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Brief News VI | December, 2023
Editor-in-Chief: MANS0N
Index
- Spotlight: a Chat with Liberza - Interviewed by Manson
INTERVIEW | CONDUCTED BY MANS0N | EDITED BY TRT Staff
Assembly Chambers, The Rejected Realms: Shortly before elections for the four Officer seats came to an end, TRT Editor-In-Chief Manson sat down with candidate/future Officer Liberza to discuss not only their hopes and aspirations for their likely role but their rise to prominence within the region as well.
Note: We’ve denoted prompts and questions from the Editor in a bold font and the subject’s responses in italics for ease of reading.
Liberza, let me say, first of all, that the role you’ve molded for yourself is a tried and true but quite impressive one. It’s of course common knowledge that TRR is bombarded with spammers, trolls, and other nations that many regions simply reject, opting to instead mark them as undesirable. Most of the players behind these nations get bored pretty easily and leave the site or get banned on their journeys toward troll superstardom. These players, if they can be reformed, become what I can only describe as the quintessential Rejects. You’ve admitted that you fell into the same category as some of these players in the past. Please elaborate on that.
I initially entered The Rejected Realms on, iirc, August 13, 2022, because I was banned from The Communist Bloc. I had said something about homophobia that I probably wouldn’t agree with now and that sent me here. I don’t blame them for banning me for what I said, though—I just decided to stick with TRR, I had no really good other place to go. It was a generally active community with friendly people, so I stayed a while.
Sounds like you were very lucky! Who or what gave you the confidence to dip your toes into getting involved in the region past a base level?
MJ and Giang. Both of them definitely inspired me that I would be able to run for officer and do something in that position. I also felt like, while I was active on the RMB, I was still not really contributing to the region. I wanted—and still do want—to do something for TRR besides frequent posting.
And here you are! Up for election. Tell me, it’s looking pretty likely that you’re going to win — what are some of the hopes and fears you have regarding the Officer role?
It depends, but I am somewhat hoping that I’ll get an Officer of Culture role, since that’s the only one I want besides Gameside, and I can’t see MJ losing that role anytime soon—so in that scenario, which becomes more and more likely every day, I’d like to do some polls. I said on the RMB earlier today that I was hoping to make a new CYOA (Choose Your Own Adventure) by holding a poll beforehand to determine its theme. I also really liked Anarchi’s creative writing event a few months ago and would like to make more of those, also with certain themes. And as for fears, my biggest fear is slipping up, messing up, or doing something that I shouldn’t, e.g. suppressing a post that shouldn’t be suppressed or doing something overambitious that won’t be viewed very well. I want to appeal to the region and do well, and the things I listed above would be the opposite to that.
Pretend for a moment that we’re looking back on this election cycle. In retrospect to your term, what advice do you have for your fellow newcomers and RMBers hoping to get more involved in regional affairs?
I look back at my first days in this region as one of immaturity. Like lots of people who get banned here, I criticized TCB for banning me, but now, I am more mature, I’m able to get over the past. I would suggest newcomers to get used to the Rejected Realms, get over their past, make new friends, and start with a fresh new slate. And if they want to get involved in regional affairs, I wouldn’t tell them to undeniably go for it 100%—it depends on the person. If i see them as someone who has proven themselves to be suitable for a position of power, and as someone who can bring good things to the table, they should go for it. I imagine some people would look at my officership with skepticism, as while I only got one abstention in the election, I’m still technically a newbie. But you don’t have to be a multi-year NSer to show your worth. That sounds like good advice to me.
Solid advice! Now for a hardball of sorts, what does it mean to be a “Reject” to you?
…A misfit. Loyal at that. Someone who belongs in the region, as opposed to someone who just comes here and moves away immediately after. The Rejected Realms is unique from the rest because we have diverse beliefs, a lot of which got us banned here. What makes a Reject a Reject is their independence. They don’t give up and throw a tantrum when they don’t get their way, and while it’s hard to do so at first, you just have to gradually accept that you are a misfit, and that that isn’t necessarily bad.
So, would you say it is or isn’t our responsibility as citizens of TRR to push past the trolls and encourage new arrivals to get involved? How would you say we should do that?
Since we are always the ones grabbing up all the trolls who were rightfully banned from other regions, we are basically the babysitters of NS. If you are a citizen, you should not be feeding trolls exactly what they want: clout. And of course we want new arrivals to get involved because the more citizens we have the better. We don’t want people to feel useless, and we should encourage people to get involved in the offsite areas and in our government.
Certainly. On a similar note, what would you say is going well for our community?
The RMB’s moderation is getting better. While I’ve definitely noticed that spam and troll messages haven’t been suppressed immediately, Mad Jack is only human. His clamping down on rulebreakers is admirable and our RMB moderation has gotten much better as of recent. I also notice that we get citizenship applications more often recently, so RMBers and newcomers are being encouraged to join.
What are some changes you’d like to see made [to the region]?
In terms of onsite, I think that there is a lot of messages that I depict as spam, specifically messages that have no purpose and add nothing to conversation. I wish that messages like these were suppressed more often. We don’t want people clogging up the RMB, and I want to encourage a community that can communicate properly without interruptions that add nothing. I would say that posts that would classify as spam are any posts that don’t add to the conversation or don’t have purpose. A one word post replying to someone or a multi-word post that describes something unrelated to conversation (e.g. nation stats or factbooks) would be different stories, since they still have purpose.
Well, I think that’s a good note to leave off on. Thanks again for agreeing to take a second to sit down with me!
Thank you!
NOTE: The Rejected Times does not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Rejected Realms.
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