Ten Years of Xenonion: A History
SPECIAL REPORT
Xenonion was founded ten years ago, on 21 September 2016.
On this most illustrious of anniversaries, we look back to ask one simple question. How did Xenonion come to be? And why? Wasn’t it founded in 2150? And how exactly is the name pronounced?
The following information has been assembled from the ISS Xenonion’s corporate archives, or at least what survived the Unbidden invasion of the Mid-Rim.
While some details remain disputed, one thing remains clear – the name Xenonion is still unpronounceable.
Memetic Beginnings
Xenonion’s origins can be traced back to the human communication network Reddit, a prototype of the later lauded Reddit Peer Reviewed Journal of Science.
It was late September when a human known as Landarin published an image on r/Stellaris entitled The Xenonion: The Galaxy's Finest News Source.
The image was a spoof of the UNE publication The Onion, and featured headlines such as Local Alliance Regrets Inviting Loser Empire.
The post rapidly reached the top of r/Stellaris, and users immediately began willing the publication into existence.
Among those responding were fellow humans Schilling and Ipser, with the latter proposing Xenonion could make use of orbital mind control satellites. These satellites would later become integral in disseminating news across the cluster.
In a matter of hours, r/Xenonion was created – the organisation’s first corporate acquisition. Five human strangers formed the original news team: Hirvia, Ipser, Landarin, Schilling and Scrat.
Scrat took responsibility for technical infrastructure and moved operations to Slack, providing an immersive corporate experience and lessons on buzzword standardization.
Each member adopted a pseudonym and profile picture depicting a xeno from Stellaris, just like other mainstream news outlets.
Of note, Chilly was a mysterious sixth Redditor who initially created r/Xenonion, passed ownership and then vanished into the ether.
Landarin’s image became the blueprint for the Xenonion project: absurdist and niche sci-fi shitposting.
Wait, How Do You Say That?
One of the first major editorial debates centred around the organisation’s name.
The obvious choice was The Xenonion from the original post, a combination of ‘xeno’ and ‘Onion’ that conveyed the purpose of the project.
One problem remained – how to pronounce it. To some it was Zen-onion, to others Zen-oh-neon.
The second editorial debate centred around the small matter of whether The Onion might close its borders, declare a rivalry and sue Xenonion for 10 million energy credits.
For a short period, The Comet News Network was considered as an alternative, combining the familiar initials of CNN with a reference to the Comet Sighted events found throughout Paradox’s various strategy games.
However, with r/Xenonion established, it was eventually agreed that the name had too much brand recognition to give up, and it was (hopefully) clear to The Onion that it was a parody outfit of a parody outfit.
Zen-oh-neon was chosen as the pronunciation, with an agreement that was fine so long as the name was not said aloud. ‘The’ was dropped from The Xenonion for reasons of pure journalistic laziness.
The first Xenonion logo was designed by Hirvia. It borrowed heavily from the visual language of The Onion, combining its familiar branding with Stellaris iconography. It was subsequently updated to an actual Stellaris flag (flag_pointy_24.dds) with some additional decorative elements for fear of The Onion landing a drop-ship full of heavily armed lawyers.
For several years the logo appeared against a grey background, until someone got bored and decided dark blue looked better, which became the defining colour palette for the branding.
Building the News Machine
It was initially decided r/Xenonion would be the primary publication outlet to allow the team to experiment with the format.
At first, anyone could submit material. This produced some excellent contributions, but it became clear that it was dangerous to give the general public such unfettered power, so posts were restricted to the news team.
Before long, Scrat had unveiled a website – xenonion.com. It was hoped this could be developed as the permanent home for Xenonion and become somewhat of a meme destination.
The early site was extremely simple, a title, a list of articles and not much else. The founding team contributed roughly $50 each towards the annual cost, again helping to perfect the feeling of working in a corporate environment and paying mysterious recurring fees.
The Unveiling
By August 2017 Xenonion had produced regular content and was ready to re-introduce itself to the universe.
The team returned to r/Stellaris and published a ‘Month in Review,’ featuring a selection of recent headlines and images.
The year 2250 in the post was chosen arbitrarily. Attempts to align this with standard galactic time (2217) were abandoned again for reasons of journalistic laziness, and as such Xenonion now finds itself publishing stories from 2260 rather than 2226.
The post quickly gained traction and r/Xenonion’s subscriber count spiked to 1,000 by September 2017, alongside the subreddit becoming an affiliated community on r/Stellaris.
While the initial post design was crude, it featured two initially throwaway segments that would later properly come to life – a fictional polling segment (‘U-Poll’) and live-action galactic news broadcasts. The ‘Are You A Synth In Disguise?’ segment also went on to have its own Xenonion Investigates promo.
The Network Expands
By the end of 2017 Xenonion had established a regular three-times-per-week posting schedule. There had been discussion of publishing every day, but that was quickly abandoned after someone noticed how much work that would involve.
Xenonion established a presence on Twitter in autumn 2017 and quickly found an audience. The account benefited from interaction with the official Stellaris account, Paradox CEO Fredrik Wester and former game director Martin Anward.
Xenonion’s Discord server opened in November 2017. Over time it became the central hub of the organization and morphed into the in-universe home of the news network, the ISS Xenonion space station.
A YouTube channel was launched in March 2018, followed by a Facebook page in July 2019, Instagram in September 2021, TikTok in November 2021, Bluesky in October 2024 and Threads in November 2024.
The different platforms brought its own audience and demands, prompting the development of new content types.
Video in particular would become Xenonion’s most popular format, with the YouTube channel reaching 50,000 subscribers as of 2026, making it the largest of any individual platform.
By 2021, the original team remained in contact, but Ipser assumed the primary role of running, creating and editing for the project with assistance from Schilling and Hirvia. The posting schedule subsequently shifted to weekly content, with videos appearing every few months as Ipser repeatedly attempted, and failed, to maintain a semblance of work-life balance.
During this time Discord became critical to Xenonion’s functioning. Beyond coordinating the organisation itself, it became the creative hub, providing a constant source of story ideas and increasingly elaborate discussions about whether Bubbles was in fact a war criminal.
Discord also saw the hosting of several marathon min-maxing multiplayer Stellaris campaigns, and a roleplay section of such complexity and drama it eventually generated its own movie script.
Xenonion launched a Patreon in August 2019. Its mission statement made clear that all content would remain free but individuals could support the project if they wished. Since then, the generosity of the internet has helped cover the costs of maintaining Xenonion’s website, while also allowing for higher-quality audio-visual elements to be incorporated into videos.
Xenonion Highlights
The last ten years have seen a number of memorable moments for the Xenonion project.
The team has collaborated with Paradox directly to produce content, alongside appearing as an in-universe news service in promotional material for Stellaris, and even as an enclave in an in-game mod on Steam.
Xenonion has also collaborated with other content creators, including producing news parody adjunct to the Templin Institute’s popular Stellaris Invicta series.
In recognition of its contribution to the Stellaris community, Xenonion received community comedy awards from Paradox Interactive at PDXCON 2018 in Stockholm and PDXCON 2019 in Berlin.
Editor’s Thoughts
Xenonion began as a shitpost on a gaming subreddit, and five strangers wanting to make more shitposts.
In ten years, Xenonion has achieved so much more than the original founders ever expected. A fully fleshed out website, hundreds of news stories, dedicated news videos, multiple social media channels, a collection of awards and a dedicated community of readers and contributors.
The original team could not have known where the project would lead, or that it would still be publishing a decade later. Although they probably could have predicted people would still be confused as to how to pronounce its name.
There are so many people who have contributed to Xenonion over the last decade that I wanted to take a moment to thank them.
To the original founders and numerous contributors, artists and voice actors that have been involved over the years: thank you. Your time, effort, comedy and creative investment has been a fundamental reason for the longevity of the project.
To those who have financially supported Xenonion through Patreon and Discord across the years, a massive thank you. You have helped Xenonion remain sustainable thanks to your generous financial contributions.
To those on Discord who help to keep the whole machine running smoothly and over time have become friends, thank you for time, effort and patience. There are not enough cups of Zroffee to repay the long hours of work you have contributed to making the ISS Xenonion have the lowest rate of Contingency infiltration bots on record.
To Paradox and the wider PDX content community, thank you for your support, kindness and good humor. Xenonion would not exist without Stellaris, and in many ways is a love letter to the game and the sci-fi tropes it allows us to play out.
And finally, to you the reader. Thank you for sticking with us across ten whole years of content. It has been a privilege and an honour to be your most trusted news provider, and deeply moving to know that you would chose us over other networks not just because of being nerve stapled or instructed to by orbital mind control satellites, but because you want to.
- Ashley Easterbrook (ipser)
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