Join the new world

_{I still need a new life.}


Digital Bread
2 days ago, somebody wrote an article. And it wasn't very good and had little to no effort, it being less of an article, more of an attempt at pithy trolling.

But it prompted Paul Proteus, somebody whom I have always trusted and one of the few people I have continued to speak to outside of this game for many years, to write a retort. It is the first thing of substance he's written in a significantly long time that is philosophical, and it deserves every cent of your time.

And while it makes good points, and the comments section even has a good back and forth thread on the matter, me being me felt I needed to point out that which wasn't mentioned.

Because we aren't talking about actual bread and circuses.

We're talking about this:


This isn't bread.

Do you get it?

Here, let me try talking about it like this:

---

Right now, we are in the middle of a true disaster. It has a lot of us on edge, and we're doing our best to cope. Some strategies might be better than others, and a lot of folks have a lot of opinions about the right way to approach it.

Do we confront the nature of our situation? Expend the energy to find strategies and develop means of surviving? Take risks which may either help us or doom us? Or do we just turtle and cope and take our medicine and hope for the best? Or perhaps, do we throw ourselves full force into things which don't mean much, not directly to our survival, but still maintain our sense of community and togetherness?

---

Now the question you need to ask yourself is:

Am I talking about the current state of the the United States in eRepublik or in real life?

Do you get it yet?

I bet a lot of you have. Maybe many are close.

How do we get all of us there, though?

I know.

Let's talk about death.


In eRepublik, your citizen can die. That's a literal mechanic that's programmed in. If you don't play for 30 days straight, your character dies.

But you're not really dead, because you can just log back in, and be right back at it again. Trust me, I did this over the weekend and I've done it many times before. This account I'm on right now isn't my first. After Athanaric "died" I came back on this one, pretending not to be Athanaric.

Because I wasn't. I was someone new.

But... not really.

There's also another way you can "die" in eRepublik: a permanent ban. It's rare, especially these days, but it's possible.

But even that isn't a true death, right? People get around bans. They make new accounts from new IPs, and they "live on" in eRepublik. So even when the divine Romanian forces that be step in and smite one among us, even then they're not truly dead.

Not really.

But there is one kind of death which is permanent in eRepublik.

And it's the same one that is permanent in reality as well.

It's death.


Digital Circuses
When this game was still in its infancy, the eUnited States created something that was wholly superfluous to the actions in the game itself: it created congress. In game, there exists congress as a mechanic, and it is a mechanic of the game that allows certain citizens to experience the political as a mechanical form.

But that is not the same as the congress created in the meta.

That congress was on a forum not owned by eRepublik. It was played out entirely separate from everything here, in eRepublik. But it was treated as just the same, maybe even to some more important. They wanted to figure out the right way to play this game.

And yet.

Many of the laws and rules passed by the eUS in the meta congress had nothing to do with the game. In point of fact, the eUS went so far as to create an entire constitution for the country, something which most definitely in no way is mechanically incentivized by the game in any way and has virtually no mechanical bearing on it at all.

Go read the Constitution.

The first two parts concern mostly things that affect operations within the game, but look at III. Executive Principles:


And to that I say: what programs?

To someone joining this game, joining the forum, and reading that for the very first time in this day and age, what do you think they would make of the abbreviation "SoH"?

Do you think they'd immediately identify that means Speaker of the House?

Why would they?

There's literally no mechanical position in game called Speaker of the House.

In fact, the Constitution never even identifies what SoH stands for. The first time "Speaker of the House" is mentioned is in Title 1.26 "Leadership Nominations and Voting" of the Code of the country, not even the Constitution, and there is no place in either document where "SoH" is placed side by side with "Speaker of the House" in order to identify the two as being one and the same.

For over 9 years this document has sat on the forums, and so far as I can tell, not a single person has ever, ever pointed out that small discrepancy.

Because it truly never bothered anybody.

Because we all knew.

And if we didn't, we learned fast.

We learned the part and the language and the way in which we conduct our own little circus and how others had done so beforehand.

Because here's the actual point I'm trying to make:

If your argument is that media, domestic policies, anything that isn't the military is the bread and circuses, then you've got worse vision than a mole.

But also.

If your argument is that the meta, that congress, that everything we've constructed around this browser game is the actual bread and circuses? Then I'm sorry to inform you that you also didn't quite get the point.

The point is not that the meta is the bread and circuses.

The point is that eRepublik is.


The Vacuousness of Unreality
On December 31st, 2020, Adobe Systems will officially stop updating and distributing Adobe Flash.

In 2014, approximately 80% of Google Chrome users visited at least one site with Flash installed each day. In 2017, when Adobe announced Flash's end of support date, that percentage had dropped to 17%.

Today in 2020, it now sits at under 2.5%.

When 2021 begins, websites will either have to have migrated to open web technologies or be left behind. There is a desperate race that has been run since at least 2015 to begin migrating or preserving as many Flash based websites as possible. The effort has been largely a success, leading to hundreds of thousands of websites that will be archived or accessible in some format.

And yet.

The feeling, the sense of living on an internet that was mostly flash based will truly be lost.

For many of us, Flash was the internet. Albinoblacksheep, Newgrounds, Ebaums World, to some of us this was our first introduction to the web. And to many who are older, it might have been your first foray as well. It was what the World Wide Web looked like and felt like, it was at one point the modern and the cutting edge. And there are things from that time we won't be able to save.

Sometimes.

If you stare at it hard enough.

You realize that metaphor is a lot more widely applicable than just Flash websites.

So why are playing eRepublik in this, the age of pandemic?

Why have so many of us turned our gaze from the harsh mechanics of our reality and come back to this bread & circus bonanza? To the least important game Romania has ever created?

I think you know.

I think you all know.

It's because bread tastes good.

And circuses are fun.

And sometimes?

Sometimes.

Sometimes you need a little headlong nostalgia and the sight of old friends to remember that, yeah.

Things suck.

But at least we have us.