Rust player says goodbye to his server neighbours by constructing a giant, illuminated middle finger: 'Making one of these is often how I like to end a successful wipe'

It can be tough getting on with your neighbours. Sometimes you want to say things to them, like "Don't let your adult children play bassy music until 2AM", or "Don't leave your dog alone at home all day so he spends the whole. Time. Barking." But for the sake of a peaceful life, you don't. Instead, you sit there, quietly seething.

When you move out, though, all bets are off, and you can tell everyone who lives nearby exactly how you feel. And I've never seen a moving out message sent quite so spectacularly as by Rust player and reddit user UniverseBear, who constructed a giant, illuminated middle finger to say sayonara to his server buddies.

As seen in UniverseBear's reddit post, the flashing flip-off is emblazoned on the side of a rectangular tower built from corrugated iron and concrete. The offending gesture itself is constructed from industrial lights timed to cycle through an animation where the middle finger slowly raises from a clenched fist.

It seems this is something of a tradition for UniverseBear, a way to cap off a round of Rust when the server is due to be wiped. "Making one of these is often how I like to end a successful wipe," he wrote, before detailing how exactly his system works.

"Basically, it's lots of timers with various blocks connected to timer starters so that some timers only start when others are done," he explained. "The counter is used to hard rest the system after every 100 "Fus" ensuring the animation doesn't go out of sync over time."

Showing the neighbors how I feel about them. from r/playrust

UniverseBear believes that "there's most likely a much more efficient way to do this", though PC Gamer's resident Rust fanatic Andrea Shearon expressed her admiration after her own dalliance with the survival sim's electronics system. In fairness, she was distracted by a Guns 'n' Roses obsessed neighbour who'd shoot her every time she'd go on the roof. Sounds like a case where a giant, flashing middle finger would come in handy.

Given how neighbours typically behave in Rust, namely by trying to murder you and steal all your stuff, constructing a giant, flashing Finger of Sauron is practically polite. Naturally, the comments are almost wholly in favour of it. "Truly a thing of beauty," says the appropriately named FlashFlash100yd. phish32786, meanwhile, says "This is the level of petty I play for."

2026 is shaping up to be a big year for Rust. The highly anticipated naval update, which was delayed out of 2025, is due to arrive within the next couple of months. The update will introduce ship construction, naval combat, and piracy to Facepunch's survival sim. The latter is not strictly a hard-coded feature, but given what Rust's players are like, oceangoing thievery is all but guaranteed.