Post by kri on Dec 26, 2004 14:51:38 GMT -6
Speech from the Throne
26 December 2004
* * *
“I have a responsibility as a human being to watch what I say. If it hurts others, I should think about it first. OPINION: The King is ‘mad.’ FACT: King Robert I is neither mad nor anywhere near anything other than sane. He reacts angrily to insults and lies, as he has the right to! He disagrees with people; get over it.” – Chris Gruber to Anthony Lawless, 1998
“If betraying the nation that entrusted you with all they have isn’t worth getting excited over, what is?” – Michael Pope to Johan Anglemark, 2000
* * *
My fellow Talossans,
Happy anniversary! Today is the Kingdom of Talossa’s twenty-fifth birthday, and the twenty-fifth anniversary of a fourteen-year-old boy’s dream.
Why are we all still here? The question is asked, every year, and the answer has always been the same: Because Talossa is fun! Heck, even the Organic Law says so, defining the Kingdom of Talossa as “a community of persons having fun.”
When I founded Talossa, twenty-five years ago to the day, I did so in order to have fun; and it wasn’t much longer before I decided to try sharing that fun with others. And whenever I find my Talossan powers flagging, I can go – perhaps in a way that no other Talossan can go – back to that wellspring. But you have to have it in order to be a real, healthy Talossan; you need to have that mystical connexion with the childhood dream. Your Talossa needs to be that magical place “where grownups can pretend to be children who are pretending to be grownups.” Unless your Talossa makes room for the dreams of that fourteen-year-old boy in his bedroom, you are just not a Talossan; you just don’t get it.
For years, there was a light-heartedness about Talossa. And of course, it’s still there if you know where to look, and care to look. Whether it was Davron forging ballots, or Nathan Freeburg’s authoritarian antics, or claiming Antarctica on a flimsy (yet legal) pretext, Talossa was fun. A party decicated to annexing Napoleon’s and making Gloria Estefan a national icon, that was fun. Whether it was deposing loony King Dobberpuhl, a Marxist Prime Minister launching a national crusade against smoking, an infamous set of forged signatures on a letter of protest, including the laughable “BNOOK”, a camping trip to France that turned into a colonial annexation, Dan Lorentz vowing to “destroy Talossa,” my high school English teacher emerging as “King” Florence, or The Berber Project, Talossa was, above all else, a hell of a fun ride!
Yet over the years, over half the RT population has drifted away apathetically, lost their citizenship through non-voting or stormed out in rage. Many have been disgusted with what Talossa has become. I have come close, on several occasions, to joining them. Indeed, the original draft of this speech (which draft will make its way into the National Archives... someday) included another abdication and another renunciation of my citizenship. But that part was written months ago, and patience is a virtue, especially at Christmas time.
Talossa hit the internet at just the right time, in 1995. We were the catalyst for a huge, global phenomenon, the appearance of online “micronations.” Our population surged, all seemed well. Today, the hobby of “micronationalism” is virtually dead; the vast majority of such communities nothing more than dead web links. Talossa’s population peaked at over 60 in the year 2000, and has steadily declined every year since. Of more than 110 people associated with Talossa since 1979, fewer than a dozen can be truly considered active. Now the hobby is dying; is Talossa dying with it?
A recent letter to me from a former citizen made the point: “The internet people killed Talossa.” I disagree, but with reservations; and the biggest reservation is simply that some of the best people who have ever been Talossan citizens are Cybercits. Men of principle like Ken Velméir, integrity like Márcüs Cantaloûr, and innocence like Tomás Gariçéir.
And yet, I think it’s fair to say, the internet saved Talossa, but at a near fatal price. Where Jack Schneiders and Tom Buffones were not to be found, we got Grubers and Frenettes. Was it simply a case of fools rushing in where angels feared to tread?
It may surprise you to hear this (it surprised me when I did the math) but the number of people who have joined Talossa since we went online just barely exceeds the number who joined before we went online. Roughly 45 pre-internet and 55 post-internet.
The only thing that distinguishes a “micronation” from any other informal, unorganized club, is the trappings of nationhood and the constitution and laws that go with it. When the ambitions of a minority transcends the laws, it – Quedéir Castiglhâ said it much better than I ever could – “cheapens the experience of being Talossan.” Stealing Cosâ seats, secret elections, dirty tricks, e-mail harassment, none of this is fun. Just as important, it “cheapens” what it means to be a Talossan. Talossa has no lawyers, no police force. It is one vast honour system. It rests on trust, and rises or falls on the trustworthiness of its participants. Like Trekkies or soccer nazis, people for whom the game means everything look like the best supporters, but appearances can be deceiving.
The hobby of web-based micronationalism is dying. And in that, lies our opening. Because those are not the people we want. We want real people, people who can sink their hands into the warm, wet earth of community. People who want to belong, not to own. People who seek to share, not to steal. Community-builders, not community-users. Real Talossans, people who have caught that dream and live it. I know there are people like that out there, both online and off.
Is that dream worth your free time? It’s worth mine. Which is why I’m still here.
What is it about Talossa that is just so inherently fascinating to so many people? Why is there a world-wide legion of non-citizens or ex-citizens who obsess over Talossa, talk about it constantly, plagiarize it, counterfeit it, but can’t handle really being a part of it? Perhaps Talossa is like alcohol, most people can handle it with no problems, “but.” Did any other micronation have a gnat-like jealous cloud of “Bug Nations” pursuing it with bitterness or amour? Does any other micronation spawn “Talossies” – Trekkie-like outsiders who devote their lives to this thing without really being a part of it?
Grasping at straws to define what it is that makes Talossa special, many citizens have come to the same conclusion, one that I have always hated to hear, but one which so many of you have forced me back to, time and time again. Dan Lorentz put it best: “Talossa must orbit the big-Ben-ego.” As much as I protest it, as much as I try to run away from it, as much as I try to abdicate and pass responsibility to others against their will, Talossa and Ben are simply connected. Perhaps Talossa is, as Florence Yarney called it, “an excuse for friends of Ben to keep in touch,” or perhaps it is more than that, as Xhorxh Asmoûr, Márcüs Cantaloûr and Fritz von Buchholtz have been telling me lately: simply an issue inherent to monarchy, where the Sovereign has a responsibility to his people, especially as its founding father.
It is that deep, intensely personal connexion that I have with Talossa that gives me perhaps my greatest fear: Has the brand name “Talossa” now become permanently damaged? If nobody can think of “Corvair” or “Tylenol” or “Thalidomide” or “Xyklon-B” without thinking of some unintended, horrific consequence, has the same become true of “Talossa”?
I don’t think so, because the roots of Talossa were never practical things that got twisted. They were a child’s dream. You can’t twist somebody else’s dream, you can only fake it. That dream is mine, and yours. If you’re a Talossan citizen, you’re entitled to share it.
Talossa, of course, is more than just Ben. It is the community that formed around Ben. And like all other communities, we are tied to and influenced by the world around us. And it is that world that may provide us with the source of our problems.
[Continued in next post... blast it!]
26 December 2004
* * *
“I have a responsibility as a human being to watch what I say. If it hurts others, I should think about it first. OPINION: The King is ‘mad.’ FACT: King Robert I is neither mad nor anywhere near anything other than sane. He reacts angrily to insults and lies, as he has the right to! He disagrees with people; get over it.” – Chris Gruber to Anthony Lawless, 1998
“If betraying the nation that entrusted you with all they have isn’t worth getting excited over, what is?” – Michael Pope to Johan Anglemark, 2000
* * *
My fellow Talossans,
Happy anniversary! Today is the Kingdom of Talossa’s twenty-fifth birthday, and the twenty-fifth anniversary of a fourteen-year-old boy’s dream.
Why are we all still here? The question is asked, every year, and the answer has always been the same: Because Talossa is fun! Heck, even the Organic Law says so, defining the Kingdom of Talossa as “a community of persons having fun.”
When I founded Talossa, twenty-five years ago to the day, I did so in order to have fun; and it wasn’t much longer before I decided to try sharing that fun with others. And whenever I find my Talossan powers flagging, I can go – perhaps in a way that no other Talossan can go – back to that wellspring. But you have to have it in order to be a real, healthy Talossan; you need to have that mystical connexion with the childhood dream. Your Talossa needs to be that magical place “where grownups can pretend to be children who are pretending to be grownups.” Unless your Talossa makes room for the dreams of that fourteen-year-old boy in his bedroom, you are just not a Talossan; you just don’t get it.
For years, there was a light-heartedness about Talossa. And of course, it’s still there if you know where to look, and care to look. Whether it was Davron forging ballots, or Nathan Freeburg’s authoritarian antics, or claiming Antarctica on a flimsy (yet legal) pretext, Talossa was fun. A party decicated to annexing Napoleon’s and making Gloria Estefan a national icon, that was fun. Whether it was deposing loony King Dobberpuhl, a Marxist Prime Minister launching a national crusade against smoking, an infamous set of forged signatures on a letter of protest, including the laughable “BNOOK”, a camping trip to France that turned into a colonial annexation, Dan Lorentz vowing to “destroy Talossa,” my high school English teacher emerging as “King” Florence, or The Berber Project, Talossa was, above all else, a hell of a fun ride!
Yet over the years, over half the RT population has drifted away apathetically, lost their citizenship through non-voting or stormed out in rage. Many have been disgusted with what Talossa has become. I have come close, on several occasions, to joining them. Indeed, the original draft of this speech (which draft will make its way into the National Archives... someday) included another abdication and another renunciation of my citizenship. But that part was written months ago, and patience is a virtue, especially at Christmas time.
Talossa hit the internet at just the right time, in 1995. We were the catalyst for a huge, global phenomenon, the appearance of online “micronations.” Our population surged, all seemed well. Today, the hobby of “micronationalism” is virtually dead; the vast majority of such communities nothing more than dead web links. Talossa’s population peaked at over 60 in the year 2000, and has steadily declined every year since. Of more than 110 people associated with Talossa since 1979, fewer than a dozen can be truly considered active. Now the hobby is dying; is Talossa dying with it?
A recent letter to me from a former citizen made the point: “The internet people killed Talossa.” I disagree, but with reservations; and the biggest reservation is simply that some of the best people who have ever been Talossan citizens are Cybercits. Men of principle like Ken Velméir, integrity like Márcüs Cantaloûr, and innocence like Tomás Gariçéir.
And yet, I think it’s fair to say, the internet saved Talossa, but at a near fatal price. Where Jack Schneiders and Tom Buffones were not to be found, we got Grubers and Frenettes. Was it simply a case of fools rushing in where angels feared to tread?
It may surprise you to hear this (it surprised me when I did the math) but the number of people who have joined Talossa since we went online just barely exceeds the number who joined before we went online. Roughly 45 pre-internet and 55 post-internet.
The only thing that distinguishes a “micronation” from any other informal, unorganized club, is the trappings of nationhood and the constitution and laws that go with it. When the ambitions of a minority transcends the laws, it – Quedéir Castiglhâ said it much better than I ever could – “cheapens the experience of being Talossan.” Stealing Cosâ seats, secret elections, dirty tricks, e-mail harassment, none of this is fun. Just as important, it “cheapens” what it means to be a Talossan. Talossa has no lawyers, no police force. It is one vast honour system. It rests on trust, and rises or falls on the trustworthiness of its participants. Like Trekkies or soccer nazis, people for whom the game means everything look like the best supporters, but appearances can be deceiving.
The hobby of web-based micronationalism is dying. And in that, lies our opening. Because those are not the people we want. We want real people, people who can sink their hands into the warm, wet earth of community. People who want to belong, not to own. People who seek to share, not to steal. Community-builders, not community-users. Real Talossans, people who have caught that dream and live it. I know there are people like that out there, both online and off.
Is that dream worth your free time? It’s worth mine. Which is why I’m still here.
What is it about Talossa that is just so inherently fascinating to so many people? Why is there a world-wide legion of non-citizens or ex-citizens who obsess over Talossa, talk about it constantly, plagiarize it, counterfeit it, but can’t handle really being a part of it? Perhaps Talossa is like alcohol, most people can handle it with no problems, “but.” Did any other micronation have a gnat-like jealous cloud of “Bug Nations” pursuing it with bitterness or amour? Does any other micronation spawn “Talossies” – Trekkie-like outsiders who devote their lives to this thing without really being a part of it?
Grasping at straws to define what it is that makes Talossa special, many citizens have come to the same conclusion, one that I have always hated to hear, but one which so many of you have forced me back to, time and time again. Dan Lorentz put it best: “Talossa must orbit the big-Ben-ego.” As much as I protest it, as much as I try to run away from it, as much as I try to abdicate and pass responsibility to others against their will, Talossa and Ben are simply connected. Perhaps Talossa is, as Florence Yarney called it, “an excuse for friends of Ben to keep in touch,” or perhaps it is more than that, as Xhorxh Asmoûr, Márcüs Cantaloûr and Fritz von Buchholtz have been telling me lately: simply an issue inherent to monarchy, where the Sovereign has a responsibility to his people, especially as its founding father.
It is that deep, intensely personal connexion that I have with Talossa that gives me perhaps my greatest fear: Has the brand name “Talossa” now become permanently damaged? If nobody can think of “Corvair” or “Tylenol” or “Thalidomide” or “Xyklon-B” without thinking of some unintended, horrific consequence, has the same become true of “Talossa”?
I don’t think so, because the roots of Talossa were never practical things that got twisted. They were a child’s dream. You can’t twist somebody else’s dream, you can only fake it. That dream is mine, and yours. If you’re a Talossan citizen, you’re entitled to share it.
Talossa, of course, is more than just Ben. It is the community that formed around Ben. And like all other communities, we are tied to and influenced by the world around us. And it is that world that may provide us with the source of our problems.
[Continued in next post... blast it!]
