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Dear friends,

Since the ability to post images in articles seems to be disabled -- and I don't have anything actually productive to do today -- I figger it's high time for another epically tl;dr WOT article from one of the New World's premiere cantankerous windbags. (That would be me.)

You know, I guess I am one of that meagre 5 of so who actually enjoys the media module. This is mainly because it offers me the opportunity to pontificate in a forum that is essentially meaningless, on topics that are spectacularly lacking in any nominal historicity, to an audience that finds any words with more than two syllables to be awe-inspiring.

In short, I find writing stuff like this to be delightfully narcissistic and hugely ironic, which both gives me pleasure and fits my somewhat jaded attitude towards the internet in general.

Oh. In the credit-where-credit-is-due department, this screed was inspired by a recent article in The Guardian by Francis Wheen on the "Top Ten Modern Delusions".


Here is a quick summary for those with AD😨 "A lot of people tend to be kinda stupid."

Also: If you take this seriously, you need to go out into the sunshine and play with some puppies.

Also: Don't forget to vote and subscribe. It's your little way to let Admin know that PQ is right about everything, even if he never actually does anything.


So here goes, the TOP TEN DELUSIONS IN THE NEW WORLD!... Enjoy!



1) Admin is on the other guy's side

This widespread delusion has rather happily suffered a major beat-down lately.

The freakish and buggy nature of the V2 war and economic modules dampens everybody's fun equally, making it hard to claim that Dear Admin favors one side or the other. Furthermore, a game that relies mainly on the use of "boosters" to accomplish anything is like giving the finger to the Olympic ideal, which is upsetting to our natural instincts for fair play. And it tells you something about the game model.

It tells you that you're going to have to use something other than skill, perserverance and luck. A hint: that "something" is not so different from what your not-so-friendly local drug cartel promotes. In short, it should be apparent by now that command central has been over-run by e-drug dealers. The metaphorical cartel has inflitrated the metaphorical national police. We are all e-living in e-Mexico now.

After all, dwindling revenues means unpaid programmers and a shrinking staff. So something's gotta give. No business can live forever on the thin air provided by angel investors. (See delusion #7.) Meanwhile, the unchecked use of bots, cheats and cracks spew an ever-growing swath of destruction like Skynet's robot hordes, further revealing the breakdown in e-law an' order an' stuff.

Dear Sweet Admin is not on the other guy's side. He's not on anybody's side, least of all the players. The real delusion is thinking otherwise.



2) The e-market is rational

A paradoxical faith in homo economicus promotes the delusion that people naturally, or at least should, always make economic decisions based on a thorough analysis of personal profit and loss. And that the capitalist market will always reward such behavior on a social level. This delusion permeates the game from top (admin) to bottom (Ayn Rand fanbois 😉.

In RL, such "rationalists" blithely ignored actual balance sheets in the dotcom bubble and in the housing bubble. On a larger and longer scale (again in RL), ignoring the imbalances caused by massive military spending led to similar states of ruin over the centuries. And yet the belief continues that the e-market will magically "correct" itself naturally and that massive military budgets are the only way to "win" the game.

It should also be noted that this delusion is widely critiqued in practice. The adoption of communal economic models by e-militaries is a fairly common practice. This causes a good bit of cognitive dissonance for economic "rationalists" who hate it when anarko-communism is demonstrated to actually work better than the "free" market.



3) There is no such thing as reality

Our New World post-modernists are quick to condemn any references to "real life" within the New World, even to the point of promoting a relatavistic attitude towards behavior that would be condemned -- and in some places get you fired, kicked out of school or even arrested -- in the blood-and-bones social world. Whether it is using racist language, engaging in internet bullying, or just generally acting like a drug-addled moron, there is something disingeneous, at best, in refusing to admit that real life has any influence whatsoever on the game world, and vice-versa.



4) We musn't ever be "judgemental"

In RL we see the argument promoted from time to time that teaching a theory that says a mysterious man-in-the-sky magically created all forms of life using some kind of supernatural replicator, as an "alternative" to the scientific theory of natural selection, is a good thing because it promotes "diversity" of thought. The advocates for this kind of "diversity" will hopefully soon be able to "diversify" into other realms of science as well. Then children can have the "option" of believing, for example, that the Moon is made of Swiss cheese or that the Earth is actually flat.

In the New World, this kind of thing is sort of the flip side of delusions #2 and #3. We often see it, for example, when something that is clearly knowable (at least to a large degree), even if somewhat flawed and buggy -- say, the mechanics of the new war module -- is treated as if it were the paradox of Schroedinger's cat or an expression of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

Remember the Barbie doll that was programmed to say "Math is hard!"? That's what "anti-judgementalists" sound like in eRepublik. It is, perhaps, easier and even more pleasant to believe that it is impossible to understand how some part of the software work than to actually study the mechanics of the game. But pretending that such an approach is simply an "alternative theory" is pretty much hogwash.



5) Laissez-faire capitalism is the prerequisite for trade and prosperity

Even the International Monetary Fund, of all people, has published statistics showing that the period 1950 to 1973 was by far the most successful economic period in 20th century history. It was an era characterized by strong trade unions, capital controls, fixed exchange rates, a large public sector and widespread acceptance of government's role in managing demand. Per capita real GDP on a world average was 2.9, twice as high as in the subsequent decades characterized by Reaganite and Thatcherite interpretations of Hayekian economics.

Whether one advocates full-bore e-socialism, or just (real) economic e-rationalism within a market-driven framework, combatting the delusion that untrammelled capitalist markets are the solution to all sorrows continues to be a never-ending task in the New World.



6) In-game religions and similar delusions are "simple fun"

Sorry. They are, in fact, as much of a con-trick as astrology, just another way to prey on ignorance and anxiety.



7) Thin air is solid

Over the past two or three decades, our oligarchic overlords in RL have tried very hard to convince workers, particularly in the West, that dismantling the manufacturing base leads to prosperity. The plan, evidently, is to replace it with a "weightless economy" made of one part "innovation", one part destruction of benefits and pensions, and one part eternal warfare. The reality, of course, is that -- on the one hand -- Third World labor is much cheaper and somewhat less cantankerous (for now), and -- on the other hand -- westerners tend to be fairly docile when provided sufficient doses of propaganda, pornography, fear and consumer goodies.

More than anything else, it is the thin air of internet-based for-profits that is promoted ad nauseum as the new solid basis for the new economy. Google is our new savior. Just put some crap out there on the inter-tubes and people will shovel their debt (i.e., their credit card "money&quot😉 into your coffers. It's like magic! Your balance sheet shows that you are actually in the red? No worries! Pump out a little more web propaganda about how totally awesome your new concept is and voila! venture capitalists who've been raking in real profits from their exploitation of overseas workers will write you a big ol' check!

Within the New World -- where, of course, there is no longer any such thing as contracts -- the economic "magic" happens with bond issues that never get repaid, stock issues based on nothing at all, and giant infusions of real world cash that give the illusion of in-game economic success.



😎 Sentimental hysteria is a sign of emotional maturity

Whether it is the cult of Diana in the UK, the cult of "heros" in the USA, or the cult of nationalism in Serbia and China, emotional populism seems to be the new drug of choice in the messy, muddy, malodorous world. The assumption that this represents a new type of collective politics is delusional; it is nothing more than narcissim in disguise.

See delusion #6 for an example of how this plays out in the New World.



9) America's economic success is entirely due to private enterprise

In the 19th century, the American government invested heavily in the national economy, building railroads and the telegraph system. More recently, the Pentagon sponsored development of the Internet and the government has provided strong supports for American agriculture, steel, and many other sectors of the "world's greatest free market economy". Huge deficit spending is a hallmark of America's "economic miracle". But its leaders get rancourous and pissy if anybody else tries to follow this model.

I've observed that some of the same players who put down others for making either real-life references or for arguing in favor of economic models that emphasize social investments and social solidarity tend to hold up this model like it is unquestionable Gospel. It is to chortle. And like their RL heros, they get a bit caterwumpus with people who point out that the god-emperor of Capital is wearing no clothes.



10) Lotteries: "It could be you..."

The odds of winning most "mega-lotteries" are about 13 million to 1. This imbecility leads millions in RL to "invest" in the dream that "It could be you..." who wins the jackpot. Yeah. It could be you...but it won't. Sorry.

Both Dear Admin and numerous players promote this delusion, whether it's the "Treasure Chest" (harr, harr, me maties) or the latest "Win 400 Gold" scam, it's all the same pile of hoo-ha.



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OK. I think that should be sufficient to generate a good bit of hate mail. Let the trolling begin!