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.
Yeah, we have a really high average age around here; our youngest posters (AFAIK) are around 20 or 21, and it’s a pretty even distribution on up through the 50s (I don’t think we have many posters over 60). I’m in the middle-lower end, and most places on the Internet I’m as old as the hills.
Also, Kavette, I have to point out that the kind of those people criticized me so they’re mean meanies omg how could you do you must all be horrible people, every one of you! thing that thing you’re doing here isn’t exactly a great example of emotional maturity.
I can’t even begin to figure out what Kavette’s point is, or rather how it connects with anything discussed in this thread or in the OP, which I take to be an indicator of all the points that went whooshing straight over her head.
I mean was that supposed to be posted to SRS or
Oh, Kavette, whatthefuckever. Why don’t you just go off on one of your semi-sleazy, neo-imperialist, just-so stories about Nicaragua again? Those don’t make my flesh crawl at all.
Please shove your tone trolling.
(For anyone following along at home, yes, this is tone-trolling by anyone’s standards, including mine.)
I’m glad I’m not the only one, Hellkell! Because seriously, yuuuuck
Yeah, I personally would be very happy not to read any more whiteymcsplainey stories about how people in Nicaragua are just so much simpler than Americans and happier for that reason. Those are pretty icky.
I’ve stopped reading this site because of the above, and started reading reddit as per your suggestion. It’s much more my speed regarding lack of bullying. Someone bragging about being a bitch? Why would that be a positive in any light?
I used the word kids because of the immature attitude not the age. Also because I could not find a word that would encompass all of the regular posters that would not be attacked for being politically incorrect. Suggest a word for me that slightly demeans the regular posters as being mean and catty like a middle schooler and I’ll gladly change it.
The sad thing is this site should show a light on the mra and how awful they are, but when you are awful back it losses the message.
Awww…. kavette’s got a sad. It’s not a circle jerk, anymore than any issue based blog is. The misogynists of the world are mockworthy.
It’s not that people wanting something beyond their grasp is mockworthy, it’s these people; with their air of gross-superiority, and the way they hate on women, pretending that all they need is a place to be, and all the rest of the trappings of the civilisation they adore will just happen.
It can, if they have lots of money. The thing is, if they had lots of money they could do it without an island. All they need is enough to buy up all the houses in a city block or so, and then the poltical clout to make it a gated community.
Voila… reddit paradise.
Instead they have pipe dreams about a self-sufficient island.
Then again, I’m an adult. I’m semi-retired. I’ve been around the block a few times. Stupid is as stupid does; and this has a very predictable set of outcomes, all of which are based on people being stupid in avoidable ways. I also know better than to put on airs of wisdom drawn of age, because it reeks of reactionary fool.
If you want to attack one person for being childish, go to town. If you try to paint a community which ranges from people in their teens, to people in their 60s, it’s going to fail.
Omg dude, ok so is this I flounce now? You’re not coming back, right? *crosses fingers*
Wow, that’s the fastest can’t-stick-the-flounce yet.
BTW, sweetie, if you want to try to insult/demean people you might want to try writing more clearly. It’s hard to be effectively snotty and condescending when everyone who reads your comments goes “OK, what was that wall of incoherent babble about?”.
Kavette, so we’re kids, but you’re also mad because we’re picking on kids?
Wells, the guy allegedly doing the alleged “negotiating” over the island, is in his 40s.
When I was maybe 15 or so, I was fascinated by the notion of starting my own country on a desert isle. Since many of the uninhabited islands in the world are atolls, I had the idea that I could build little floating platforms to put in the murky water in the middle of atolls to increase the amount of living space and to grow stuff on. I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about electricity or plumbing or hurricanes.
Even at the time, though, I realized this was sort of a silly and impractical dream. I mean, was I really going to move to an island and grow my own food? I didn’t even enjoy gardening.
There’s still a little part of me that wants to start my own country. Lots of people have those fantasies. Heck, sometimes I fantasize about winning the lottery (even though I don’t play). But I don’t start up subreddits devoted to my plans to spend my imaginary lottery money.
If the guys on Reddit talking about this were all 15 years old, and had even a little bit of self-awareness about this, I’d cut them a lot of slack for their silly ideas. But they’re adults.
If I can’t make fun of people with silly ideas, what’s the point of life in the first place?
That’s right Kavette, I’m proud of being a bitch. And the reason for that pride is because being a “nice girl” doesn’t get things done. Being a bitch does. It also generally stops asshats and creeps in their tracks.
You’re just pissed that we have opinions about things. Or that we tell people to shove it when their behaviour is attrocious. Or that we don’t smile and simper while asshats piss all over us.
Too bad.
That was friggin’ random. Bad landing on the flounce.
Did you ignore reddit is full to the brim with bullying people because of their race, gender sexual orientation, ect?
ahahahahahahhhaahahahahahahahahahahhah you all are just too immature because you make fun of misogynists who want to move on an island with no plans to avoid contact with women! They are kids (but not really) and you are crushing their dreams!! Oh and what “unpolitical correct” word did you want to use to describe us but could not because we would attack you? I am dying here to know!
Kavette: You think reddit is more free of bullying that manboobz? Pull the other one, it’s got bells on.
That, or you’ve not really looked at reddit.
I used the word kids because of the immature attitude not the age. Also because I could not find a word that would encompass all of the regular posters that would not be attacked for being politically incorrect. Suggest a word for me that slightly demeans the regular posters as being mean and catty like a middle schooler and I’ll gladly change it.
I don’t know, you could go with catty, or petty, or sophomoric, or clique-ish, or even childish.
Those are all functional adjectives about behavior. You didn’t do that. You chose to use one about raw age. That’s rhetorical fail. The rest, that’s a related fail, and is actually why I think you chose kids. You were assuming an air of superiority. You were claiming to be more adult that we are, more sophisticated and urbane; more tolerant and cosmopolitan.
That kind of attack needs a basis; so you tried to say we weren’t actually grown-up. Not that we were adults who chose to stoop to a lower level of behavior than than we ought but rather people who weren’t able yet to rise to the level you are at.
To make the claims you buried in that tone-trolling you needed not merely describe us, but to bemean us. You needed to berate us, without seeming to be 1: petty and 2: making it seem we were anything close to equal to you.
You didn’t parse any of that, and so you failed; because there you don’t have the social credit to get away with telling everyone here they are wrong. It’s not clear that anyone (save, of course Dave) has such gravitas. Trying to assume it, as an occasional poster in dubious odor (you aren’t despicable in your very being as Ruby is, nor a pathetic as Varpole, nor as ludicrous as Tom Martin; though you might rise to the tedium of a Brandon, were you to post with frequency) was bound to fail.
To do it in defense of this, in a weakly worded bit of tone-trolling; that’s just sad.
You know what? “Immature” isn’t even really that much of an insult. Being immature sometimes is fun.
I’d like to know what horrid un-PC word she was gonna smack us down as well.
Missed the part about there being less bullying on Reddit the first time. LOL! Free advice – stick to posting pics of kitties, don’t say anything else there if your skin is this thin.
Honestly, if you’re a person who gets uncomfortable when people make fun of other people, then yes, this is not the blog for you; there are plenty of other blogs that discuss stuff (including feminism) in sober tones with Absolutely No Mockery.
This one has “mockery” in the tagline.
In general I’d agree with katz, but if you want to post imperialistic little anecdotes about Nicaragua that will get you called out in not-so-nice tones on most feminist blogs. If she tried that on Feministe, for example, she’d end up even more butthurt than she is now.
If Kavette can avoid the parts of Reddit that offend hir why can’t zie avoid this site if it offends hir? Unless Kavette is going into all the subReddits and telling them off for their perceived sins too (that would take a LOT of time).
http://schoolbox.ca/
The imperialist horror of it all. Not my organization but close enough.
The bitch funds a NGO in a third world country. She lives there half the year. She happens to believe that poverty in Winnipeg is worse then Nica, that people there are in general happier.
Awful…. don’t look at yourselves and say why am I spending hours a day making fun of people. Instead attack the next person who opens the cyber door.
My word instead of kids would have been dude btw.
Yeah, I kind of agree with Kavette. I think most of the regular posters on this blog are often right, and of course vastly more intelligent than the majority of MRAs, but they can also be really mean. Often it is justified, of course, but sometimes it goes too far. I hate that there’s no middle ground- no room for people who think that everybody should have equal rights, but think the idea of ‘male privilege’ or ‘white privilege’ is embarrassing bullshit. Also, many MRAs probably are mentally ill. What’s wrong with stating the truth? Mentally ill people often have persecution complexes, which is exactly what many MRAs seem to have. That guy who can’t sit next to a woman on the bus, who can’t stand to read about them? I have been that guy, even if it was a different target I was fixated on. I know he is probably a huge asshole who would condemn me as an inferior being, but I also know that such an existence is torture.
Don’t forget that while the majority of people wouldn’t like MRA beliefs, they would find most of the beliefs of the regulars here almost as silly.
And now you can rip me to shreds (or ignore me, fine by me), which is a shame, because I really like this blog. But I had to say it.