You remember Reddit Island, right? The utterly serious, unintentionally hilarious project in which a bunch of Redditors attempt to set up a Reddity miniature utopia on some remote island somewhere? They are still trying to find an island, and apparently that process is … not going so swimmingly.
As Adrian Chen of Gawker notes in a nice long piece on the project, a fortysomething IT guy from Virginia names Mark Wells has been telling prospective Reddit Islanders that he may have found the perfect place for them:
Wells, who uses the handle Citizenpolitician, explained in a series of increasingly breathless posts on Reddit Island that he’d been scoping out a tiny tropical splotch called Current Island. Just off the coast of Bahamian island of Eluthera, Current is sparsely inhabited, and could be a possible option for their settlement. He’d cold-called members of the local government about the possibility of having a few hundred internet nerds settle Current Island. And he had been met with a very promising response.
Or so Wells said. Trouble is — SPOILER ALERT — Chen himself got in touch with Theo Neilly, the Bahamian Member of Parlliament who Wells had said was “very interested” in the Reddit Island project. And Neilly had a rather different story to tell Chen:
Neilly was more than a little surprised when I told him this. He’d never spoken with or even received an email from Wells, he said. He had heard word of Reddit Island, but only because an acquaintance Wells had actually contacted forwarded him the email. … [E]veryone in Eluthera I spoke to was eager to distance themselves and anyone they knew from him the Reddit Island idea.
D’oh!
Wella, for his part, claims that Chen has mucked up a good thing by actually trying to check to see if anything Wells was saying was true.
When Chen contacted the Bahamians, after being asked not to be involved since we were at a delicate time trying to start a process of negotiations, his contact to the Bahamians, making the relationship public, removed all opportunity for any further communication with the Bahamians and I am afraid now that he has gone to the extent of mentioning them in his article, will suffer political fall out because of this. THis is extremely poor journalism and unfortunate not just for us but for those that wanted to find out more about what we had to offer and what could come of that.
This also puts us in a difficult situation because any further communications with other land owners and government representatives in other countries could become publicly abused as this relationship did and end all hopes for negotiating in good faith with those people. It means that going further will be difficult if we are to maintain transparency and be open to the group here because people like Chen will use it to distort and dismantle those efforts.
So, back to the drawing board, I guess. (The whole discussion of Chen’s article in the Reddit Island subreddit is hilarious, actually.)
Let me make a suggestion, guys: Don’t try to go it alone! Basically, what you’re talking about is forming a tiny civilization that will be essentially a bunch of dudes. In the past, you guys have treated the “sausage party” aspect of the project as a liability.
Instead, you should embrace it as a selling point. Team up with some of the fellas over in the Men’s Rights subreddit; many of them seem not to be fans of women at all.
Heck, some of the guys there are ALREADY TALKING ABOUT GETTING AN ISLAND:
MRA Island! Make it a reality.
In related news, a number of years back a bunch of Something Awful goons launched a similar island project. It involved an actual tropical island and everything. It seems to have fallen apart; it’s not clear (since I haven’t actually read anything about it beyond that blog post I linked) if there was any cannibalism involved.
Women only cities? Apparently there are plans for one in Saudi Arabia but are they common elsewhere? I guess we will now have MRA complaining about how discriminated against men are in Saudi.
Silly boys! They’re thinking too small. They ought to be looking into getting their own planet, like the dudes did in Ethan of Athos!
snirgle snirgle snirgle snirgle
Or, you know, maybe they could start small, like a treehouse, for practice.
Look at well that worked for Calvin and Hobbes!
It’s the He-man Women-haters club!
I can’t imagine them developing a culture as kind and well-run as Athos. Social duty credits? How dare you say they have a social duty!
Or start with one of their own backyards, and see how it goes.
I do love Wells’ hissy over being exposed as a liar. These dudes don’t do much well.
Or start with one of their own backyards, and see how it goes.
That would be like little kids going camping in tents in the garden and talking about how girls have cooties.. except replace “kids” with “grown men”.
It will surely go better than the leftist utopias like Jonestown.
Bird Island in Florida looks like a great deal for the enterprising MRA – $250K for 50 acres! How hard can it be for a bunch of guys to come up with $250,000? It’s a perfect opportunity for them to build everything with their own hands.
When I buy my island, though, it will be one just like this. Y’all are all invited.
They should get together with these guys trying to build a libertarian island (I have the impression there’s a certain amount of overlap between the MRA and glibertarian groups, anyway): http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/silicon-valley-billionaire-funding-creation-artificial-libertarian-islands-140840896.html
No building codes, minimum wage, or gun restrictions! What could possibly go wrong?
I’m not surprised that someone tried to scam the MRAs on Reddit by claiming to have a line on a private island somewhere.
I am surprised that there’s a website devoted to the sale of private islands. Like, I didn’t know buying your own island was an actual thing that people actually did.
To be fair, the MRAs on Reddit don’t seem to be involved in this at all; I just thought that little discussion in r/mr suggested that maybe they SHOULD team up.
Also, the Reddit Islanders are having trouble getting organized enough to update their web site:
http://www.reddit.com/r/redditisland/comments/xekav/things_that_need_to_be_done/
Dudes, try to organize a picnic. If that goes well — and there’s no cannibalism — then move on to an actual island.
“Hey, we love high five-ing each other on the net, right! Surely that’s a solid basis for a civilization.”
Of course the MRA/MGTOWs won’t ever “Go Galt” and make their own island, because that involves actual effort and getting off the internets for more than a minute. It’s a lovely idea, though.
Ahhhhahaha, that discussion about their web site is hilarious. I set up a WordPress site for a friend’s animal sanctuary a couple of years ago and had the whole thing done in a few days. Four days, I think? She’s so untechy that she still isn’t quite clear on what a URL is, but we got it done and she’s been running it on her own just fine. These guys are so full of shit.
Now Jonestown is supposed to have been leftist? I was in the Bay Area when that went down. It was nothing but an RWA/SDO religious cult. Amazing, what vapors these stories generate as time goes on.
Priceless, absolutely priceless!
I’d kind of like to see a reality show called Reddit (or MRA) Island. It’d be quite the spectator sport to see how long it’d take before it turned into Lord of the Flies Mark 2.
Plus think how grateful their parents would be to have their basements back and watch their internet bills plunge.
@KittehServant
There could be counters for MRA ‘talking points’ such as ’empty use of things actually of concern to men’, ‘LADIES NIGHT IS MISANDRY’ and ‘B*tches and wh*res!’ (which would be one of the higher ones methinks).
Also we can vote them off. And by voting them off, I mean they have to partake in a challenge, like being polite to a woman.
Okay, so let me get this straIght..
A bunch of internet guys want to buy an island, which has absolutely zero infrastructure or ammenities, and build a civilization on it. *giggle*
And um… How many of these guys have built so much as a tool shed? Kept a garden large enough to preserve food (hell! Preserved food!), built a road by manual labour, set up a sanitation system, anything?
They do realize that many of the skill sets they need are traditionally feminine ones right?
I mean, if they want ideas on low tech solutions, I got all kinds of info on things that work. One of my pet hobbies is looking for low tech yet very efficient ways of homesteading and or developing world solutions with very limited resources.
What they are looking at is a ton of hard labour and high risk. Also, buying the island is the easy part. I haven’t seen any mention of the many many oher costs that need to be factored in… Including how they are going to get themselves there along with basic necesarry supplies and skills. Has anyone started organizing these guys to make sure they have experienced qualified men capable of handling medical emergencies, setting up trade? Anything? I mean, having fifty guys buy in and realizing not one of them knows how to set a broken bone or plow a straight line would be comic to watch.
“Now Jonestown is supposed to have been leftist?”
Of course it was. It was basically a communist commune. You lived there so of course they’re going to downplay how San Francisco ideals led to the disaster.
I can’t get over the commenter who has a hard time even sitting next to a woman on the bus. How fucked up do you have to be for that to be a challenge? How miserable must you be, if such minor aspects of daily living cause you distress? No wonder people like that feel persecuted and oppressed; the world really does function in such a way as to make them almost constantly unhappy. Of course, the problem is with them, not with the fact that the world actually contains women.
I’ve had this idea for a science fiction story. There is a planet of only males, as they have gone all MRA and eradicated women, using artificial wombs to procreate. The men there have never seen a woman, and don’t know what one is. Then, a woman from another planet that still lets women exist crash lands on this planet. The protaganist discovers her, and is shocked at the strange feelings she inspires in him. He hides her from the other men so she isn’t killed or imprisoned. They end up falling in love and plotting to overthrow the government of the womanless planet. Or they escape to another planet to live together and have children. Haven’t figured it out.
@fembot — have you read the “Chaos Walking” books by Patrick Ness? Has a lot of the points you just discussed, with many layers of added fucked-up.
@Podkayne
No, but I’ll check those out.
the aussies have already started an island
I’m not gonna lie, I think the idea of going off and making a pretend civilization on an island is kind of a fun idea, and would actually be pretty awesome if they managed to pull it off to any worthwhile extent.