation Bob's Watch.

Some players adopt similar themes (a glorification of wormhole space and a preference for PvP over PvE) while avoiding the association with Bob. For instance, role-playing corp The Wormhole Police claims a mandate of archeological preservation over Sleeper sites in J-space as a real-life motivation for their PvP playstyle. They use similar language and themes to Bob's preference for PvP and exploding ships, but do not frequently use Bob as a figurehead nor justification.

Other Influences

Player-invented religions have a long history. Some are more directly parodies of existing religions ("RNGesus", for instance), while others (Bob included) spawn their own mythos and lore.

In the case of "Bob" specifically, the name is also associated strongly with the fictional character J.R. "Bob" Dobbs,, the primary persona of the parody religion the Church of the SubGenius.. This blending and sharing of names and themes is incredibly common and likely had some impact on the inspiration and evolution of Eve's version of Bob, whether consciously or subconsciously from cultural influence.