Many of you asked what a "Discord democracy" even is in the Averra Dossier video. I previously mentioned that an introduction to it could warrant a video in its own right. Well, here is that video-the (spiritual) Part 0 of the Averra Dossier! Thank you once again to all of my subscribers and Patreon donors for your continued support :)
There's a game called Deep Space Airships that I think you might be interested in. It has a unique political environment and involves geopolitics, war, paranoia and toxicity. Please look into it and maybe make a video on it.
The main problem I see in this experiments is that often they have democracy for democracy sake, not as a way to govern resources and the interests of economical agents. So what can you do in this type of situation other than try to fuck with it?
I’d say it might actually make sense in the Minecraft situation as there are resources to govern. However Reddit and Discord democracies really have no reason to exist and are really quite boring without some sort of wannabe dictator.
@cupboard8476 Yeah _some_ Minecraft experiments with democracy sorta work out (with the obvious issues of people still trying to fuck with it cause its Minecraft and people are there to have fun, not make a long term stable system) but generally they don't run long enough to see the long term outcome. Plus, Minecraft resources are laughably easy to manage. I've wanted to see someone try a civilization experiment in Vintage Story (much more realistic and waaaay harder to manage survival that encourages specialization of labor, trade, and careful resource management) that lasts for months to years to see how people react to that.
I think it is a great experiment that way. LIke playing a game where you can be a monster without any moral concern cuz it's just a game. Here, you aren't putting any real economies at risk, so let's play around with how many ways can democracy go down the drain. It could be an interesting thought experiment for students and experts in the topic to learn how to better defend democracy from these flaws.
@@StuffandThings_ Here's a terrifying truth for ya bud: People mess with real governments and systems for shins and giggles, too. Powerful people, it's a game to them that they play with each other. It's a very high stakes games that they're addicted to, the same way a gambling addict is addicted to poker or slots.
@@StuffandThings_ The central problem with any attempt to replicate Earthly social systems in virtual spaces is security. In our real world, people are always present to defend people's property and rights. Either the victims themselves, or individuals invested with the legal authority to act in defence of the community. And the perpetrators are always present in the world, at risk of being located and punished for their actions. This presents a significant barrier to any attempt at thievery or violence, especially by outsiders entering a community. There is a good chance they will be repulsed, captured or killed if they try. And even if they escape afterwards, news of their actions will spread, and dire consequences may catch up with them. But in virtual spaces, players have to log off and do things in the real-world. Leaving their avatars either unresponsive or absent entirely. So they can't be present at all times, to defend themselves or their property. Other players could provide defence on their behalf, but they also need to log off from time to time. So to provide 24/7 defence, you would need a legion of players willing to perform regular and consistent shifts as security guards. Needless to say, this never happens. Leaving player's avatars and property undefended for long periods of time. Meanwhile, these kinds of anarchic, laissez-faire social experiments inevitably attract bad actors. People who want to take advantage of a lack of rules or moderation, to do things they would be punished for elsewhere. People who want to get their kicks being barbarian raiders, preying on other players. Or who just want to ruin other people's fun, destroying their property and killing their avatars like a bully kicking over sandcastles. And in these virtual experiments, all these people find ample opportunity to indulge in their bad behaviour. They inevitably destroy anything the sincere actors try to build, and devolve the system into transient clans of warlords, squabbling in a crab bucket. I have some ideas for how this could be addressed, but this comment is long enough as-is.
it's honestly pretty funny, it's no wonder things turn out like that, once you replicate the existing structures of power, people will inevitably replicate it's flaws.
@@zeevdrifter2707 Which is why I am waiting for something so alien to our understanding that it might just work. Extraterrestrial leaders, AI overlords... Something beyond our comprehension might be our only salvation. If not that, then a new system, one we don't have or don't know, yet. The entire "capitalism vs socialism" thing is bs, and anarchy being the third option is equally ass...
I find it hilarious that Gageboi vowed to be impartial and then IMMEDIATELY took autocratic control of his experiment. Honestly it's more baffling than anything else.
@@max7971Fortnite perpetuates literally no benefits to society, larping at least gives teenagers something to look back on. I don’t think larping is more productive than actually reading about history, but it sure as hell is more fun to some people I like the game Fortnite for being a cool ass game that’s a fever dream when you think about it, but I really hate the work culture in epic games. super disgusting
@@YawndereXO I'd argue it gives practical experience to work on rhetoric, as that's the most important skill for politicians or any position of leadership, even in companies nowadays.
To be fair an autocracy can technically be a democracy. Its just that having so much power delegated to one person effectively guarantees the end of democracy.
"Autocracy" implies that there is enough individuality for one person to dictate to others. I would call it a hivemind instead as their thoughts are already identical.
When I was 14 or so I played a lot of Roblox, and in that time the first so called ‘Napoleonic’ groups started popping up. Basically Roblox groups that depicted certain countries during the Napoleonic wars and fought eachother in special events. All actually pretty fun, and at that age it was just awesome to be surrounded by history nerds like myself. So at some point I joined a group that depicted the French Empire, and there was a whole hierarchy one had to go through. There was an emperor, and generals, majors, different regiments and specializations. You couldn’t even become an officer without endorsement from other higher-ups. You started as a trainee, and through participation in drills, combat performance, and general effort for the group, you could climb through the ranks. I made it to a Lieutenant in the 45th regiment (this is important) before things started getting…sketchy. You see, some of the officers in the other regiments were not really happy with our current emperor and generals. In truth they had been absent a lot, and because promotions from a certain point onward had to be done by them personally, the group was kind of a dead end for captains, lieutenants and other mid level officers like me. However, our regiment had one of the few active majors running it, who was friends with basically the only active general, so life continued as normal for us. Perhaps that is why we were surprised when half the group left out of the blue and created their own French Empire. It was a coup d’etat by the other regiments. The raids were so frequent that normal gameplay (i.e. trainings and such) became impossible, so we sat down with the regiment, and the group admins, emperor, marshals, to see what could be done. And here is where it gets real Machiavellian. As a lower ranking officer who was generally nice to everyone I enjoyed a certain amount of respect by the group members, including among the conspirators, and the admins seemed to know this. As they wanted to get the conspirators back on board, they came up with a plan. I would be made one of the marshals, just like that, and together with the two others I would oversee that higher ranking officers would be more active, participate more, or step down to be replaced by more worthy individuals. When this decision was communicated to the conspirators, by me actually if I remember well, a lot of them came back (at least 150 had left) and the coup was effectively over. However, some major had made a list of all the players who had conspired against the group. A f*cking list. And when these players came back to join the training sessions, they found themselves spawning under the ‘raiding’ team, but inside the fort in front of a wall unable to move. For weeks on end there were executions by firing squad, performed mostly by the same 45th regiment I had served in. After being ‘executed,’ the players were promptly banned from the place. Now I didn’t approve of this mind you, but agreed with the other marshals that I could only demote the major in charge after some time had passed. They were afraid it would send a message of new rebellion or whatever, but in any case this major was just another puppet in this Machiavellian hellscape that we created, a puppet to perform executions and then be dealt with himself because he made us look bad. Some weeks passed and I demoted this guy, stepped down as marshal, took command of the 45th regiment myself, and created a group within a group. Actually, we would have another good year of fun with this regiment, with our own Discord and training place I built myself, and with players I still talk to sometimes, after all these years. We even used genuine French drill manuals, and requested the group owners for uniform updates to represent the newesr details we learned in researching the actual 45th regiment, which we all got because I basically saved their group. We had an awesome time, but preceeding it was the strangest reflection of human nature in a video game I have ever seen. I mean, coups, executions, keeping players in the dark, using them; I’m not sure why I was not just discarded by the group admins. Why keep me, a lieutenant made marshal for a scheme, but allow this same marshal his new position and get rid of other players of lower rank who organized the executions (I mean, some kid somewhere went out of his way in his spare time to create a list of conspiring players in a Roblox group), yet at the same time keep the soldiers who actually performed it? Is it all just random? All just luck? I had the most fun year of gaming, honestly ever, with the 45th regiment, because of all this. Strange how the world works man…
As someone who did military groups as a tween/early teen, sounds absolutely right. The one I was in had various tensions between some of the special operations groups, and the 160th SOAR (SOCOM helicopter pilots) got disbanded because they staged a protest with them. Even crazier learning there was a CIA branch with its own covert actions, along with a Secret Service that wasn't allied with the main group to hide it from the public eye. Wild stuff.
Noticing at the very start of the video that the "SimDemocracy Constitution" post is being made by a now-deleted account sure is an omen if I ever saw one.
Oh I’m pretty sure that was written by Gage, who got caught up in a controversy when he tried to make himself president by impersonating a new member named Jackie. Jackie was always Gage, it went on for months. We had to clear the discord and made a new one to plan a coup. We eventually took it back after a while. “The Jackie” crisis was probably peak Simdemocracy lmao
The US is the only example in history, where "separation of powers" did not result in a coup of one branch (Executive, Legislative, Judicial) against the other. That we're publicly aware of and can prove, anyway.
@@Psytinker What you say is just not true... That being said, saying "no thanks" to the Supreme Court is perfectly possible in the real world and not just in theory - things like these do happen in the real world. Laws are, after all, just words - they have as much power as people are willing to give them. And it can very well happen that - for various reasons - legitimacy of one branch and its ability to exercise its powers will be put into question, creating a split in the system.
@@Eliastion Exactly. You can find examples of this right in US history. Andrew Jackson famously ignored a Supreme Court ruling on the rights of the Cherokee nation so that he could persecute them further. Everyone learns this in history class, it's the lead-up to the Trail of Tears
@@Psytinker....No? We have a hustorical example of a President ignoring a Supreme Court Order, even, in Andrew Jackson's involvement in the Trail of Tears despite the Supreme Court declaring the forced moving of Native Americans to Nebraska (I believe that was the State?) illegal.
Exactly! That seems like they just thought "if someone is actually deserving of this then it will be 100% against them, people arent taht dumb" And well...
So what I'm getting from this is that the habbo democracy RP had a system where, in order to remove a sexual predator on the grounds of soliciting and obtaining CP, they had to themselves violate multiple laws, national and international, pertaining to the distribution of that CP
@@SGresponse have you considered that being a member of an echo chamber of alliterative pedophiles has changed what you consider to be the normal response to pedophilia? Because yeah, people universally hate those who prey on the defenceless.
@@claudeyazso WTP would have, in NationStates terms, been "widely abused" and "corrupted" in both civil rights and political freedom. Yes there were people who just randomly pinged everyone for fun. Why? Idk 4 years later. For some reason someone challenged the result, the Anti Spam Act, tho I believe a long time after the issue of spam pinging resolved itself. And for some reason I struck it down. Tho idk maybe it was as a meme I did that. I have no idea. I didn't even remember this thing until I saw it lol
Pretty much sums up perfectly how every empire in history met its end. They were too big to control and imploded in its own broken laws and rebels. Growing weaker and weaker, like a car that's about to crash, met its end to a wall it can't figuratively climb over to
If you look it up, you might find that it _doesn't_ come from them. The people who tried and failed to make a government the quote is usually attributed to (and most likely lightly paraphrased from) were slightly older.
@@gavros9636 I was literally about to say this. You think French politics nowadays are bad, just go back a hundred years ago to the Third French Republic, which was the constitutional regime that ruled France from 1871 to 1940. Governments literally collapsed an average of twice a year during that time period!
at this point i'm tempted to say that the US constitution is the only type of constitution that people will actually respect. the document was never meant to last and was a kluged together pile of garbage at the time that people just kept building on. if you want your system of government to last, you gotta build the dysfunction into the legal system directly
I imagine that the constant coups and powergames in these democracy RP servers is caused by the fact that they’re interesting. There has to be a reason for players to stick around- either because the democracy serves a non-RP purpose or because there’s enough drama to keep things exciting.
this is why CivMC and civclassic before it has had such staying power, because it doesn't matter what unhinged threats you spew on discord or how hard you complain about one of your citizens being locked in the current hegemon's vault; if you don't have the military expertise or at least a motivated population that actually logs on to mine and build, all those words have zero substance. Equally if you are one of the people running the hegemon you can make pretty much anyone else stop doing something you dislike with a two word discord reply.
Richard, the lionheart is perhaps one of the most beloved Kings, if not the most beloved King of England. He considered himself a French King who happened to have Britain as one of his personal holdings barely spoke English and ruled entirely from France.
I mean that and the fact there are no consequences except for somebody trying to doxx you for it. Real life coups take a lot of planning and just as much luck to work. When you have neither and do it on a whim you end up with what happened in South Korea last year.
I was once elected president of one of these on discord, I was a third party candidate in a two party system and couldn’t get the senate to agree on anything that would benefit the server without being called a member of one of the two parties even when someone send child endangerment material in another server I couldn’t get him banned due to his friends controlling the senate, in the end I created a Supreme Court of the most neutral and competent members to be a neutral final check “to protect the servers democracy” I then deleted the senate and its roles and resigned leaving the server to the Supreme Court, the server started functioning after this lmao
This entire video is like the essence of middle-high class teenagers who have had access to video games and media since they were a kid. I find that a lot of us end up in a spot in our teenage years where we have all this advanced adult ideas, ambitions, curiosities, etc, but we don’t really have an outlet to really express them properly. A lot of people in our local environments such as school don’t really care, or seem to understand. Even now I don’t feel like I can even begin to describe what I am trying to talk about. In anycase, a lot of the same people end finding themselves in places like Minecraft Civilization events, or creating Virtual Democracies with elaborate storylines. It is our way to be heard and express.
I had never really thought about it, but yeah. Thats how I ended up in the sphere. Even if I never actively participated. Comments like this is why I still bother to read them.
32:10 Anytime a politician appears on television they need a banner that says "views expressed by this speaker do not necessarily reflect their views anymore"
Until you realise that plenty of people who disagree with a law or ruling will consider it tyranny. Point being I agree with the anti-fascist sentiment, but there are so many people who want to pretend they're victims of some sort of tyrannical regime that I'd be more afraid of the people who'd abuse the idea than any rightful and well considered rebellion it might inspire. How many people espouse the idea that "charity starts at home" as some sort of reason for not giving to charity?
@@mrjoe5292 its abuse of it. It's generally a greed power grab to use words like that. What you feel is tyranny probably isn't just they are using those words cause they have power behind it until they don't Its why if you are looking at current electoral systems notice how often someone cry something is evil when its just middle of the road until you get to actual war.
So basically the whole 38:00 info about Habbo Hotel's case is: The court system is so bureaucracy-filled and complicated (in a very bad way) that the plaintiff just used law loophole just to get to the point (accuser get banned). Democracy at it's finest. Anyway, good video. Would like to translate to my language for more people to acknowledge this mastercraft.
@@DefaultProphet its a bit of a misconception since other founders like Alexander Hamiltion were 18 at the time of the declaration signing in 1776. People condense the early founding of America even though most of what we think about occurred over like 20-30 years. ex. Washington's term ended 16 years later in 1792
Ain't all that surprising that internet folks who don't take anything seriously would do that, either as a dark joke, deliberate troll of the system, or in attempt to get the server in trouble.
The fact that a 'President' in a polisim server was grooming and sexually harassing minors and wasn't immediately banned by the owner/staff is an absolute disgrace the fact that anyone remained on that server after staff chose to allow that and chose to let the players punish this pedophile in sim is pure and undiluted insanity.
More common than you think. I speak from personal experience given I played on a Minecraft server whose owner *was* that particular kind of person. Plus they were trying to make the server an actual democracy...
Real life criminal behavior-which soliciting nudes from minors absolutely is, should face real life legal consequences. The user gets immediately banned, is reported to law enforcement, and any/all evidence gathered also gets forwarded to law enforcement.
@@NewfieOn2Wheels Actually I’d be very hesitant in contacting the police in cases of soliciting images. Depending on jurisdiction, the victim might technically have committed a worse crime than the perpetrator. After all, they both created and distributed that material. You’d think that creating and distributing material of yourself would by okay, but in many jurisdictions it’s treated exactly the same, and you can get years in prison for victimising yourself. It was a serious problem at my school.
It makes me so happy teenagers are learning how old and rich have been gaming the system for centuries. Armed with that knowledge they will be able to fight back and build a better world for everyone... right?...... right?
This is actually the channel I always dreamed of! I love hearing about stories of wild project done in the Internet and in virtual world. There’s so many weird and interesting tales that just never get documented because people don’t think to do it. I’m so glad TH-cam randomly decided to recommend me your channel
I really love your video, doing investigation journalism on video games/online communities is an underrated/undermade content ! Thanks for giving us this great video as a gift for new year !
Honestly I was deep into this kind of stuff for the longest time. It was the only thing that gave me a sense of community at the time and made me learn how politics is done. I still crave for those days, but I feel like now I'll never achieve democracy that I always craved. Laws are meant to be broken, as people find ways around it. Government is an uphill battle between desire for power and status quo. What is a direction of a nation, especially a small one, other then total domination inside? There is just no winning with people and it makes me feel sad. That everything I wanted to try has already been tried.
@@drrocketman7794 You are terribly naive if you think that is exactly what OP meant. People don't hold peers accountable, otherwise these structures wouldn't come to fruition. Yet, they always do. You cannot train people (not in the billions) out of their instincts, and expecting them to be even half as self-regulating is asking humans to be half as robotic. There is a reason anarchy isn't an answer either. Humans are organic flawed beings, with every right to be flawed organic animals. Any less than that is forcing humans into dictatorships. Ironic, isn't it? To reach the proper mass education for an anarchy to work, you need mass indoctrination to rewire the brain, which is dictatorial... There is no way out, brother.
Imo experiments like that are kinda boring. Everyone knows how democracy works and especially when someone tries to copy an existing system, it inherets its pros and cons and is just kinda nothing. Theese are not real after all, thats why we should try out diffrent things, what about trying to create a new system, customised to the enviroment its in, what about revisitng unpopular or old ideas, like i would love to see something like an electoral monarchy and stuff, not boring copy paste democracy.
Roblox is another interesting platform for virtual governments, although there is much less democracies the diplomacy between communities can be very interesting. Some communities have purpose made games where they can wage war with one another within the constraints of a global economy and resource trade. (windward is a pretty good example although it's activity has been declining)
27:42 This part sent genuine shivers through my body. This quote could describe the current situation regarding a constitutional crisis that is still ongoing where i live. It is a VERY complex situation, but in short new ruling coalition does not recognize multiple constitutional judges due to them being considered as illegitimate and incorrectly chosen by the previous ruling party, due to double appointments on multiple seats in 2015. It's probably not intentional, but in a part where he talks about democratic backsliding, the report he shows consists a picture from demonstrations against the previous ruling government regarding this exact crisis. While in a bit different way and in a different situation, for a bunch of teenagers on a minecraft server to replicate a legal dualism issue very similar to one caused by real, governing politicians is both fascinating and terrifying.
While the picture of the demonstration wasn't intentional, the reference to democratic backsliding was. I didn't say it explicitly in the video, but I too saw parallels with Poland's rule of law crisis when I first researched this story.
The amount of work, writing, research, visuals and everything else in your videos is severely underappreciated. Your production value should warrant millions of subscribers!
Hi :) I’m a close friend of one of the people of the Republic of Krameria, at 48:09, it’s the big picture and in 50:42, the first one. His name is Hersey. He is incredibly dedicated to Krameria. (To the point of us calling him obsessed.) In the server that we’re both from, this video has been a topic for days. None of us expected to see our virtual governments to be the focus of a video essay. -Xuo, from VirtualCongress
These stories remind me of my 4 year old niece who doesn't understand yet that when playing a game, not following the rules and doing something like drawing cards until you get the one you want or picking up your piece and moving it to the end of the board and saying you win, isn't fun for the other players and actually makes it less fun for her too but she can't see that yet.
2 mins into the video >A Reddit democracy >Creator and "Dormant supervisor" with highest executive position actively participating in own experiment I wonder where does all problems start from
Great vid! Having been involved later on in SimDem, and witnessisng the VoD events, it was interesting to see what other polsims have gotten up to during the years (Krameria wtf)
Oh god, the god problem is so real. When I was a kid (11-15 ish) I was sporadically involved in a lego star wars role play community on the official lego star wars gallery. The community emerged organically from collaborative story writing, and ended up with one player known as Sand as the leader in charge of negotiating rule disputes and updating the rules. Setting aside how wonky the rules and lore was, my understanding is that Sand was rather prone to favoritism in his rulings (affecting gameplay) and after a 2016 post involving a gay couple was made, Sand (who was 18) was forces to leave the gallery by his evangelical parents. Then there was chaos, and people decided to hold an election for who would be the replacement leader (“supreme leader”, as we said, in reference to Snoke). A player named Krayt won, who was more chill (and is still my friend lmao) and he ended up with a semi-official suite of advisors to help. But there was no democratic oversight, and we were on the official lego website and ultimately beholden to LEGO themselves. When the galleries became unusable we migrated to MOCpages briefly, and with that forum glitching more and more and infighting becoming more common we were all on discord by 2018. We languished trying to develop more effective economic rules and a decent democratic system of government that we (a group of teenagers known for alt accounts and political finagling) couldn’t break. We briefly ran a subreddit for a reboot of our game but by mid 2020 it lost steam, as it was basically just five of us. We’re still friends, but that entire RP was full of failed democracies and founder issues. Sand was practically a minor deity for a while; the day he left, 7/7/2016, was practically a national day of mourning for people. As the evangelicals left and more people came out, it instead became a celebration where short stories with lgbtq couples were posted (known as “raindrops day” now, for the post he left over, which was called “raindrops”). I also had a faction, the “emerald elites” which I tried to set up as a parliamentary democracy; I wrote an entire constitution and declared that I would be the court system while we could vote in political parties for the parliament who could then choose a prime minister, all in game. But not only did I want to keep power, interest was low and transferring information about military and financial power was difficult, which meant that even as other people got ahold of the parliament and ministry they did so little I effectively had to run the military as a dictatorship to ensure we could actually do things. The lore gets crazier, and we still talk and celebrate raindrops day on a new discord server, but teenage virtual democracies are crazy
Great video as always, you have an incredible talent for making very complex and minute topics interesting. The concept of the "dormant supervisor" is one i had a lot of interest in when i was younger. A political system that exists solely to survey and enact the will of the people would be highly efficient with the right checks and balances in place
As someone who has been in a bunch of sim democracys a huge problem that often happens is political partys forming off of real life politics with people then just voted of their irl political side more than actions and events done in the sim democracy
@@Shotblurpolitics is polarizing because politics is polarizing. A radical right has to exist if there’s a radical left and vice versa. The default motion of government is no motion. Action is always conserved in any system, its thermodynamics in practice on a political scale.
@@estan315 i think the problem here is from the 2 party system. In a system with more parties there can exist points which multiple parties agree with, and often they can unite in the government and enact that thing. but if you are given a 2 party system you are either with them or against them, there is no gray zone to be in. (Most of the time)
@@hampustoft2221 right but it’s exactly the same scenario with more variables. Instead of one party pushing left and another pushing right, it’s a complex field of vectors all carefully balancing each other out in every direction. The motion of politics will still trend towards zero. It’s impossible for anything to happen on a large scale like that without enough leverage, which means a power imbalance. Think of the French Revolution, when society is overthrown to this extent it leaves a massive power vacuum for power hungry ideologues to swoop in and “save the day”. Think of Germany 1945, think of the Soviet Union and the red revolution, think of the French Revolution where the people traded a monarch for an emperor. This type of large scale political movement is not something we should aspire for. The first rocks in an avalanche are often small.
Another problem is people copying existing government structures, complete with their flaws, instead of trying to innovate and try to improve on the idea. Things like party systems, or not trying other forms of voting like ranked choice. Though personally I have issues with ranked choice, but that's the alternative form of voting that people know about or that's at least actually discussed.
I really liked this video for its analysis of how human power dynamics always end up doing the same things. Every law, no, every word can have its meaning changed and voided by people trying to exploit the system and that will always happen as long as theres more than 2 people obeying the law
do you realize you are comparing teenage brainfarts to real world political dynamics? These systems are horrendously thought out, real world systems of all flavors have much a wide variety of safe guards against vague interpretations being used on a whim to subvert a political order. It's not smart to compare these silly teenage systems to real world politics.
Yeah it’s almost like laws being written with language makes them fundamentally reinterpretable, which means anyone can leverage the words to gain power based off their own definitions. Maybe the answer is just to stop telling people what to do already and acting like we know best for other people.
I was in a Roblox democracy group called NUSA, I didn't really play Roblox or care about the group, I just found it while scrolling on Twitter one day and decided to mess around in their Discord. There was an election for president at the time, so I, of course, put my own hat in the running as the leader of the new and improved Whig Party. Long story short some kid ended up winning while I got second place, so I messaged him threatening to "reveal the dirt on him" (i had absolutely 0 dirt on him) unless he conceded the race to me. Which he did, mostly because he didn't really want to play anymore. I have never woken up with that many Discord notifications in my life. Dozens of people asking for jobs as FBI/CIA Directors, cabinet positions, even federal judges. After filling out my government I ended up getting bored and had my friends tell the server's owner that I had died from AIDS.
I used to partake in one of these, several years ago. It started off as a virtual democracy, which inspired other virtual democracies to be formed. Eventually they formed an "international organisation", which soon became the focus point of the entire community as it transitioned to a kind of geopolitics sim. The internal politics of each nation slowly began to die out, since the leaders were always the most active in each nation. Most server members were either completely inactive, or were citizens of about a dozen other nations. This was tolerated since there was a 10 (and later 15) non-alt non-bot member requirement to be accepted as a nation. Once a nation was accepted they got the opportunity to be placed on the map, which had gradually become the focus of the entire community. There was a divide in the community between the "RPers" who were more willing to engage in roleplay, and the "Simulationists" who wanted to make sure everything was "organic" and "true to the principles of political simulation". I was a member of the latter faction, mainly because it's more fun for me personally, though I wasn't above fabricating historical events to make my nation's lore more interesting. In one of my attempts to boost activity in my nation, I created "concentration camps" for people who didn't respond to my messages, where I would isolate them in a single channel separate from the rest of the nation (I did this because I wanted to "clean up" my nation, without reducing my member count). Some folks got mad at me for calling them concentration camps, even though the name was technically accurate. I also recall one time, when the transition to a geopol sim was more complete, the international community had agreed to vacate certain areas of the map, to allow for the creation of new nations (and thereby new active leaders). I ignored the agreement, and claimed the entire area (which was downgraded to 1/3 of the area by the Cartographer) for my colony, as I was 1) opposed to the creation of new nations (which I accused of being "ghost nations"), and 2) I was once a member of the nation which claimed that land, but which had since disbanded. It's ironic really, since my nation wasn't all that active either. I think we only had around 4 unique active members, and the vast majority of the activity came from me anyway. When I finally did get other active members, I did my best to isolate them from the rest of the community since I didn't want them to get distracted into the geopol sim. Eventually the sim evolved. We got a system of districts to replaced the adhoc cartography system we had before, where 1 district = 1 non-bot non-alt member. This worked until one guy's youtube channel blew up and he directed everyone to his nation, so we went from the biggest nation having 120 members to over a thousand in a matter of weeks. Someone developed an economy bot, which was brilliant and a massive driver of activity. But the bot kept crashing and eventually it became so unreliable that nobody could use it. There was an influx of new members (the 4th Generation is what I called them at the time) who massively expanded the roleplay elements of the sim. Eventually the sim collapsed, when the hub server became too "toxic" after a war. Rival hubs were founded, but they failed to attract all of the community. At the same time the economy bot got completely wiped for some reason, so everyone lost interest. We primarily recruited through friend groups, so it died quite quickly once a few key groups left. It was fun.
I had no idea that there were other versions of these (or more accurately, other versions that were good (i.e. simulationist)). It'll be interesting to check them out.
your accent, delivery, and music choice (especially at the beginning of _constitutional rights and wrongs)_ makes this feel like an extra weird episode of look around you. absolutely lovely! so glad the algorithm blessed me with this today 😇 and a little ashamed i didn't subscribe after the algorithm served me up your video about the weird dude who ran a democracy discord that was him, ~3 friends, and a thousand of his alts. such good stuff!
It feels like in a lot of these teenage democracies, they would be served well by making their monarch an adult with zero connection to the community itself, maybe an older sibling or a parent of one of the members, whose sole job it is to sign off (or withhold their signature) on bills decided by the teenaged government, and to handle more serious out-of-character abuses. Somebody with zero interest in the day-to-day happenings of the community but who has the maturity to be the final say and so can act on inappropriate/unsafe behaviour to protect the kiddos
I've been involved in many virtual democracies, and while I understand the premise of what you're suggesting, it doesn't work. Players would never actively engage or participate in a server in which the head is not involved in the community in any way.
Very good video, I very much enjoy this style of long form content! keep it up, and I hope to see many more cool videos about virtual democracies as you stated in the middle of the vid, with how there are way too many types of virtual democracy styles out there for you to squeeze into one vid. I wish you luck on all the rest of your vids!
I'm a person who wants to try to bring democracy to a planned minecraft server to help ease moderation tensions, I must say that this is probably the most important video I should watch right now.
Problem is you don't know who is going to get elected and if they are going to be tyrants in the server. Humanity has many problems with their greed for power.
I've stumbled upon your videos randomly and I am surpised that there are/were so many democracy/state sims. Also the quality of your videos is amazing and you must do a ton of research into the happenings of these communities
I am simply amazed at the scale AND quality of this analysis. This is PhD level work about an unexplored and fascinating subject, that also informs about the real world - presented clearly and at no cost to us. More, please!
Hello, long-time member of the Virtual Congress Discord server and other Discord servers over the years. Very interesting video, I didn't know how many virtual democracies there were or how other places treated these issues. Well done!
reminds me of this minecraft server where u can just jail anyone if u kill them and the admins wouldnt interfere for any reason, think it was called civmc or something. ppl would make larp nations around all the ideologies u could think of and it would actually work.
CivMC is still around, it's working fine. The ability to jail other players works because this way the players themselves can keep order without the admins.
@@adamus1342 That's a pretty similar concept to one I've had for years of a semi-hardcore server where you get banned if you're killed by a player. Usually in Minecraft servers, the power is disproportionately in favor of the bad agents like malicious PvPers and griefers, because they can just keep coming back to do damage, and destroying things takes way less time and effort than creating them. But if an organized counter to your actions can get you banned (or in the CivMC case, jailed), then there are lasting consequences that you have to consider, and the power balance is more equal. I'm curious, though, does CivMC still have land claiming/protection plugins and stuff? That's the main thing that's always turned me away from all these types of servers. I prefer the idea of a more player-enforced kind of order, where griefing is technically possible, but governments are able to protect against it through their structure and player enforcement. I still haven't ever fully found that, and suspect I'll just have to hope I get the resources to create it myself one day.
It’s crazy seeing Simdemocracy mentioned in a TH-cam video. I was a member for a long time. I never did anything major but I was privy to a lot of insider politics and controversies due to being friends with a lot of major players at the time. It was super fun!
Bro I clicked on this video to save it to watch later, and ended up watching the whole introduction. safe to say this is a banger video you got here ✨✨
Somewhat controversially (although this obviously depends on who you ask), the owners stepped in to stop it by holding snap elections for Congress and the presidency. As DemocracyCraft is a dual state, the owners were within their _legal_ right to do that-but whether or not it was the _politically_ right thing to do is another question. In terms of how the event has shaped DemocracyCraft politics after, the members of that server would be able to give a better answer than me.
@@Trolligarchfor your own information, I’m the lawyer that colluded with Matthew to do those Supreme Court shenanigans (AlexanderLove). The legal field was permanently marred after that, until a very recent good state. Politics recovered quickly albeit staff vs politician tensions never recovered. End always runs into a rough time as he’s a major political figure but his position as owner puts him under intense scrutiny.
Nice reference to the dual state! For those wondering, Ernst Fraenkel analyzed Nazi Germany as being a dual state. (Hitler could overrule the law whenever he wanted basically…and he did…a lot)
I'm really glad someone spotted this! Realising that Fraenkel's analysis of the dual state could be applied to explain the relationship between the owner and the elected government was definitely an "ah-ha" moment for me! It's arguably not a perfect analogy, though. The prerogative state, as Fraenkel described it, is meant to be a state that exercises its power arbitrarily outside the rule of law-essentially an "Unrechtsstaat," to use the German legal term. However, as I mentioned in the video, there are strong arguments to be made that owners and admins (the prerogative state) have non-arbitrary reasons-e.g., protecting the real-life safety of players-for their absolute power to intervene in a normative state's affairs. So, instead, I used Fraenkel's dual state as more of a neutral descriptor. Even if the prerogative state (ownership) doesn't exercise its powers arbitrarily, it still possesses Kompetenz-Kompetenz, which is the main point I wanted to convey. (That said, I didn't mention any of this explicitly in my video since I've tailored it to a lay audience!) I forgot to add Fraenkel in my additional sources section (in the video's description), so thanks for the accidental reminder as well!
I ran one of these with less than a hundred members on a discord server pre-covid and during covid. I was the server owner but also head of the judicial branch. There was a senate to make laws and a president to enforce them and elections were held every two weeks. I was in charge of overseeing elections. I would call the elections on Saturday nights between 8 and 11 pm, just depending on whenever I was online. Well, one time someone ran for president who wasn't trusted by a lot of the OG members, myself included, but they were ahead in the polls. Myself, the current President, and a couple of senators sat in a call together until almost 1 am messaging less active members to vote for our guy, until we had eeked out a victory, then I immediately called it. The opponent found out Sunday morning but it was too late. Great times
That was fucking awesome. I'm glad someone finally made a video on the subject, Because its hilarious the depths people go to attain some semblance of power. Happy New Year dude.
I could have condensed over an hour of this video into basically bringing up the old era of proboards forums (usually for RP and sometimes for other content), and how literally without fail no matter how well you try to ensure all is fair and well with rules and staff, inevitably you realize that the moment you give teenagers any sort of power over others in any way, shape or form, it will always without fail turn into a high school clique-ran cafeteria and drama meltdown. And every time without fail, it will lead to backstabbing, gossip and just yelling insults and accusations at each other until the whole thing collapsed because feelings got hurt and every other member becomes little Timmy taking his ball and going home out of pettiness. It actually feels like a fitting metaphor for most politics in the world overall: For all the talk, sophistication and trying to be mature or civilized, most politics is just high school drama but everyone else has to suffer the consequences of Heathers/Mean Girls squabbling but with the funds of Richie Rich.
This concept of a virtual democracy and how they operate and fail is utterly fascinating to me. Every story I could think of real world analogs to what the communities were facing and it gets a lot more intense than I would have expected.
So, teens will try to make virtual democracies that are very similar to the ones they live in. Only to run into similar shenanigans as the democracies they try to imitate. (Representative democracy)
This reminds me of the short-lived minecraft discord gang wars. In short; the official minecraft discord sever during 2020 had collectives of people known as gangs whom usually named them selves (noun)-gang. They used the minecraft discords off topic channel for recruiting and the two major ones I remember were Bread Gang (the one I was a part of) and their rivals: Egg Gang. They were all for the most-part "discord authoritarian" (owner, admin, mod, member). They trend died out before 2021 but severs like Bread Gang still exist though are wastelands but still host rich histories. I could go on paragraphs about the Bread Gang history, we had wars, civil war, puppet states, a lot.
A rather fascinating place for government simulation in the Minecraft server Stoneworks. Rather than just running one government, there are hundreds running all at once, with some lasting extremely long times and holding mass amounts of power.
Many of you asked what a "Discord democracy" even is in the Averra Dossier video. I previously mentioned that an introduction to it could warrant a video in its own right. Well, here is that video-the (spiritual) Part 0 of the Averra Dossier! Thank you once again to all of my subscribers and Patreon donors for your continued support :)
This comment section is now under the control of SimDemocracy and the SDAF.
So they did Britain! A dormant supervisor (king), which inaugurates every prime minister, and a democratic system also. Very cool!
I can't wait for the second Averra episode.
Why not mention Political Simulation United States History Season 1 (and now 2) :wa: :trollsome:
There's a game called Deep Space Airships that I think you might be interested in. It has a unique political environment and involves geopolitics, war, paranoia and toxicity. Please look into it and maybe make a video on it.
The main problem I see in this experiments is that often they have democracy for democracy sake, not as a way to govern resources and the interests of economical agents. So what can you do in this type of situation other than try to fuck with it?
I’d say it might actually make sense in the Minecraft situation as there are resources to govern. However Reddit and Discord democracies really have no reason to exist and are really quite boring without some sort of wannabe dictator.
@cupboard8476 Yeah _some_ Minecraft experiments with democracy sorta work out (with the obvious issues of people still trying to fuck with it cause its Minecraft and people are there to have fun, not make a long term stable system) but generally they don't run long enough to see the long term outcome. Plus, Minecraft resources are laughably easy to manage. I've wanted to see someone try a civilization experiment in Vintage Story (much more realistic and waaaay harder to manage survival that encourages specialization of labor, trade, and careful resource management) that lasts for months to years to see how people react to that.
I think it is a great experiment that way. LIke playing a game where you can be a monster without any moral concern cuz it's just a game. Here, you aren't putting any real economies at risk, so let's play around with how many ways can democracy go down the drain. It could be an interesting thought experiment for students and experts in the topic to learn how to better defend democracy from these flaws.
@@StuffandThings_ Here's a terrifying truth for ya bud: People mess with real governments and systems for shins and giggles, too. Powerful people, it's a game to them that they play with each other. It's a very high stakes games that they're addicted to, the same way a gambling addict is addicted to poker or slots.
@@StuffandThings_ The central problem with any attempt to replicate Earthly social systems in virtual spaces is security. In our real world, people are always present to defend people's property and rights. Either the victims themselves, or individuals invested with the legal authority to act in defence of the community. And the perpetrators are always present in the world, at risk of being located and punished for their actions. This presents a significant barrier to any attempt at thievery or violence, especially by outsiders entering a community. There is a good chance they will be repulsed, captured or killed if they try. And even if they escape afterwards, news of their actions will spread, and dire consequences may catch up with them.
But in virtual spaces, players have to log off and do things in the real-world. Leaving their avatars either unresponsive or absent entirely. So they can't be present at all times, to defend themselves or their property. Other players could provide defence on their behalf, but they also need to log off from time to time. So to provide 24/7 defence, you would need a legion of players willing to perform regular and consistent shifts as security guards. Needless to say, this never happens. Leaving player's avatars and property undefended for long periods of time.
Meanwhile, these kinds of anarchic, laissez-faire social experiments inevitably attract bad actors. People who want to take advantage of a lack of rules or moderation, to do things they would be punished for elsewhere. People who want to get their kicks being barbarian raiders, preying on other players. Or who just want to ruin other people's fun, destroying their property and killing their avatars like a bully kicking over sandcastles. And in these virtual experiments, all these people find ample opportunity to indulge in their bad behaviour. They inevitably destroy anything the sincere actors try to build, and devolve the system into transient clans of warlords, squabbling in a crab bucket.
I have some ideas for how this could be addressed, but this comment is long enough as-is.
it's honestly pretty funny, it's no wonder things turn out like that, once you replicate the existing structures of power, people will inevitably replicate it's flaws.
and or sad
Yep. Bolshevik revolution in a nutshell
All systems are subject to the human condition.
@@zeevdrifter2707 Which is why I am waiting for something so alien to our understanding that it might just work. Extraterrestrial leaders, AI overlords... Something beyond our comprehension might be our only salvation. If not that, then a new system, one we don't have or don't know, yet.
The entire "capitalism vs socialism" thing is bs, and anarchy being the third option is equally ass...
@@NothingXemnasoh here we go with the "enlightened" centrism
I find it hilarious that Gageboi vowed to be impartial and then IMMEDIATELY took autocratic control of his experiment. Honestly it's more baffling than anything else.
It was HIS experiment.
Goes to show when humans are given power they have to use it.
Not if you understand elite theory, which this is a classic demonstration of.
Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Every dictator thinks he's benevolent, even while committing massacres of his own people.
"Kids these days are always on their damn phones"
Kids on their phones:
You playing Fortnite on your phone is more beneficial to society, than you unironically larping on reddit.
@@max7971Fortnite perpetuates literally no benefits to society, larping at least gives teenagers something to look back on.
I don’t think larping is more productive than actually reading about history, but it sure as hell is more fun to some people
I like the game Fortnite for being a cool ass game that’s a fever dream when you think about it, but I really hate the work culture in epic games. super disgusting
@@YawndereXO Both of y'all are yapping
@@YawndereXO I'd argue it gives practical experience to work on rhetoric, as that's the most important skill for politicians or any position of leadership, even in companies nowadays.
*How* are you arguing under my absolute nothing meme comment
>A Reddit democracy
(Actually an autocracy that does nothing productive in a space that doesn't matter)
Yeah sounds about right, thanks reddit
To be fair an autocracy can technically be a democracy. Its just that having so much power delegated to one person effectively guarantees the end of democracy.
"Autocracy" implies that there is enough individuality for one person to dictate to others. I would call it a hivemind instead as their thoughts are already identical.
@@chebic5095 An autocracy in a space that has only 1 member is a democracy
And to the surprise of no one whatsoever, the Reddit democracy experiment became a complete dumpster fire.
Aren't you entertained?
When I was 14 or so I played a lot of Roblox, and in that time the first so called ‘Napoleonic’ groups started popping up. Basically Roblox groups that depicted certain countries during the Napoleonic wars and fought eachother in special events. All actually pretty fun, and at that age it was just awesome to be surrounded by history nerds like myself.
So at some point I joined a group that depicted the French Empire, and there was a whole hierarchy one had to go through. There was an emperor, and generals, majors, different regiments and specializations. You couldn’t even become an officer without endorsement from other higher-ups. You started as a trainee, and through participation in drills, combat performance, and general effort for the group, you could climb through the ranks. I made it to a Lieutenant in the 45th regiment (this is important) before things started getting…sketchy.
You see, some of the officers in the other regiments were not really happy with our current emperor and generals. In truth they had been absent a lot, and because promotions from a certain point onward had to be done by them personally, the group was kind of a dead end for captains, lieutenants and other mid level officers like me. However, our regiment had one of the few active majors running it, who was friends with basically the only active general, so life continued as normal for us.
Perhaps that is why we were surprised when half the group left out of the blue and created their own French Empire. It was a coup d’etat by the other regiments.
The raids were so frequent that normal gameplay (i.e. trainings and such) became impossible, so we sat down with the regiment, and the group admins, emperor, marshals, to see what could be done. And here is where it gets real Machiavellian.
As a lower ranking officer who was generally nice to everyone I enjoyed a certain amount of respect by the group members, including among the conspirators, and the admins seemed to know this. As they wanted to get the conspirators back on board, they came up with a plan. I would be made one of the marshals, just like that, and together with the two others I would oversee that higher ranking officers would be more active, participate more, or step down to be replaced by more worthy individuals. When this decision was communicated to the conspirators, by me actually if I remember well, a lot of them came back (at least 150 had left) and the coup was effectively over.
However, some major had made a list of all the players who had conspired against the group. A f*cking list. And when these players came back to join the training sessions, they found themselves spawning under the ‘raiding’ team, but inside the fort in front of a wall unable to move. For weeks on end there were executions by firing squad, performed mostly by the same 45th regiment I had served in. After being ‘executed,’ the players were promptly banned from the place.
Now I didn’t approve of this mind you, but agreed with the other marshals that I could only demote the major in charge after some time had passed. They were afraid it would send a message of new rebellion or whatever, but in any case this major was just another puppet in this Machiavellian hellscape that we created, a puppet to perform executions and then be dealt with himself because he made us look bad.
Some weeks passed and I demoted this guy, stepped down as marshal, took command of the 45th regiment myself, and created a group within a group. Actually, we would have another good year of fun with this regiment, with our own Discord and training place I built myself, and with players I still talk to sometimes, after all these years. We even used genuine French drill manuals, and requested the group owners for uniform updates to represent the newesr details we learned in researching the actual 45th regiment, which we all got because I basically saved their group.
We had an awesome time, but preceeding it was the strangest reflection of human nature in a video game I have ever seen. I mean, coups, executions, keeping players in the dark, using them; I’m not sure why I was not just discarded by the group admins. Why keep me, a lieutenant made marshal for a scheme, but allow this same marshal his new position and get rid of other players of lower rank who organized the executions (I mean, some kid somewhere went out of his way in his spare time to create a list of conspiring players in a Roblox group), yet at the same time keep the soldiers who actually performed it? Is it all just random? All just luck?
I had the most fun year of gaming, honestly ever, with the 45th regiment, because of all this. Strange how the world works man…
This comment is art
I actually read it all and wasn't disappointed
As someone who did military groups as a tween/early teen, sounds absolutely right. The one I was in had various tensions between some of the special operations groups, and the 160th SOAR (SOCOM helicopter pilots) got disbanded because they staged a protest with them. Even crazier learning there was a CIA branch with its own covert actions, along with a Secret Service that wasn't allied with the main group to hide it from the public eye. Wild stuff.
This sounds like it should become a movie
Games without frontiers, war without tears
Noticing at the very start of the video that the "SimDemocracy Constitution" post is being made by a now-deleted account sure is an omen if I ever saw one.
Oh I’m pretty sure that was written by Gage, who got caught up in a controversy when he tried to make himself president by impersonating a new member named Jackie. Jackie was always Gage, it went on for months. We had to clear the discord and made a new one to plan a coup. We eventually took it back after a while. “The Jackie” crisis was probably peak Simdemocracy lmao
I noticed that too lmao
Yep
Insert "foreshadowing" meme
What omen
Democracy craft is crazy, who knew you could just say “no thanks” to the Supreme Court.
The US is the only example in history, where "separation of powers" did not result in a coup of one branch (Executive, Legislative, Judicial) against the other. That we're publicly aware of and can prove, anyway.
That neat little trick worked a few times in our country.
@@Psytinker What you say is just not true...
That being said, saying "no thanks" to the Supreme Court is perfectly possible in the real world and not just in theory - things like these do happen in the real world. Laws are, after all, just words - they have as much power as people are willing to give them. And it can very well happen that - for various reasons - legitimacy of one branch and its ability to exercise its powers will be put into question, creating a split in the system.
@@Eliastion Exactly. You can find examples of this right in US history. Andrew Jackson famously ignored a Supreme Court ruling on the rights of the Cherokee nation so that he could persecute them further. Everyone learns this in history class, it's the lead-up to the Trail of Tears
@@Psytinker....No? We have a hustorical example of a President ignoring a Supreme Court Order, even, in Andrew Jackson's involvement in the Trail of Tears despite the Supreme Court declaring the forced moving of Native Americans to Nebraska (I believe that was the State?) illegal.
It's kind of ridiculous that they needed a whopping 91% supermajority to recall a representative. What's the point of such an undemocratic threshold?
I wonder who wrote in that sort of unachievably high threshold...
@@Ididntchoosethisname I'm assuming it was an oversight from when the constitution was first written
Exactly! That seems like they just thought "if someone is actually deserving of this then it will be 100% against them, people arent taht dumb"
And well...
Myth of the rational voter
A Morgna wes core.
So what I'm getting from this is that the habbo democracy RP had a system where, in order to remove a sexual predator on the grounds of soliciting and obtaining CP, they had to themselves violate multiple laws, national and international, pertaining to the distribution of that CP
@@SGresponse you enjoyed that line a lot huh?
makes me wonder if there were any dudes who would make it up just to get the cp
@@SGresponse have you considered that being a member of an echo chamber of alliterative pedophiles has changed what you consider to be the normal response to pedophilia?
Because yeah, people universally hate those who prey on the defenceless.
@@SGresponse you could've just said you liked minors and it would've saved a whole lot of time. creep.
@@SGresponse Ain't no way you're defending CP
I spit out my coffee when I saw myself being featured in a youtube video. I'm "Jack Ryan", chief justice of We the people at the time lmao
Always fun to see your name in stuff like this
I even found myself from years back in here!
I laughed when I saw my name in that case, LOL
Were people intentionally just trolling or did the systems naturally devolve
Jack Ryan the Tom Clancy character?
@@claudeyazso WTP would have, in NationStates terms, been "widely abused" and "corrupted" in both civil rights and political freedom.
Yes there were people who just randomly pinged everyone for fun. Why? Idk 4 years later.
For some reason someone challenged the result, the Anti Spam Act, tho I believe a long time after the issue of spam pinging resolved itself. And for some reason I struck it down. Tho idk maybe it was as a meme I did that. I have no idea. I didn't even remember this thing until I saw it lol
I love that all of these come down to "The closer an Empire to its end, the crazier its laws." Absolutely magnificent video.
Pretty much sums up perfectly how every empire in history met its end. They were too big to control and imploded in its own broken laws and rebels. Growing weaker and weaker, like a car that's about to crash, met its end to a wall it can't figuratively climb over to
"When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty" is a raw ass line to come from a bunch of teenagers trying and failing to make a government
If you look it up, you might find that it _doesn't_ come from them. The people who tried and failed to make a government the quote is usually attributed to (and most likely lightly paraphrased from) were slightly older.
they didn't come up with it, I think it was said by one of the US founding fathers, can't remember whom tho
yeah definitely a raw ass line
@@ShankarSivarajan damn
@@Lambda_Ovine It's actually a line from Australian activists, but it is sometimes wrongly attributes to Jefferson.
That democracycraft one was so cool. Like one letter in the constitution ending in a full take over
political instability as national mythos is such a terrifyingly powerful concept
edit: ave Kartek
Welcome to France!
@@gavros9636 I was literally about to say this. You think French politics nowadays are bad, just go back a hundred years ago to the Third French Republic, which was the constitutional regime that ruled France from 1871 to 1940. Governments literally collapsed an average of twice a year during that time period!
at this point i'm tempted to say that the US constitution is the only type of constitution that people will actually respect. the document was never meant to last and was a kluged together pile of garbage at the time that people just kept building on. if you want your system of government to last, you gotta build the dysfunction into the legal system directly
Sounds like PSUSH
KARTEK MENTIONED‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️
>Nurembourg law
“Wait, I’ve seen this one before”
Ah shit here we go again...
@DrippyPootisGone full circle with this one
ExplNation please
@@flamsey See: Nuremberg Laws passed within nazi germany.
@@flamsey "The Nuremberg Laws were antisemitic and racist laws that were enacted in Nazi Germany on 15 September 1935" -Wikipedia
1:23 "a record 117 votes were cast" well... when its your first election even 1 would be a record haha
Not to mention it was roughly 110% of votes right out of the gate as well. Even their first ever vote was rigged.
ikr xD
I felt that the emphasis was on the fact that there were more votes cast than there were voters 😂😂😂
@@AndrewFatherOfEdward haha i did not catch that
Literally the first elections were rigged and everything made by the president would be invalid
A new trolligarch video in less than 4 years. Starting the year off right.
Homestuck woah
omg
HOMESTUCK
I imagine that the constant coups and powergames in these democracy RP servers is caused by the fact that they’re interesting. There has to be a reason for players to stick around- either because the democracy serves a non-RP purpose or because there’s enough drama to keep things exciting.
Truth is, most folks IRL define a "functional" government as "a government I do not need to pay even slight attention to"...
this is why CivMC and civclassic before it has had such staying power, because it doesn't matter what unhinged threats you spew on discord or how hard you complain about one of your citizens being locked in the current hegemon's vault; if you don't have the military expertise or at least a motivated population that actually logs on to mine and build, all those words have zero substance. Equally if you are one of the people running the hegemon you can make pretty much anyone else stop doing something you dislike with a two word discord reply.
Richard, the lionheart is perhaps one of the most beloved Kings, if not the most beloved King of England. He considered himself a French King who happened to have Britain as one of his personal holdings barely spoke English and ruled entirely from France.
Such a great point. These are not 'virtual democracies', they're games. No matter how they dressed up.
I mean that and the fact there are no consequences except for somebody trying to doxx you for it. Real life coups take a lot of planning and just as much luck to work. When you have neither and do it on a whim you end up with what happened in South Korea last year.
I was once elected president of one of these on discord, I was a third party candidate in a two party system and couldn’t get the senate to agree on anything that would benefit the server without being called a member of one of the two parties even when someone send child endangerment material in another server I couldn’t get him banned due to his friends controlling the senate, in the end I created a Supreme Court of the most neutral and competent members to be a neutral final check “to protect the servers democracy” I then deleted the senate and its roles and resigned leaving the server to the Supreme Court, the server started functioning after this lmao
That’s awesome as hell bro lol
thank you femboyhistory
that sounds sick, wp
you did a coup on that server, and you are actively amazing for that
Cincinnatus
This entire video is like the essence of middle-high class teenagers who have had access to video games and media since they were a kid. I find that a lot of us end up in a spot in our teenage years where we have all this advanced adult ideas, ambitions, curiosities, etc, but we don’t really have an outlet to really express them properly. A lot of people in our local environments such as school don’t really care, or seem to understand. Even now I don’t feel like I can even begin to describe what I am trying to talk about. In anycase, a lot of the same people end finding themselves in places like Minecraft Civilization events, or creating Virtual Democracies with elaborate storylines. It is our way to be heard and express.
oh my god yeah! i personally find my interest solely in learning about these things but sociology is so interesting actually.
I had never really thought about it, but yeah. Thats how I ended up in the sphere. Even if I never actively participated.
Comments like this is why I still bother to read them.
cringe
@@zeppl1n
Why?
@@zeppl1nsure, but cringe compared to what? Not having those ideas?
32:10 Anytime a politician appears on television they need a banner that says "views expressed by this speaker do not necessarily reflect their views anymore"
Not really, their views is their whole thing, they'll update us if it changes
"Owner" being able to overrule the ruling cabinett is just modern-day constitutional monarchy :D
why does australia still have a royal family lol
@Wrenifferbecause the alternative of a presidential republic is a great deterrence
The constitutional part of constitutional monarchy says that the monarch has no real power.
Rather absolute monarchy in it's truest form as in "the country belongs to the king" is taken quite literally
@@papierbakI mean technically the British monarch can veto stuff but it’s still a constitutional monarchy. It’s just not done.
Holy crap the line when "tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty" goes so hard
Until you realise that plenty of people who disagree with a law or ruling will consider it tyranny.
Point being I agree with the anti-fascist sentiment, but there are so many people who want to pretend they're victims of some sort of tyrannical regime that I'd be more afraid of the people who'd abuse the idea than any rightful and well considered rebellion it might inspire. How many people espouse the idea that "charity starts at home" as some sort of reason for not giving to charity?
Dovaahkin loved doing speeches like that
@@mrjoe5292 its abuse of it. It's generally a greed power grab to use words like that. What you feel is tyranny probably isn't just they are using those words cause they have power behind it until they don't Its why if you are looking at current electoral systems notice how often someone cry something is evil when its just middle of the road until you get to actual war.
@@unskilledkeks501he still does
It's a line that is attributed to Thomas Jefferson btw
So basically the whole 38:00 info about Habbo Hotel's case is: The court system is so bureaucracy-filled and complicated (in a very bad way) that the plaintiff just used law loophole just to get to the point (accuser get banned). Democracy at it's finest. Anyway, good video. Would like to translate to my language for more people to acknowledge this mastercraft.
Not before multiple people commiting the real life crimes of sharing and disseminating CSE materials mind you 😅
i feel like in a point where something is an ACTUAL IRL criminal offense they shouldnt have to go through a fictional law system to ban someone
I FUCKING LOVE INEFFICIENT BUREAUCRACY!
@@averagesnail thats what they said after the case was done and their admins can directly ban without needing to interact with fictional systems
20:31 I never expected someone who makes videos on niche internet things to be a lawyer.
he has an oxford degree! (in the channel description)
Moon channel is another TH-camr who's a lawyer tough it's part of his persona there.
Why? A lot of youtubers have real careers, I would even say most of them
@@juegobuenoyomalo9501because if you think of a youtuber, you'd think someone who dropped out
TBH considering he's making videos on internet politics, lawyer is like the _most_ expected career path.
Welp, looks like I won't be doing any work for the next hour, the universe has decided that being productive is not for me today
I folded my clothes while listening to this
@@JBeestonian Well good on you, I didn't
Fun facts:
The US's founding fathers were mostly early adults
Younger than most people perceive them to be nowadays
They really are ahead of their time, and always will be.
Average was 44(Signers of Declaration of Independence) or 45(Signers of Constitution).
Wouldn’t really call that early adults
That's probably because the current USA Senate is filled with geriatrics. The average age is 64 (as of 2023)... JFC America, get your shit together.
@@DefaultProphet its a bit of a misconception since other founders like Alexander Hamiltion were 18 at the time of the declaration signing in 1776. People condense the early founding of America even though most of what we think about occurred over like 20-30 years. ex. Washington's term ended 16 years later in 1792
11:58 “(a) All users with the ‘Jewish’ role shall be mandated to include the Star of David in the beginning of their nickname” is wild.
Literally the start of Nazi Germany
Ain't all that surprising that internet folks who don't take anything seriously would do that, either as a dark joke, deliberate troll of the system, or in attempt to get the server in trouble.
Im not very shocked by it because its a bunch of teenagers running a "democracy" over discord lmao. Everything turns into COD lobbies with time
@@Spartan322the double irony. Tryhards
@@JoshD08try powerlevel discussion in ANY platform
The fact that a 'President' in a polisim server was grooming and sexually harassing minors and wasn't immediately banned by the owner/staff is an absolute disgrace the fact that anyone remained on that server after staff chose to allow that and chose to let the players punish this pedophile in sim is pure and undiluted insanity.
Just like it happends in real life : )
More common than you think. I speak from personal experience given I played on a Minecraft server whose owner *was* that particular kind of person.
Plus they were trying to make the server an actual democracy...
Real life criminal behavior-which soliciting nudes from minors absolutely is, should face real life legal consequences. The user gets immediately banned, is reported to law enforcement, and any/all evidence gathered also gets forwarded to law enforcement.
That just makes it an authentic model of a real-world government.
@@NewfieOn2Wheels Actually I’d be very hesitant in contacting the police in cases of soliciting images.
Depending on jurisdiction, the victim might technically have committed a worse crime than the perpetrator. After all, they both created and distributed that material.
You’d think that creating and distributing material of yourself would by okay, but in many jurisdictions it’s treated exactly the same, and you can get years in prison for victimising yourself.
It was a serious problem at my school.
It makes me so happy teenagers are learning how old and rich have been gaming the system for centuries. Armed with that knowledge they will be able to fight back and build a better world for everyone... right?...... right?
We need to make the internet a democracy
Depends, if race is still a huge thing when they become the rulers, shit's gonna hit the fan
@@simdemocracyofficial7512sounds kinda dumb to make the internet a democracy
Libertarianism and authoritarianism is the same
Capitalism and socialism is the same
The problem is inherently always demographics
@ horse shoe
This is actually the channel I always dreamed of! I love hearing about stories of wild project done in the Internet and in virtual world. There’s so many weird and interesting tales that just never get documented because people don’t think to do it. I’m so glad TH-cam randomly decided to recommend me your channel
I really love your video, doing investigation journalism on video games/online communities is an underrated/undermade content ! Thanks for giving us this great video as a gift for new year !
As a former Europeian on NationStates, I did NOT expect to see our forum being used as an example. Great video!
Hopefully also a former NationStates-er :p
My people plz gather here 😅 when did you all last play @a_rush @Zalidia
Honestly I was deep into this kind of stuff for the longest time. It was the only thing that gave me a sense of community at the time and made me learn how politics is done. I still crave for those days, but I feel like now I'll never achieve democracy that I always craved.
Laws are meant to be broken, as people find ways around it. Government is an uphill battle between desire for power and status quo. What is a direction of a nation, especially a small one, other then total domination inside? There is just no winning with people and it makes me feel sad. That everything I wanted to try has already been tried.
The best government is where people govern themselves, and, failing that, they are brought to account by their peers.
@@drrocketman7794 You are terribly naive if you think that is exactly what OP meant. People don't hold peers accountable, otherwise these structures wouldn't come to fruition. Yet, they always do. You cannot train people (not in the billions) out of their instincts, and expecting them to be even half as self-regulating is asking humans to be half as robotic.
There is a reason anarchy isn't an answer either. Humans are organic flawed beings, with every right to be flawed organic animals. Any less than that is forcing humans into dictatorships. Ironic, isn't it? To reach the proper mass education for an anarchy to work, you need mass indoctrination to rewire the brain, which is dictatorial... There is no way out, brother.
Imo experiments like that are kinda boring. Everyone knows how democracy works and especially when someone tries to copy an existing system, it inherets its pros and cons and is just kinda nothing. Theese are not real after all, thats why we should try out diffrent things, what about trying to create a new system, customised to the enviroment its in, what about revisitng unpopular or old ideas, like i would love to see something like an electoral monarchy and stuff, not boring copy paste democracy.
That's because democracy has reached it's peak of effectiveness
Monarchy for the win
Fantastic video. The guy at 47:23 is pretty cool, you should include him more
What's your name on discord?
truth
Pipe down lil bro, ur not him
viktor tsoi?
Funny how this was supposed to be a democracy, but with the Supervisor it's closer to a constitutional monarchy.
The difference are two supervisor one on the reddit one on the discord so neither has full control
Now the supervisors are very weak and the President and the Senate holds all the power
constitutional monarchies can be democracies, what are you on about?
@@simdemocracyofficial7512 ah like the Roman Consular Republic
Yeah that sounds like an oxymoron bro 😭
Roblox is another interesting platform for virtual governments, although there is much less democracies the diplomacy between communities can be very interesting. Some communities have purpose made games where they can wage war with one another within the constraints of a global economy and resource trade. (windward is a pretty good example although it's activity has been declining)
I know where our next expansion campaign should be
0:33 Don't you silence me!!!
27:42 This part sent genuine shivers through my body. This quote could describe the current situation regarding a constitutional crisis that is still ongoing where i live. It is a VERY complex situation, but in short new ruling coalition does not recognize multiple constitutional judges due to them being considered as illegitimate and incorrectly chosen by the previous ruling party, due to double appointments on multiple seats in 2015.
It's probably not intentional, but in a part where he talks about democratic backsliding, the report he shows consists a picture from demonstrations against the previous ruling government regarding this exact crisis.
While in a bit different way and in a different situation, for a bunch of teenagers on a minecraft server to replicate a legal dualism issue very similar to one caused by real, governing politicians is both fascinating and terrifying.
While the picture of the demonstration wasn't intentional, the reference to democratic backsliding was. I didn't say it explicitly in the video, but I too saw parallels with Poland's rule of law crisis when I first researched this story.
The amount of work, writing, research, visuals and everything else in your videos is severely underappreciated. Your production value should warrant millions of subscribers!
Hi :) I’m a close friend of one of the people of the Republic of Krameria, at 48:09, it’s the big picture and in 50:42, the first one. His name is Hersey. He is incredibly dedicated to Krameria. (To the point of us calling him obsessed.) In the server that we’re both from, this video has been a topic for days. None of us expected to see our virtual governments to be the focus of a video essay.
-Xuo, from VirtualCongress
please delete ur account lil bro
These stories remind me of my 4 year old niece who doesn't understand yet that when playing a game, not following the rules and doing something like drawing cards until you get the one you want or picking up your piece and moving it to the end of the board and saying you win, isn't fun for the other players and actually makes it less fun for her too but she can't see that yet.
2 mins into the video
>A Reddit democracy
>Creator and "Dormant supervisor" with highest executive position actively participating in own experiment
I wonder where does all problems start from
a trolligarch video gotta be a sign of a good year to come
Great vid! Having been involved later on in SimDem, and witnessisng the VoD events, it was interesting to see what other polsims have gotten up to during the years (Krameria wtf)
Oh god, the god problem is so real. When I was a kid (11-15 ish) I was sporadically involved in a lego star wars role play community on the official lego star wars gallery. The community emerged organically from collaborative story writing, and ended up with one player known as Sand as the leader in charge of negotiating rule disputes and updating the rules.
Setting aside how wonky the rules and lore was, my understanding is that Sand was rather prone to favoritism in his rulings (affecting gameplay) and after a 2016 post involving a gay couple was made, Sand (who was 18) was forces to leave the gallery by his evangelical parents. Then there was chaos, and people decided to hold an election for who would be the replacement leader (“supreme leader”, as we said, in reference to Snoke). A player named Krayt won, who was more chill (and is still my friend lmao) and he ended up with a semi-official suite of advisors to help. But there was no democratic oversight, and we were on the official lego website and ultimately beholden to LEGO themselves. When the galleries became unusable we migrated to MOCpages briefly, and with that forum glitching more and more and infighting becoming more common we were all on discord by 2018. We languished trying to develop more effective economic rules and a decent democratic system of government that we (a group of teenagers known for alt accounts and political finagling) couldn’t break. We briefly ran a subreddit for a reboot of our game but by mid 2020 it lost steam, as it was basically just five of us.
We’re still friends, but that entire RP was full of failed democracies and founder issues. Sand was practically a minor deity for a while; the day he left, 7/7/2016, was practically a national day of mourning for people. As the evangelicals left and more people came out, it instead became a celebration where short stories with lgbtq couples were posted (known as “raindrops day” now, for the post he left over, which was called “raindrops”). I also had a faction, the “emerald elites” which I tried to set up as a parliamentary democracy; I wrote an entire constitution and declared that I would be the court system while we could vote in political parties for the parliament who could then choose a prime minister, all in game. But not only did I want to keep power, interest was low and transferring information about military and financial power was difficult, which meant that even as other people got ahold of the parliament and ministry they did so little I effectively had to run the military as a dictatorship to ensure we could actually do things.
The lore gets crazier, and we still talk and celebrate raindrops day on a new discord server, but teenage virtual democracies are crazy
Great video as always, you have an incredible talent for making very complex and minute topics interesting. The concept of the "dormant supervisor" is one i had a lot of interest in when i was younger. A political system that exists solely to survey and enact the will of the people would be highly efficient with the right checks and balances in place
As someone who has been in a bunch of sim democracys a huge problem that often happens is political partys forming off of real life politics with people then just voted of their irl political side more than actions and events done in the sim democracy
After decades of refining political parties into their most polarizing forms, I'm not surprised people just copied them at the end of the day.
@@Shotblurpolitics is polarizing because politics is polarizing. A radical right has to exist if there’s a radical left and vice versa. The default motion of government is no motion. Action is always conserved in any system, its thermodynamics in practice on a political scale.
@@estan315 i think the problem here is from the 2 party system. In a system with more parties there can exist points which multiple parties agree with, and often they can unite in the government and enact that thing. but if you are given a 2 party system you are either with them or against them, there is no gray zone to be in. (Most of the time)
@@hampustoft2221 right but it’s exactly the same scenario with more variables. Instead of one party pushing left and another pushing right, it’s a complex field of vectors all carefully balancing each other out in every direction. The motion of politics will still trend towards zero. It’s impossible for anything to happen on a large scale like that without enough leverage, which means a power imbalance. Think of the French Revolution, when society is overthrown to this extent it leaves a massive power vacuum for power hungry ideologues to swoop in and “save the day”. Think of Germany 1945, think of the Soviet Union and the red revolution, think of the French Revolution where the people traded a monarch for an emperor. This type of large scale political movement is not something we should aspire for. The first rocks in an avalanche are often small.
Another problem is people copying existing government structures, complete with their flaws, instead of trying to innovate and try to improve on the idea. Things like party systems, or not trying other forms of voting like ranked choice. Though personally I have issues with ranked choice, but that's the alternative form of voting that people know about or that's at least actually discussed.
I really liked this video for its analysis of how human power dynamics always end up doing the same things. Every law, no, every word can have its meaning changed and voided by people trying to exploit the system and that will always happen as long as theres more than 2 people obeying the law
do you realize you are comparing teenage brainfarts to real world political dynamics? These systems are horrendously thought out, real world systems of all flavors have much a wide variety of safe guards against vague interpretations being used on a whim to subvert a political order. It's not smart to compare these silly teenage systems to real world politics.
Yeah it’s almost like laws being written with language makes them fundamentally reinterpretable, which means anyone can leverage the words to gain power based off their own definitions. Maybe the answer is just to stop telling people what to do already and acting like we know best for other people.
I was in a Roblox democracy group called NUSA, I didn't really play Roblox or care about the group, I just found it while scrolling on Twitter one day and decided to mess around in their Discord. There was an election for president at the time, so I, of course, put my own hat in the running as the leader of the new and improved Whig Party. Long story short some kid ended up winning while I got second place, so I messaged him threatening to "reveal the dirt on him" (i had absolutely 0 dirt on him) unless he conceded the race to me. Which he did, mostly because he didn't really want to play anymore.
I have never woken up with that many Discord notifications in my life. Dozens of people asking for jobs as FBI/CIA Directors, cabinet positions, even federal judges. After filling out my government I ended up getting bored and had my friends tell the server's owner that I had died from AIDS.
Aids??
@@ArtinNikkhoo-r9l yeah we never took it too seriously and told them i had AIDS and was playing from a hospital bed
You... You could've just resigned
Bro is a dìckhead for bláckmailing that kid
Funny story; too bad it's made up.
Great video, very entertaining and insightful. Sincerely, one of the DemocracyCraft Supreme Court Justices you mentioned.
I used to partake in one of these, several years ago. It started off as a virtual democracy, which inspired other virtual democracies to be formed. Eventually they formed an "international organisation", which soon became the focus point of the entire community as it transitioned to a kind of geopolitics sim. The internal politics of each nation slowly began to die out, since the leaders were always the most active in each nation. Most server members were either completely inactive, or were citizens of about a dozen other nations. This was tolerated since there was a 10 (and later 15) non-alt non-bot member requirement to be accepted as a nation. Once a nation was accepted they got the opportunity to be placed on the map, which had gradually become the focus of the entire community. There was a divide in the community between the "RPers" who were more willing to engage in roleplay, and the "Simulationists" who wanted to make sure everything was "organic" and "true to the principles of political simulation". I was a member of the latter faction, mainly because it's more fun for me personally, though I wasn't above fabricating historical events to make my nation's lore more interesting. In one of my attempts to boost activity in my nation, I created "concentration camps" for people who didn't respond to my messages, where I would isolate them in a single channel separate from the rest of the nation (I did this because I wanted to "clean up" my nation, without reducing my member count). Some folks got mad at me for calling them concentration camps, even though the name was technically accurate. I also recall one time, when the transition to a geopol sim was more complete, the international community had agreed to vacate certain areas of the map, to allow for the creation of new nations (and thereby new active leaders). I ignored the agreement, and claimed the entire area (which was downgraded to 1/3 of the area by the Cartographer) for my colony, as I was 1) opposed to the creation of new nations (which I accused of being "ghost nations"), and 2) I was once a member of the nation which claimed that land, but which had since disbanded. It's ironic really, since my nation wasn't all that active either. I think we only had around 4 unique active members, and the vast majority of the activity came from me anyway. When I finally did get other active members, I did my best to isolate them from the rest of the community since I didn't want them to get distracted into the geopol sim.
Eventually the sim evolved. We got a system of districts to replaced the adhoc cartography system we had before, where 1 district = 1 non-bot non-alt member. This worked until one guy's youtube channel blew up and he directed everyone to his nation, so we went from the biggest nation having 120 members to over a thousand in a matter of weeks. Someone developed an economy bot, which was brilliant and a massive driver of activity. But the bot kept crashing and eventually it became so unreliable that nobody could use it. There was an influx of new members (the 4th Generation is what I called them at the time) who massively expanded the roleplay elements of the sim. Eventually the sim collapsed, when the hub server became too "toxic" after a war. Rival hubs were founded, but they failed to attract all of the community. At the same time the economy bot got completely wiped for some reason, so everyone lost interest. We primarily recruited through friend groups, so it died quite quickly once a few key groups left.
It was fun.
I had no idea that there were other versions of these (or more accurately, other versions that were good (i.e. simulationist)). It'll be interesting to check them out.
It's pretty indecent to call them concentration camps even if the name is technically accurate, it makes light of such a horrible thing
This is unexpectedly entertaining, very entertaining. I would easily watch a 9+ hour version of this (with the same style and direction)
Excellent video! SimDemocracy and Voices of Democracy are some of the best ones out there, and it’s generally a very welcoming community.
is it though
Hello. I’m a member of the modern 15th Republic of Krameria, and I am so happy to see us mentioned here!
More republics than France......
your accent, delivery, and music choice (especially at the beginning of _constitutional rights and wrongs)_ makes this feel like an extra weird episode of look around you. absolutely lovely! so glad the algorithm blessed me with this today 😇 and a little ashamed i didn't subscribe after the algorithm served me up your video about the weird dude who ran a democracy discord that was him, ~3 friends, and a thousand of his alts. such good stuff!
It feels like in a lot of these teenage democracies, they would be served well by making their monarch an adult with zero connection to the community itself, maybe an older sibling or a parent of one of the members, whose sole job it is to sign off (or withhold their signature) on bills decided by the teenaged government, and to handle more serious out-of-character abuses. Somebody with zero interest in the day-to-day happenings of the community but who has the maturity to be the final say and so can act on inappropriate/unsafe behaviour to protect the kiddos
I've been involved in many virtual democracies, and while I understand the premise of what you're suggesting, it doesn't work. Players would never actively engage or participate in a server in which the head is not involved in the community in any way.
Very good video, I very much enjoy this style of long form content! keep it up, and I hope to see many more cool videos about virtual democracies as you stated in the middle of the vid, with how there are way too many types of virtual democracy styles out there for you to squeeze into one vid. I wish you luck on all the rest of your vids!
I really lucked out subscribing after your last vid - this is QUALITY! If you can keep this up, I can see you easily surpassing 500k subs
absurdly high quality video, glad to have discovered this channel
I'm a person who wants to try to bring democracy to a planned minecraft server to help ease moderation tensions, I must say that this is probably the most important video I should watch right now.
dictatorship of the proletariat will stop the tension imo
Problem is you don't know who is going to get elected and if they are going to be tyrants in the server. Humanity has many problems with their greed for power.
HA! In 4 minutes flat gageboi becomes effectively the UN. "I high disapprove of this!" being the only real response. Love it.
well done on that introduction, first 9 minutes hooked me in
I've stumbled upon your videos randomly and I am surpised that there are/were so many democracy/state sims. Also the quality of your videos is amazing and you must do a ton of research into the happenings of these communities
I am simply amazed at the scale AND quality of this analysis. This is PhD level work about an unexplored and fascinating subject, that also informs about the real world - presented clearly and at no cost to us. More, please!
57:05 Wow, this "Bobux Party" seems like it should've won all 17 seats.
Damn man the production value and organization of this video essay are top notch. I'm subbing out of respect for the effort. Great job.
okay it's so so funny seeing AP and Politico in this video, I can't even. Just wow it's both fascinating and over the top, but wow
Hello, long-time member of the Virtual Congress Discord server and other Discord servers over the years. Very interesting video, I didn't know how many virtual democracies there were or how other places treated these issues. Well done!
We need to make a UN of all of them
reminds me of this minecraft server where u can just jail anyone if u kill them and the admins wouldnt interfere for any reason, think it was called civmc or something. ppl would make larp nations around all the ideologies u could think of and it would actually work.
wait omg you play on that server too? it's so good
CivMC is still around, it's working fine. The ability to jail other players works because this way the players themselves can keep order without the admins.
@@adamus1342 That's a pretty similar concept to one I've had for years of a semi-hardcore server where you get banned if you're killed by a player. Usually in Minecraft servers, the power is disproportionately in favor of the bad agents like malicious PvPers and griefers, because they can just keep coming back to do damage, and destroying things takes way less time and effort than creating them. But if an organized counter to your actions can get you banned (or in the CivMC case, jailed), then there are lasting consequences that you have to consider, and the power balance is more equal.
I'm curious, though, does CivMC still have land claiming/protection plugins and stuff? That's the main thing that's always turned me away from all these types of servers. I prefer the idea of a more player-enforced kind of order, where griefing is technically possible, but governments are able to protect against it through their structure and player enforcement. I still haven't ever fully found that, and suspect I'll just have to hope I get the resources to create it myself one day.
well that's one way of getting a civics education
It’s crazy seeing Simdemocracy mentioned in a TH-cam video. I was a member for a long time. I never did anything major but I was privy to a lot of insider politics and controversies due to being friends with a lot of major players at the time. It was super fun!
Bro I clicked on this video to save it to watch later, and ended up watching the whole introduction. safe to say this is a banger video you got here ✨✨
What happened to DemocracyCraft after that coup? I'm curious.
Somewhat controversially (although this obviously depends on who you ask), the owners stepped in to stop it by holding snap elections for Congress and the presidency. As DemocracyCraft is a dual state, the owners were within their _legal_ right to do that-but whether or not it was the _politically_ right thing to do is another question.
In terms of how the event has shaped DemocracyCraft politics after, the members of that server would be able to give a better answer than me.
@@Trolligarchfor your own information, I’m the lawyer that colluded with Matthew to do those Supreme Court shenanigans (AlexanderLove). The legal field was permanently marred after that, until a very recent good state. Politics recovered quickly albeit staff vs politician tensions never recovered. End always runs into a rough time as he’s a major political figure but his position as owner puts him under intense scrutiny.
"81%" "Failed because it didn't meet the 91% threshold" sounds familiar *cough cough* florida ballot amendment 4 *cough cough*
Off to a good start, "this election is undemocratic"…
Nice reference to the dual state! For those wondering, Ernst Fraenkel analyzed Nazi Germany as being a dual state. (Hitler could overrule the law whenever he wanted basically…and he did…a lot)
I'm really glad someone spotted this! Realising that Fraenkel's analysis of the dual state could be applied to explain the relationship between the owner and the elected government was definitely an "ah-ha" moment for me!
It's arguably not a perfect analogy, though. The prerogative state, as Fraenkel described it, is meant to be a state that exercises its power arbitrarily outside the rule of law-essentially an "Unrechtsstaat," to use the German legal term.
However, as I mentioned in the video, there are strong arguments to be made that owners and admins (the prerogative state) have non-arbitrary reasons-e.g., protecting the real-life safety of players-for their absolute power to intervene in a normative state's affairs.
So, instead, I used Fraenkel's dual state as more of a neutral descriptor. Even if the prerogative state (ownership) doesn't exercise its powers arbitrarily, it still possesses Kompetenz-Kompetenz, which is the main point I wanted to convey. (That said, I didn't mention any of this explicitly in my video since I've tailored it to a lay audience!)
I forgot to add Fraenkel in my additional sources section (in the video's description), so thanks for the accidental reminder as well!
8:00 oh he can’t cover them all well at least his a cute little video, wait that’s intro music, oh my God it’s an hour long
Huge respect for your channel, really interesting topics covered so far :)
I see you malth
"No manipulation of elections" was the most unrealistic rule here
The habbo extradition play was actually genius
Appreciate the breakdown. It was great to speak to you Trolligarch, and share our stories!
Was gonna say this reminds me of that Discord "democracy", then I realized you made the video on it lol
Krameria: *Blasts Eurobeat while speed running politics
RIP Napoleon, he would’ve loved this as a teenager
Iron law of oligarchy remains undefeated.
SimDem is still going since 2019!
I ran one of these with less than a hundred members on a discord server pre-covid and during covid. I was the server owner but also head of the judicial branch. There was a senate to make laws and a president to enforce them and elections were held every two weeks. I was in charge of overseeing elections. I would call the elections on Saturday nights between 8 and 11 pm, just depending on whenever I was online. Well, one time someone ran for president who wasn't trusted by a lot of the OG members, myself included, but they were ahead in the polls. Myself, the current President, and a couple of senators sat in a call together until almost 1 am messaging less active members to vote for our guy, until we had eeked out a victory, then I immediately called it. The opponent found out Sunday morning but it was too late.
Great times
That was fucking awesome. I'm glad someone finally made a video on the subject, Because its hilarious the depths people go to attain some semblance of power.
Happy New Year dude.
Thank you! I love the Averra video and this is much appreciated background :)
I could have condensed over an hour of this video into basically bringing up the old era of proboards forums (usually for RP and sometimes for other content), and how literally without fail no matter how well you try to ensure all is fair and well with rules and staff, inevitably you realize that the moment you give teenagers any sort of power over others in any way, shape or form, it will always without fail turn into a high school clique-ran cafeteria and drama meltdown. And every time without fail, it will lead to backstabbing, gossip and just yelling insults and accusations at each other until the whole thing collapsed because feelings got hurt and every other member becomes little Timmy taking his ball and going home out of pettiness.
It actually feels like a fitting metaphor for most politics in the world overall: For all the talk, sophistication and trying to be mature or civilized, most politics is just high school drama but everyone else has to suffer the consequences of Heathers/Mean Girls squabbling but with the funds of Richie Rich.
Regarding of how some of these ended up with flaws, it's actually quite impressive how some teenagers where really going serious with all this stuff
This concept of a virtual democracy and how they operate and fail is utterly fascinating to me. Every story I could think of real world analogs to what the communities were facing and it gets a lot more intense than I would have expected.
So, teens will try to make virtual democracies that are very similar to the ones they live in. Only to run into similar shenanigans as the democracies they try to imitate. (Representative democracy)
52:00 : They managed to speedrun 19th century France. Very impressive !
It is very impressive isn’t it, i’ve been in that server for a long time and it’s pretty peaceful now.
This reminds me of the short-lived minecraft discord gang wars. In short; the official minecraft discord sever during 2020 had collectives of people known as gangs whom usually named them selves (noun)-gang. They used the minecraft discords off topic channel for recruiting and the two major ones I remember were Bread Gang (the one I was a part of) and their rivals: Egg Gang. They were all for the most-part "discord authoritarian" (owner, admin, mod, member). They trend died out before 2021 but severs like Bread Gang still exist though are wastelands but still host rich histories. I could go on paragraphs about the Bread Gang history, we had wars, civil war, puppet states, a lot.
I was just thinking yesterday about rewatching your videos, perfect timing lol
these videos are incredibly interesting, you cover them really well! I'm in awe at how you get these videos out so quickly. i hope they keep coming🙏
A rather fascinating place for government simulation in the Minecraft server Stoneworks. Rather than just running one government, there are hundreds running all at once, with some lasting extremely long times and holding mass amounts of power.