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You are about to participate in a great adventure. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to the outer limits.



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Hello! I am visiting from the Twilight Zone to share a few notes on how one old player tried to have some fun. Hoping maybe this will be useful for some noobsters. Or maybe encourage some of those who've lost all hope. Or maybe I'm just stuck in a trans-dimensional bus stop for a while and have nothing better to do today.




Some of you might remember me. I used to post under various names which are not important, some articles which were occasionally well-received and others that were widely ignored.

At all times, my orientation was to introduce and promote themes on: liberation from bondage, tyranny and boredom; encouragement of social solidarity across all boundaries of nationalism, age, gender, orientation and so on; and the uselessness of pretending that the eRepublik game model is anything other than a lame attempt at profiting from ethno-nationalist strife.

That pretty much worked for me until I'd get too full of myself and need to take a break and re-focus on just having some fun. Eventually the whole she-bang seemed to have run out of steam. And another "Real" seemed to need a bit of my attention, due to various kinds of fuckery and shenanigans that required a slightly different approach to anti-fascist musings.




I still love you all. And I still check in from time to time. But not planning to stay on this remote outpost for any length of time.

So. Walk with me a little and I'll relate the various phases I experienced as I phased in and out of the game.




The 'I Can Make a Difference' Phase



I started out my eRep writing career touching on non-ironic topics like:

* Socialist Pie: How Delicious It Is!
* Why High Wellness is Your Top Priority During Times of Occupation
* Resistance Organizing is Applied Critical Thinking
and
* How to Join the Bear Cavalry

Long ago, joining a militia happened off-game. The secret call sign for the Bear's Club House was "Ursa fi! I'm ready to die!". At one point, it had two Brigades, both organized off-game. One was devoted to wars of liberation and the other to defense of the homeland -- The Workers Brigade and The Lincoln Brigade.

* Fortresses and Hospitals: A Guide for the Perplexed

Yeah! There used to be hospitals and fortresses and other semi-interesting things to do in eRepublik.

You know, before it became a game in which the chief mechanic is to type in your Mom's credit card number and then "win points" for "fighting", or whatever. All-in-all, I'd offer that the game now is pretty much like voting in the RL USA or Russian Federation or any number of other places dominated by a criminal-moron cabal of oligarchs: the idea is to just suck it up and accept whatever clown/criminal bullshit is offered up and then pretend we have nobly participated in "democracy".




Peeps of Anarchy Phase



Then I kind of started realizing what an opportunity eRep was for a character like me, who comes from the Twilight Zone to begin with, to have some fun blurring the line between the "Real" of the Game, the "Real" of our popular imaginations and generally-accepted social abstractions, and the "Real" of fiction and myth.

That's when I started coming up with things like:

* An Analysis of Classes in eRepublik
* Two Magic Spells Everybody Should Know
* The Gypsy Caravan -- a "traveling" story written serially by different writers

And doing interviews -- not with "leading players" or "leaders" and "Presidents" -- but with regular players who kinda maybe had an interesting off-the-wall, more-or-less ideologically-committed approach to "playing the game".

Folks who were into things like...
anarcho-primativism ,
anarcho-communism ,
deep pacifism,
autonomist-marxism ,
marxist-luxembourgist-socialism,
democratic-socilist-musicality,
meowist-peoples-war ,
zuulist-cynical-gardening ,
or just like wack-a-doodle leftie-pirate-internationalism or whatnot .

In other words, players who were trying, even in some small way, to use the game platform as a platform for maybe revolutionizing shit a little bit.




Don't Mourn, Organize / Revolutionary Bike Shop Phase



Days 731 to 1025 saw "me" as the lead editor for what was called the "Socialist Freedom News Feed".

A typical edition referenced articles from various writers on global and national topics, provided reminders about upcoming elections, summaries on whatever was going on with whatever never-ending World War was going on at the time, and took note of various Resistance Wars too.

That was a happy time, reaching out to players in other countries and in other parties to find some common interests, while still promoting a more or less unique "story line". It worked pretty well: write letters to players who might be interested in contributing to a Journal-style publication; and keep in touch, asking them from time time what is interesting in their Press, or if someone in their Party had done or written something cool. Pull it together and give people lots of credit.

Everybody loves seeing their "name" "in print".




Soap Box Phase



Let's be honest: I am fairly lazy playing video/internet games.

Like I generally prefer to win when playing Civilization and get bored if I can't figure out how to. I'll play harder levels and different scenarios to try out something different. But if I can't figure it out pretty quickly, then I go back to the one I know. I don't want to have to think about it too hard. I do plenty of other things to exercise my mind and I have a pretty good circle of friends and family outside the electronic zone. So when playing these silly games I pretty much just want push buttons, see nifty shit happen on the screen, and maybe get a tiny thrill from "advancing" through the levels or whatever.

In eRepublik, I'd found the niche I liked -- writing, the media module -- and I'd developed a "tone" or "voice" within that, centering around certain themes that were a little beyond the norm. The actual (so-called) mechanics of the game bored me to tears. Having fun doing a bit of "serious" role-playing felt amusing: a fun niche within the overall mediocrity of the thing. But it was taking up too much time and too much effort for too little reward.

A focus mainly on my own publications, not as part of a Journal or Party publication, emerged. Started pontificating a bit more, getting high, basically, on having -- or at least appearing to have -- various kinds of wacky and extreme opinions, without descending into the psycho-pathology of trolldom.

This included articles like:

* My Big Gay Rant
* Opus orbis terrarum iunctus! (a really bad translation into Latin for "The Work of the World is Completed!")
* A series of "I Want You!" style screeds on "Why You Should Join the Socialist Freedom Party"
* The Top Ten Delusions in the New World
* The Coming Insurrection
* On the Importance of Dissent in the New World
* A Response to the Capitalist Weekly
* Long Live the Victory of e-Peoples's War!



Hejira Phase




A common cure for boredom in eRepublik is international "travel". The "politics" within an electronic "country" can tie a person up in knots, can screw you up emotionally, can block your creativity. Sometimes the best way to get untied and unscrewed and unblocked is to emigrate.

Get a new perspective. See how the other half lives. Fight with Serbs in a slightly different way than you fought with them before. And so on.

My globe-trotting took "me" to New Zealand, which had recently been added to the game, and to the Czech Republic, where a bunch of international lefties were trying -- ironically, though I'm not sure we realized that at the time -- to "colonize" a "place". Serbs soon took over New Zealand. And some fun-loving Stalinist bank robbers wrecked the democratic-anarcho-communist dream in Czechia, after which a mob of angry Slovakian nationalists chased out the internationalists, amidst a good bit of rancor and name-calling. The shit show never ends. LOL.

It was a good break. Learned how to just cruise along thru the game without necessarily having to "do" much of anything. And worked on my character development a bit, offering-up introspective pieces like:
* Red Star Hamlet (a meditation on Alexander Bogdanov-Bear)
and
* Portrait of the Citizen as a Young Ostrich (an auto-biographical mythology)





Criminal-Philosophical Phase



Upon returning to the shores of "America", and after having thought a lot about Bogdanov-Bear's early socialist science fiction, reading a smattering of Gramsci-Bear, and then spending a good bit of time contemplating notes on art from the surrealists (mostly Salvador Dali-Bear) and the situationists (mostly Guy Debord-Bear), it occurred to me that I have a good bit of fun by simply dubbing on writing that I enjoyed, and twisting it around a bit to make "fit", in some weird way, into the "Real Fiction" of eRepublik.

This was probably the most "successful" thing I ever did in eRepublik. Presented something like 37 "lessons" on e-Philosophy, all cribbed and modified to be a bit funnier, shorter, and using "e-" terminology and references, from a short, popular book on the NY Times Best Seller list at time titled something like "Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar".

The series covered --
* Metaphysics
* Logic
* Epistemology
* Ethics
* Religion
* Language
* Sociology
and
* Relativity


It was fun and amusing. People liked it. Lots of people responded. I handed out "titles" of various types when it was all over. Towards the end of the series an astute reader noted the heavy "borrowing", which was promptly admitted to. In an act of both contrition and in recognition of the impermanence of all things, the entire series of articles was deleted once the "course" was finished.




Guerilla-Ontology-Philosophical Phase



If you've never heard of Robert Anton Wilson and his "Illuminatus" trilogy, or other writings, you owe it to yourself to check it out. Hilarious stuff that introduced things like "The Discordian Society" into popular myth-making. I'd always liked his "Doubt Everything" attitude and, looking for some way to continue having fun while pushing the boundaries of the "Real" within the fiction of eRepublik, my next phase of fun took a few weird turns.

This was the period where I published articles like:
* Seeing Red (based in part on Stephane Hessel's pamphlet "Indignez Vous", which had helped to inspire the "Occupy" movements in France, Spain, the UK and the USA)
and
* Dance Like Your Life Depends On It



'Selling Out' Phase



Although I'd been in Congress a few times in the USA, in New Zealand and in Czechia, participating in that kind of "politics" usually left me disgusted, bored and cold. Generally speaking, playing a electoral politics and such felt like carrying a bag of rocks and dumping them in a pile of poo. Just a lot of mess and splatter, with no particular point to it.

I'd been through a number of semi-interesting attempts at applying some kind anti-hiearchical, cooperative principles to the economic module. With the collapse of Organizations, that had become more difficult to do. But a few of us did come up with some schemes to form "real" communes or cooperatives. Mine involved folks buying into equity shares and being rewarded with dividends and a small profit along with repayment. This was basically a credit union sort of approach that allowed us to create "businesses" more quickly without having to rely on the long slog of "game play" or on "rich" players (oh, let's just call them oligarchs, OK?) funding everything.

Eventually it came around to a preference for "high wage" communes, where participants are rewarded based on their contribution - and then free to spend the earnings however they liked. In other words, it was not one of the "slave labor / low wage" communes where folks "heroically" sacrifice their "work" in order to buy weapons for their favorite militia. (Not that I am against that sort of thing -- it was just not my idea of a "commune".)

That was interesting in a very tedious way.

The e-USA happened to elect a bit of a character (Glove) as Prez during that time. We were kind of pals, mostly because he liked my wacky approach to writing, and he invited me to be his "Press Secretary".

I took the opportunity to go a bit mad with activity. The "WHPR" (White House Press Release) was published every single day, rain or shine, when I was in that office. If I didn't have some "real" news to report, I would pretty much just make stuff up, publish inspiring quotes from Jorge Luis Borges ("Nada se construye sobre piedra; todo se construye sobre arena, pero debemous construir como si la arena feuse piedra." -- translation: "Nothing is built on stone; all is built on sand, but we must build as if the sand were stone.") and similar bons mots.

Getting involved with the federal/national "government" of whatever "country" you in is the best way to get pulled into the "Real" of the game. That's where the "action" is. And being a "serious economist" is endless fascinating too. Just like in "Real" life. Sure. Ask anyone.

But of course taking these "serious" approaches to play will also destroy your e-soul. It's inevitable. Case-in-point: take our Glorious Socialist President zRTx (may his reign last 1000 turns), who, when making his talking points the other day mentioned how important it is to be "imperialist" in order to promote "activity". Holy Osmany Ramon, nana! Sheesh. Abraham Lincoln-Bear is turning over in his e-grave!





Literary-Artistic Phase



After reaching such heights, it can be difficult to fall back to earth and just be one of the regular hoi-polloi again. Some people handle this diminuation in status with aplomb and dignity. Others not so much. And then there are those who never wanted anything other than to be "famous" and "important" in eRebupkis, but could never quite "make the grade".

In any such cases, relief can be achieved, if only briefly, by concentrating your efforts on the beauty of words and images. Or if that doesn't work, then try writing about "history" and "reality". If still no luck, then try being an amateur psychiatrist and diagnosing eRep players.

Some of my (lesser-well known) pieces in this vein included --

* The Strange Case of the Pledge of Allegiance
* Oedipal Reflections on eRepublik
* I Can No Longer Shop Happily
* The Mirror Complex in eRepublik
* Notes on the Zombie Apocalypse
* a two-part attempt at placing Shakespeare on an e-footing in "The Prince of Pickledom"
* History of the Socialist Freedom Party in Poetry (not kidding! That one included gems like...)

"As the red sun set
on our last tête-à-tête,
cousin unrest left
the internet.

At unbefriended morning,
bereft Ursa wept
to yield such a guest.
She rwared her behest
for a hero."




'I Am The Only One Here' Phase



Rational people simply rage-quit and call it a day. Or maybe they just fade away. Or make a heartfelt fare-thee-well and jump ship.

All good, rational options for withdrawing from this e-maelstrom of illness, weirdness and boredom.

OR.

Or one can just go "all-in" pursuing one's own solipsistic "dream" of what the "Real" of eRepublik is. This can take various forms, of course -- not all of them very pretty. Some of my favorite "swan songs" have been epic hacks, for example, that destroyed banks, wrecked economies, took down the site and so on, for a period of time. I have neither the skills nor the sense of vengeance to feel the need to do something like that, though I do admire the rebel spirit behind such shenanigans.

Sticking to my own set of psycho-pathologies, my first serious turn towards "fuck all this nonsense" was more along the lines of starting to "preach the word" as "I" (or to be more precise, as my invented character) saw it. This was a fun time. But it also led to (e-)madness and eventually killing off the character.

Works in this mode included --
* Open Your Heart to the e-Universe
* Two Dogs Gaze Out Window (an attempt to de-colonize the ideological trapping around the SFP, in which it is concluded that "the SFP is not actually the "tip of the spear" for the working-class masses and citizen-soldiers of eRepublikan players. It is a community that mobilizes in the name of eRepublik's "99%".)
* Lutero and Calvino (which had something to do with 'Desire and Socialist Freedom Experience'. Best line from that one: "Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt stars.")
* The Confessions of Phoenix Quinn (in which he confessed to anti-Pfeifferist feels and thought crimes)
* Reopening the Revolutionary Question (in which he predicted that Gnilraps running for CP on the SFP ticket was fore-shadowing the demise of the "old elites" in the USA and concludes that "Strategic intelligence is born from the heart.")





Re-birth and Reincarnation Phase



After certain events unfolded in the "real" life, plus given the "end of the journey" sort of point the character had arrived at, I chose to have my eRep existence obliterated, lock, stock and e-barrel. It was a wonderful revelation that none of that was really important at all. Letting go of it all was easy-peasy, simple as falling off a log. I had no regrets.

But eventually two things occurred to me.

One, that considering the amount of time and effort I'd put into the whole silly business, and how much of that had been devoted to championing the "regular player", "the little guy", to "defending the noobs" and so on, that it might just be worthwhile to re-enter that world from the lowest level and see how it felt to start again.

Two, that while I had reached an age and a position in "real" life where direct action and public agitation were starting to get beyond my reach, I might -- if I honed my "persona" and "message" a bit -- be able to counter-act some of the alt-right, far-right nastiness that was spreading like cancer in the darker corners of the internet.

So I gave it shot for a while. It was fun and interesting. Not least by taking a somewhat less "in your face" approach, and starting out knowing full well that I had no need to be "active", that I was really ONLY there to write shit. And being a bit more congnizant of the boundaries around being overly pedantic (though I still struggle with that).

I started right up with the approach of having my own "Journal" and I stuck to a regular rhythm, pretty much publishing once a week, usually at some point during the weekend. Went through a couple of series of articles since I knew that sticking to a regular schedule, with a unifying theme, was my ticket to successful "participation" in the "game" I was playing.

The first series was another dub on an actual book, called "Combating Tyranny". Knew pretty much exactly what I wanted to do, and already had a wee community of friends to hook up with. (By the way, Long Live the Socialist Freedom Party!)




Another series was called "Occupation Songs", referencing songs and artwork evocative of resistance and liberation throughout the Americas, drawing on artists, writers, and musicians like Emory Douglas, Woody Guthrie, William Burroughs, the Dropkick Murphys, Nina Simone, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Gran Fury, and others.




And in the "I am just over here playing my own game" category, I contributed a few heart-felt and entirely unclassifiable standalone "interpretations" of the current "situation" within the "Real(s)", drawing on various sources for inspiration in most cases, with themes like:
* On Assholes
* A Meditation on the Game Show 'Password' ("All great cultures strive to manage the illusion by illusion, to treat evil with evil, so to speak. Perhaps seeking to reduce illusion with truth is the most fantastical illusion of all?")
* An Invitation to Sin
* Pure Immanence
* A New Alliance is Possible
* Live Free. Fight like los Chinacos
* A Scientific Analysis of Presidential Preferences and Also: Pants

and finally, to kind of make up for my previous incarnation's rather sudden "disappearance", this time there was a poetical farewell drawing heavily on a lovely piece by Walt Whitman
* Just Another Day in May or: So Long!




Over and Out



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