There is another problem with activity and that is, if you're not either in party heirarchy or running\performing in elected office... There's really very little for the average Atlasian to do unless they want to do a newspaper\commentary...
Unless I'm missing something, there is just not a lot to do if you aren't in an office.
True, which was why I spent most of my time in Atlasia helping build up regional legislatures. It seems as though even those have died down though over the past few months.
The entire game had slowed to a crawl since well before Marokai and I had announced our candidacy to run back in April. The whole premise under which I approached him was, I believe, "I'm bored, let's run for president/vice president." So while I will take the blame for not adequately engaging people in the last few months, I don't think of my administration as the root of the problem. This was an obvious problem well before I even decided to run.
Part of me wants to say that the back-to-back-to-back controversies of Ogis, Hamilton and then McCarthyist anti-sockism so poisoned the environment in the game that people simply became fed up and tuned out. That era in Atlasia was as full of hate as the era of DWTL, except that the regionalism fights were a single, drawn out controversy rooted in an ideological debate, as opposed to the more recent era, which was rooted in personal bickering.
Would anyone argue that this analysis is off base?
No, in fact, it's spot on. I, myself have gotten sick of the awful sludge of Atlasia more than once and still come back for more. A bit like a masochist, I suppose. I used to serve in the NE Assembly before I had to leave... Where the hell did it go?!... I haven't even found the bloody thing since coming back as having a single post. It got so personally reprehensible to me that I just decided I wouldn't come back and yet, here I am again...
I'm close to proposing a radical solution to this problem that could even cause some backlash... There's only one group that seems to be really enjoying themselves and that's the Populares... Basically Atlasia's Tea Party... That is a sad state of affairs indeed. Nothing against most of them, because they're active, but let's be honest, a lot of the feelings of rancor come from the prickly personalities that everyone seem to have picked up. It gets so hateful and so damn personal that I think some forget that they aren't really in a public office. They like to try and hurt people or lash out at people... There may be nothing that can change that...
