for Nostalgia, for Education: a previously unreleased interview.

[© tweed]

I gave this interview in late 2010 but it never made it to the Atlasian public sphere.  I post it now:  (in full disclosure, the interviewer went by the name 'Junkie', you may know him better than I)

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1.) How did this all begin? Was the intention just to simulate elections or to create a complete government?


it wasn't well thought through. the February election of course preceded any sort of constitution, for example. my memory is a bit foggy on a lot of these things as it's a damned long time ago; but, we were a cohesive internet community at that point. and I was on a 16 day vacation from school spending the vast majority of my time on Atlas and watching the NFL. it is likely that the original thread I created broadly positing the idea of 'elections' sprung out of discussions that were ongoing that tangentially referred to organized structures within the community; such as, who is the leader of the Forum Democrats? and Republicans? and so on. so in short the whole thing was pretty spontaneous, and while it didn't explicitly not try to create a government concurrent with the elections it just didn't think that far ahead.

2.) You were the first chairman of the Democratic Party, were you elected or did you just appoint yourself that?  Did everyone just make up titles for them at first?

people did make up titles. for example I think Supersoulty called himself 'Governor', and this was not uncommon though with the advent of the constitution it went out of practice as the titles began to mean something. the key difference with my title is that it reflected an actual consolidation of power. I did just declare myself AFDNC chair, but it held weight as people listened.

3.) During the first primaries you came out first for Christoper Michael against Migrendel and Nym 90.  However within a week it appeared that Christopher was no longer running for the nomination and you became the primary challenger to Nym.  How did that occur and why?

I was heavily involved in internal bargaining from the get-go. in the absence of actual coherent party structures, I as self-proclaimed chair served as a sort of kingmaker. three candidates emerged for us: CM, who was center-rightist in tendency, Nym90, who was the traditional liberal type, and Migrendel, who had almost Marxian leanings on certain things and at least carried that reputation. originally I bargained a deal that put CM and Nym90 on opposite ends of the ticket, but eventually after discussions with Nym thought the better of it. it's important to remember that at this point CM and Nym were actually close friends in RL so they were able to smooth things over amongst themselves.  Nym made sense as he was universally respected around the boards at this time.

4.) After the election, there appeared to be some controversy about electing a senate and creating a constitution.  What was your feelings on the issue?

I didn't care, I was more concerned about preserving party power. I did get pissed at Nym but it looks like we'll cover that in ques. 8. the lone policy issue I attempted to get involved with was to steer away from preferential voting because I thought it would open the door to our eventual demise; up through May or so we had a strong hold on power, but the coalition wasn't really built for anything like preferential voting.

5.) Dunn started the Progressive Party, what was the purpose for the split?

it had more to do with them than us. people who wanted to steer the whole thing in more of a social democratic direction. calling it a 'party' is a bit of a misnomer. Dunn and I got along very well and I always felt the Progs were well under AFDNC control. the extent of their power was carefully orchestrated: we 'gave' them 2 or 3 Senate seats to make them feel good about themselves.

6.) Christopher was Chief of Staff, but resigned and accussed Nym of lies, what was that all about?

pretty sure it had to do with RL personal fallout between the two of them that I'm obviously unfit to comment on.

7.) Nym never seemed to be around for awhile, were people unhappy with his presidency?

8.) About one month into the Nym presidency, you were vowing to deny him the renomination, why was that?

these sort of go hand in hand: he had some personal stuff to attend to in RL and had to be largely absent. as I really cared about the game it was bothering me that we had worked so hard to win and were building a power structure that looked like was going to last, only to be undermined by an inactive president. there were even considerations underway to allow Harry to act as president until Nym returned or provided an explanation. any public statements I made were purely intended to act as manipulations to make him active again.

9.) Two weeks after that, you were challenged for party chairmanship.  Even though your own polls had you at 35%, you pulled out a huge victory.  How did you do that?

I always had this authoritarian, dictatorial or even hysteric public persona that served to flaunt the power I'd collected in my hands. this of course led to a bit of a left opposition movement within that party, that wanted AFDNC democracy and pointed out that I had never been elected, and so on. so I agreed to hold a private election among registered Dems. hughento challenged me. any number I gave in public was probably a fabrication. I knew I was going to win and wouldn't have held an election if I thought it would be my demise. I think I won with 75%.

10.) Going into the Senate elections, it appears you engineered a deal with the Progressives over the VP seat and some Senate seats.  How did that occur and who did you deal with?

probably dunn, who was Prog chair iirc. the Progs were a pretty solid bloc at that point, between a quarter and a third of the people we eventually expected to form the base for Nym's re-election in June, so it was clear they had to be thrown a bone. the AFDNC (aka me) officially endorsed I believe 3 progressives for Senate seats and instructed our people to support them.

11.) You eventually stepped down from the Party chair spot and became Senator.  How did that occur?

I think there was a special election quickly after the midterms in my district. I had sort of gotten 'bored' with the old job and wanted to have a hand in policy, which I thought was the new battlefield now that we had a working Constitution, party structures and so on. I won a close race against AndrewBerger, at that time known as YoungRepub, who incidentally was the original AFRNC chair and a sort of natural rival.  by the end of the term the old party system was in tatters, the UAC dominated and I actually joined the AFRNC in an attempt to steer one of the last vestiges of the past back to relevancy. quite the reactionary.

12.) Do you remember the Jesus Christ Party starting?  What were your feelings about it?

I do, it was bgwah's creation along with some friends. I was convinced that it had to be fraud, their names were all like Reverend Matthew, Father Elijah, etc.

13.) Who was this CT guy that everyone seemed so fired up about?

a posted from Connecticut who didn't hold back. really played up the whole Northeast elitist, anti-agrarian, anti-Southern shtick to a vitriolic level. eventually got banned I think.

14.) There was a Civil war in 2004.  Seriously, what was up with that?  How did it occur?

I don't really remember. some people who were bored I guess. I tried to make a rally-around-the-flag thing with Nym about it which proved inconsequential.

[ilikeverin]

omg.  The first Civil War.  That was the best thing.

Here were my responses.  Note that they in and of themselves can be considered a snapshot of history, as bgwah and I are now biffles and everything *hughughug*

If you're looking for more and haven't seen it, the Wiki article on the Proggies is pretty good.

All right here the first set of questions.

1.) When did you join and why?

I joined in February(?! apparently...) of 2004.  I had been lurking on the Forum for a while.  Unrelatedly, I was joining some random online roleplaying sites, and I found some political ones.  When I saw the Forum had one, I decided to join that.

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The former.  I'm not even sure what the latter would look like...

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Yes, I did almost right away.

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I wasn't particularly interested in constitutional issues, at the time.  I just wanted to be a part of a left-leaning party that wasn't the Democrats, and I also styled myself as being further to the left than the Democrats at the time (though it wasn't quite true even then).  So I joined the Progressives.  I think I joined after the party name changed to the Progressives.

As far as goals go... hmm... being leftist... I guess, and being independent of the Democrats, who were seen as monolithic and a little scary?  Even then, the forum was left-leaning, and people were worrying that elections wouldn't be competitive.  Maybe that was a part of it?  I know we changed to "Progressive" to try to showcase our "reformist leftist" ideas.

There might be a Progressive forum floating around somewhere.  Talk to Al about that; he usually was involved in creating forums (and has a pretty good favorites archive, I think), even though I recall it was on proboards somewhere, which I suggested.

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I don't recall these spells of inactivity on his part very well.

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The general consensus was that he went insane for no apparent reason, then left in a huff over some perceived slight.  No one really missed him.

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I don't recall that.  Was it before I became truly active, towards the middle of March?

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I have almost never been involved in any sort of dealmaking during my time in Atlas, to such an extent that Harry didn't even ever include me in the "Forum Elite Conspiracy" that he liked to perpetrate on non-Democratic leftists when the AFDNC was still in existence.  See also the implosion of the AFIP, the party that I created, because of Dramaz (tm) that others in the party led despite my official party leadership.  So I'm not sure what dealmaking went on.  Peter would be the best person to talk about that, if you ever got in touch with him, because he was involved in every deal back then.

Obviously, we won the Senate seats because we were awesome

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The latter's not familiar, but the former was some sort of bgwah creation, either a sock or a "friend".  I can't ever recall whether the dispute over his true status was ever resolved.  In any case, Father Joshua (and I think there was another account or two) was a bgwah creation meant to sew unpleasantness amongst our little creation.  Maybe vote rigging, too, but I seem to recall it mostly being just a way to make bedlam.  At least, that's what it caused.

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I think there was just general discontent over the status of the game.  A group of us (mostly Progressives and Progressive-leaners) decided things were boring.  One day, over AIM, a plan was hatched...

So, boredom, I guess.

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Not intimately.  I think I may've joined the chat room late or something... or if I was in it, I didn't lead.  I've never been much of a leader in Atlasia, to be honest.  But I know I pitched in right away on the side of the rebels, and I remember proposing the title of "JFK YouthKorps head" to JFK in AIM the night it was created.

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Yes and yes.  Peter spearheaded it, I believe, and JFK agreed to be some sort of figurehead.  I insisted on my title.  I don't really remember who else was involved, basically all the Progressives who weren't dunn.

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Mostly just us being like "WE'RE AT WAR" and people being like "what" and Harry being like "STOP EVILDOERS ".  Lots of angry AIMing and forum posts.  We stopped when people starting taking it way too seriously, and I mostly used it to try to advertise the political simulation I was trying to make by myself, which never ever, ever, ever took off.

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No!  Nononono, never. (this directly contradicts the wiki article, but I don't ever recall hearing anything about this.)

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He was upset that so many Progressives joined the Civil War and quit the forum entirely because of it.

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Yes, we all loved him terribly in the Progressives, and we were utterly depressed that he left, which helped take the wind out of the Civil War's sails.  He also left the forum entirely because of it, which is also a shame, because he was an insightful poster.  Anyway, it caused a bit of navel-gazing amongst those of us who had participated, because that was the first time some of us drove people away because of our excesses.  We got over it pretty quickly, though

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Really?  That's earlier than I remember.  I'm just misremembering, I guess.

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Oh, I loathed bgwah.  My feelings for him were about as low as most people's seemed to be of Xahar after his hacking incident, or of Ogis when he was doing his thing.  He was the first Atlas troll, after all, and we were young and naïve at the time (and now I'm 20 and naïve, but whatever ), so it was a Very Big Deal (tm) to us.  This is especially true, because I seem to recall arguing for us to give bgwah one more chance, only to have him squander that chance, which made me angry, but then he got another chance, and I thought that was unfair.

But I digress.  Yeah, I didn't like bgwah, and I thought the JCP was an idiotic cult-of-personality party, dedicated to making sure he wouldn't be punished for his actions.

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Of course not.  Who'd listen to bgwah?!?

Ooops.

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Yes.  See also: any of Harry's posts at the time.  (Nym wasn't nearly so bad.)  I think it did kill the Progressives, yeah.  But the UAC started soon enough to provide some entertainment.

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Yes; I was seen, probably accurately, as a puppet of Peter et al. in the whole Civil War thing.  Not that it wasn't voluntary for me to join, but that it was clear I didn't have a position of actual leadership, and I was just playing "Me, too!"  No, I don't think we had to swear any oaths.  Did we?

After the Progressives, I'm not sure what I joined right away (I was probably an Indy for a while), but I know after a short time I became a member of the UAC, which helped bring derision upon the party (I seem to recall Harry being extremely amused that the UAC included people on the spectrum from me to htmldon).  I was always stridently opposed to the existence of the AFDNC and AFRNC in-game, believing them to be crutches that would prevent true discussion of the issues in favor of voting based on avatar color (which would determine registration), and I'm proud to say I never joined either party.  In any case, the UAC quickly became a viable alternative to the two major parties, so I quickly jumped over there, partially inspired by Gustaf and JFK, who I liked a lot.  The DA was a good analog of the UAC: not very ideologically committed, and winning an outsized number of elections perhaps because of it.  Also, a vague focus on Forum Affairs Issues (tm), which have, well, always been a focus of mine

[bgwah]

Still hard to believe I turned the JCP into a major party.