No shade (but some legit questions from a mere pleb)

[Prefonteen]

I mean.. the discussion seems to have shifted a little here. Earlier, we were talking about tangible "tiers"- that is to say, the division of nations by "size". Some prefer to go by score, others by infra, others by city count. I'd daresay that out of the three, city count is the most commonly used method by major alliances in planning their economics and war strategies. Therefore, it'd be logical to base any assessment of tier distribution in the game on that.

My (and several other people's) argument was that "20 cities" can not be construed as "whale tier" (which I suppose is a fancy name for the tier above upper tier), by virtue of the large amount of people who would then qualify as a "whale" as well as the huge disparity that would create between "small whale (20)" and "biggest whale (30-something)". If we look at tiering, "whale" tier would by definition be the "needlessly huge nations in this game" and should really only apply to the top x%. The rest would be upper/middle/lower tier. It does not make sense to have a whale tier, larger than an upper tier.

It makes even less sense to base our definition of "tiers" around the alliances in which they reside. That's a silly way of approaching things in my opinion. You're free to disagree ofcourse ;).

Now, if we look at "whales" as a "mindset" and associate it with pixelhuggery/hoarding, then maybe you can apply the term more broadly. But who defines what does and does not constitute as pixelhuggery? Opening up that discussion puts us in a bit of a grey area!

[Dr Rush]

22 minutes ago, Buorhann said:

Gag orders aren't really that huge of a deal, because they don't hinder relations with other alliances they may be treatied.

Most current alliances have strongly built communities as well.  So it's not a huge shakeup there either.

However, your points do hold merit.

I'd argue that diplomatic relations and internal affairs aren't really germane to whether something is bad for general public relations and if so, to what degree.

 

Also, IQ see what you have done? You have me and a the hippo splitting hairs over a minor point because you can't wage a propaganda or an actual war.

[Big Brother]

16 hours ago, Anneal said:

Or it could be a mix of both. “Whales” are not very clearly defined in this game, and I see it as more of an idea – are you actually buying infra and city count to inflate your score and evade war? If so, then you’re a whale. Neither getting lots of cities nor getting a bunch of infra per city make you a whale automatically. Bluebear is on 23 cities and hardly anyone considers him a whale, and most people at JEst may have plenty of cities but are pretty willing to eat several nukes and burn some pixels. 

Yeah, there's definitely more than one factor that comes into play and there's no universally accepted definition of what exactly a whale is, which leaves it open to interpretation. I totally agree that what you use your nation for and how willing you are to fight in a war is something that should be taken into account when attempting to judge whether or not someone is a whale. It's good to read different opinions on the subject, I think it can be useful in terms of improving our understanding of what being a whale actually is.

Edited February 17, 2018 by Big Brother
Forgot a word

[Daniel Storm]

7 hours ago, Holton said:

We're just now seeing people respond after a week of fighting.

 

Now what do we see? Not even an official acknowledgement but, I will assume, leadership letting a few well-spoken members off the leash to "prove" no one is gagged.

I think Occam's Razor would serve you well here. Which is more likely? That hundreds of members IQ who would have been shitposting along with you guys are all bound and gagged by leaders who totally have the free time to micromanage us all? Or do we just not give a shit about a war that most of us aren't even involved in?

[Ripper]

5 minutes ago, Dad said:

I think Occam's Razor would serve you well here. Which is more likely? That hundreds of members IQ who would have been shitposting along with you guys are all bound and gagged by leaders who totally have the free time to micromanage us all? Or do we just not give a shit about a war that most of us aren't even involved in?

120 individual nations from IQ have participated to the war. Acadia was blown to pieces. 20% of BK is beiged. The total losses from IQ are around $16B already.

What you mean is that NPO members "just not give a shit about a war that most of us aren't even involved in". Which is the classic way NPO treats its allies really.

[Daniel Storm]

11 minutes ago, Ripper said:

120 individual nations from IQ have participated to the war. Acadia was blown to pieces. 20% of BK is beiged. The total losses from IQ are around $16B already.

What you mean is that NPO members "just not give a shit about a war that most of us aren't even involved in". Which is the classic way NPO treats its allies really.

Now I'm not the best at math, but I'm pretty sure Arcadia + 20% of BK still leaves the numerical majority of IQ nations out of the war. Personally I am fighting and I still find these threads, and the OWF in general boring as all hell, as you can see by my post count.

[Ripper]

20 minutes ago, Dad said:

Now I'm not the best at math, but I'm pretty sure Arcadia + 20% of BK still leaves the numerical majority of IQ nations out of the war. Personally I am fighting and I still find these threads, and the OWF in general boring as all hell, as you can see by my post count.

Well, if you did follow OWF, you would know that your allies are called Acadia and not Arcadia.

And sure, 120 members of IQ fighting means that another 280 do not. If these 280 nations "don't give a shit" about what happens to the other 120 though, this just shows what a tight community IQ is.

Being apathetic towards your enemies is all good. Being apathetic towards your allies though... Well, it's wrong.

[Daniel Storm]

13 minutes ago, Ripper said:

Well, if you did follow OWF, you would know that your allies are called Acadia and not Arcadia.

I'm leaving the typo in a petition for them to change their name to the much cooler Arcadia, Acadia reminds me of Social Studies

[Ripper]

2 minutes ago, Dad said:

I'm leaving the typo in a petition for them to change their name to the much cooler Arcadia, Acadia reminds me of Social Studies

Touché. For the record and to be fair, that's a common mistake. Second only to the Valyria-Valkyrie one.

[Kastor]

42 minutes ago, Dad said:

Now I'm not the best at math, but I'm pretty sure Arcadia + 20% of BK still leaves the numerical majority of IQ nations out of the war. Personally I am fighting and I still find these threads, and the OWF in general boring as all hell, as you can see by my post count.

Well it hinders your growth and advancement. But if you don’t care about that then okay.

[TheNG]

Wow, you may burn a man's pixels, but shading his theme is a crime fit only for the most despicable. If Roq allowed me any independent control over my actions, I would declare an eternal war on NPO for this treacherous attack.

Also, while the rest of IQ won't say anything, TKR is a new addition and thus much more wiling to talk. I encourage everyone to castigate them for the failures of their allies in IQ. 

Edited February 17, 2018 by TheNG

[Buorhann]

I could get a nice clean shave with the edge @Dad is expressing here.

[Shadowthrone]

1 hour ago, Ripper said:

What you mean is that NPO members "just not give a shit about a war that most of us aren't even involved in". Which is the classic way NPO treats its allies really.

Oh do tell us more about how we treat our allies? For someone who's new here, I'd be glad to listen to this history lesson  

[Buorhann]

15 minutes ago, Shadowthrone said:

Oh do tell us more about how we treat our allies? For someone who's new here, I'd be glad to listen to this history lesson  

Well, for one, what has NPO done for my Princess @Kastor other than hold her up in a tower like she's Rapunzel?

[Ripper]

16 minutes ago, Shadowthrone said:

Oh do tell us more about how we treat our allies? For someone who's new here, I'd be glad to listen to this history lesson  

 

1 hour ago, Dad said:

Or do we just not give a shit about a war that most of us aren't even involved in?

 

[Settra]

Just now, Ripper said:

18 minutes ago, Shadowthrone said:

Oh do tell us more about how we treat our allies? For someone who's new here, I'd be glad to listen to this history lesson  

 

2 hours ago, Dad said:

 Or do we just not give a shit about a war that most of us aren't even involved in?

 

[Holton]

23 hours ago, Shadowthrone said:

We just choose to not engage on the OWF for the most bit  

 

19 hours ago, Buorhann said:

Gag orders aren't really that huge of a deal, because they don't hinder relations with other alliances they may be treatied.

Most current alliances have strongly built communities as well.  So it's not a huge shakeup there either.

However, your points do hold merit.

DrRush is expressing some decent points here but I'd also like to come at this from the side of the individual nation - interacting on the game's forums, especially in an age where alliance forums rarely exist, is one of the best ways to expose yourself to the wider community. Very important stuff. Also "self expression is important" etc.

17 hours ago, Dad said:

I think Occam's Razor would serve you well here. Which is more likely? That hundreds of members IQ who would have been shitposting along with you guys are all bound and gagged by leaders who totally have the free time to micromanage us all? Or do we just not give a shit about a war that most of us aren't even involved in?

I'm a really really old player so while I appreciate a logical argument, I also know that gag orders are real things that aren't very hard to implement. If it hasn't been directly ordered then it's been culturally reinforced by repeated portrayal of the game you play's public forums being "too toxic to visit". The very people who love to repeat this line are some of the most venomous posters I've ever met and to think they can't take the heat of someone making a cultural victory meme is laughable. It's all propaganda.

15 hours ago, Shadowthrone said:

Oh do tell us more about how we treat our allies? For someone who's new here, I'd be glad to listen to this history lesson  

NPO is historically an alliance that fits into multiple categories. They are a leader group, meaning they will not content to be along for someone else's ride and prefer to be a centerpiece of any bloc or war they're in. They're historically pragmatic and have shown the ability to cast aside long-term allies for political gain or recruit long-time enemies to the same effect. They're also known as a particularly ruthless group, known to hold a grudge for a long time and try to act on it when opportunity arises as long as it doesn't interfere with other goals.

Personally, I fall into a camp of people that actually supports NPO's methods. Pragmatism, self-interest, and ruthlessness not only make for good points for T-Jest to make propaganda posts about, these qualities also provide an interesting figure on the political stage to contend with.

 

In a sea of mindless alliances barely surviving disbandment, content to languish in inactivity and meaninglessness, a self-interested pragmatist group is a beacon of light in the darkness. We need more of these and ideally every alliance should act with self-interest and a desire to be the centerpiece in mind.

 

Unfortunately, this all falls short of the mark when they forsake what they are and go radio silent and pout in their corner like a child. If 23 people can post on the OWF and make the environment seem "anti-pacifican" then surely the 120 members of Pacifica can out-post them and turn that tide. A leader-type alliance like NPO can't hide in the shadows like Roquentin has done for years in previous alliances. It simply doesn't fit your established persona, but it's what happens when you import your entire government and cabinet from a completely different culture.

Old Pacifica thrived on their propaganda department and public image. PnW's incarnation needs to live up to the name.

[Roquentin]

2 hours ago, Holton said:

 

DrRush is expressing some decent points here but I'd also like to come at this from the side of the individual nation - interacting on the game's forums, especially in an age where alliance forums rarely exist, is one of the best ways to expose yourself to the wider community. Very important stuff. Also "self expression is important" etc.

I'm a really really old player so while I appreciate a logical argument, I also know that gag orders are real things that aren't very hard to implement. If it hasn't been directly ordered then it's been culturally reinforced by repeated portrayal of the game you play's public forums being "too toxic to visit". The very people who love to repeat this line are some of the most venomous posters I've ever met and to think they can't take the heat of someone making a cultural victory meme is laughable. It's all propaganda.

 

 

Unfortunately, this all falls short of the mark when they forsake what they are and go radio silent and pout in their corner like a child. If 23 people can post on the OWF and make the environment seem "anti-pacifican" then surely the 120 members of Pacifica can out-post them and turn that tide. A leader-type alliance like NPO can't hide in the shadows like Roquentin has done for years in previous alliances. It simply doesn't fit your established persona, but it's what happens when you import your entire government and cabinet from a completely different culture.

Old Pacifica thrived on their propaganda department and public image. PnW's incarnation needs to live up to the name.

Or how about what Altmoras/Dad recommended and we use Occam's Razor. Did he derive the opinion he has from someone just telling him the OWF is toxic or reading it on his own and coming to that conclusion?  I already know he read it on his own and came to his own conclusion on it since he mentioned it. A lot of people aren't really particularly enthralled by image spam or shitposting except for the people who glamorize it like yourself. Different people have different tastes and for the vast majority of people they don't like to engage on here or any browsergame forums. It's not anyone's obligation to provide you with content.

Instead of trying to paint some sort of false narrative of how an entity in a much smaller setting years later is supposed to be like your imagined bygone era in another game(lol) at a time at which it had four or five times the playerbase this one currently does, you could see things for what they are. People don't have the emotional investment in posting that they did seven, eight, nine, ten years ago in a different game and the vast majority of people who were interested in it moved on past the medium. The people who tended to post the most didn't tend to stick around for a decade. Most people don't want to spend time outspamming a lightly moderated  forum. Basic demographic shifts.  Again, there isn't any obligation on anyone's part to post just to try to show you up. This post was a good vehicle for you to brandish your crossgame personal issues, Holton, but it's based on irrationality more than anything else. There has never been one hundred twenty members posting concurrently from any single alliance in any nationsim game and when there was even half of that, it was from a much wider base of players. It's a ridiculous expectation to have. It's also not twenty three people posting and that would be attributing every negative post to just Terminal Jest members when it's not the case.  If you were being earnest with your 50s faux nostalgia-style trip you'd know radio silence was a frequent thing even in the halycon yesteryear you keep harping on about.

The reason ultimately why people aren't bothering to engage this time around is it's all the same talking points and we know where everyone stands. There aren't any real arguments to have.  It's full circle. If you want to get your jollies off trolling people, that's your prerogative, it's not anyone else's to respond. There isn't a need to rehash responding to what boils down to "you suck" and argue about that.  If someone wants to, they're welcome to indulge in masochism and talk to the wall on here.

 

 

Edited February 17, 2018 by Roquentin

[Buorhann]

Hey Roq, why is the NPO community in PnW?  Real talk.

[Edward I]

2 hours ago, Holton said:

They're also known as a particularly ruthless group, known to hold a grudge for a long time and try to act on it when opportunity arises as long as it doesn't interfere with other goals.

In a sea of mindless alliances barely surviving disbandment, content to languish in inactivity and meaninglessness, a self-interested pragmatist group is a beacon of light in the darkness. We need more of these and ideally every alliance should act with self-interest and a desire to be the centerpiece in mind.

It's interesting that almost all criticism of NPO falls into one of two veins: "NPO is evil, they're killing the game!" or "NPO isn't being evil enough, they're killing the game!".  Even if we thought it was a good idea, NPO can't always be pragmatic and go out of its way to be an idealized villain for everyone else.

[Holton]

3 minutes ago, Roquentin said:

Or how about what Altmoras/Dad recommended and we use Occam's Razor. Did he derive the opinion he has from someone just telling him the OWF is toxic or reading it on his own and coming to that conclusion?  I already know he read it on his own and came to his own conclusion on it since he mentioned it. A lot of people aren't really particularly enthralled by image spam or shitposting except for the people who glamorize it like yourself. Different people have different tastes and for the vast majority of people they don't like to engage on here or any browsergame forums. It's not anyone's obligation to provide you with content.

Instead of trying to paint some sort of false narrative of how an entity in a much smaller setting years later is supposed to be like your imagined bygone era in another game(lol) at a time at which it had four or five times the playerbase this one currently does, you could see things for what they are. People don't have the emotional investment in posting that they did seven, eight, nine, ten years ago in a different game and the vast majority of people who were interested in it moved on past the medium. The people who tended to post the most didn't tend to stick around for a decade. Most people don't want to spend time outspamming a lightly moderated  forum. Basic demographic shifts.  Again, there isn't any obligation on anyone's part to post just to try to show you up. This post was a good vehicle for you to brandish your crossgame personal issues, Holton, but it's based on irrationality more than anything else. There was never been one hundred twenty members posting concurrently from any single alliance in any nationsim game and when there was even half of that, it was from a much wider base of players and it's a ridiculous expectation to have. It's also not twenty three people posting and that would be attributing every negative post to just Terminal Jest members when it's not the case.  If you were being earnest with your 50s faux nostalgia-style trip you'd know radio silence was a frequent thing even in the halycon yesteryear you keep harping on about.

The reason ultimately why people aren't bothering to engage this time around is it's all the same talking points and we know where everyone stands. There aren't any real arguments to have.  It's full circle. If you want to get your jollies off trolling people, that's your prerogative, it's not anyone else's to respond. There isn't a need to rehash responding to what boils down to "you suck" and argue about that.  If someone wants to, they're welcome to indulge in masochism and talk to the wall on here.

 

 

It appears I struck a nerve.

You can spin it into "Holton has a grudge" all you want but the truth is I have nothing against you other than what I've been openly stating. Furthermore, take note that none in this game are off-limits to my criticisms. So please stop dropping full-length essays about how I'm trying to witchhunt against you or your group because of things that happened in other worlds years ago. At least engage my points if you're going to bother responding.

 

Somehow the big bad community of roughly 20 regular posters has managed to create too toxic of an in-character environment for the majority of the game to even attempt to engage with?

I'm not goading you, or anyone, to create content for me... I want to see the world thrive and try to free the overwhelming majority from being locked in a self-imposed exile.

[Buorhann]

I don't think NPO is evil (Not in the context that you're presenting here).  I do think they're killing the game (As well as other major alliances not doing anything, so NPO isn't the only one).

My issue with NPO is the fact that you guys are very...  disengaging.  Like the one person that sits alone at a house party, for example.  Why are you there if you're not engaging yourself?

You got yourself a tightly knit sphere, then just sat there.  In the past, wars/conflicts or even forum drama of major alliances bickering back and forth, normally occurred every 3-5 months.

If the game isn't interesting and the forum is too toxic, why be here?

 

This war was a good way to paint Partisan (And myself since I've been meme'd) as villains.  You didn't provoke us.  You didn't say or do anything stupid.  You were innocent just sitting there alone, and suddenly you got hit.  You couldn't find any interest of spinning that?  Hell, Partisan and folks messing with Kayser/TKR was more involving than this and they're not even in the conflict.

[Holton]

25 minutes ago, Edward I said:

It's interesting that almost all criticism of NPO falls into one of two veins: "NPO is evil, they're killing the game!" or "NPO isn't being evil enough, they're killing the game!".  Even if we thought it was a good idea, NPO can't always be pragmatic and go out of its way to be an idealized villain for everyone else.

I think the distinction you've missed is that being self-interested and being "the villain killing the game" are two separate things.

 

Things like permawar or forced disbandment or punitive reparations could be considered the "villain killing the game" because you're actively hindering someone else's progress through spiteful means.

Things like not allowing yourself to be in a bloc unless you're the/a leader of it are self-interested moves. Creating a sphere around yourself is a self-interested move. Both things your alliance does well and should be modeled by others.

 

And again, no one is out here demanding NPO step up and do the impossible. Many of us are content just to see you guys engage with the community.

Edited February 17, 2018 by Holton

[Roquentin]

52 minutes ago, Buorhann said:

Hey Roq, why is the NPO community in PnW?  Real talk.

The goal of any expansion would be to prolong the longevity of the community and ideally add more people to it. For the most part it, it has succeeded in that as people who wouldn't have been involved have otherwise integrated.

 

29 minutes ago, Buorhann said:

I don't think NPO is evil (Not in the context that you're presenting here).  I do think they're killing the game (As well as other major alliances not doing anything, so NPO isn't the only one).

My issue with NPO is the fact that you guys are very...  disengaging.  Like the one person that sits alone at a house party, for example.  Why are you there if you're not engaging yourself?

You got yourself a tightly knit sphere, then just sat there.  In the past, wars/conflicts or even forum drama of major alliances bickering back and forth, normally occurred every 3-5 months.

If the game isn't interesting and the forum is too toxic, why be here?

 

This war was a good way to paint Partisan (And myself since I've been meme'd) as villains.  You didn't provoke us.  You didn't say or do anything stupid.  You were innocent just sitting there alone, and suddenly you got hit.  You couldn't find any interest of spinning that?  Hell, Partisan and folks messing with Kayser/TKR was more involving than this and they're not even in the conflict.

This is kind of revisionist. The OWF has always had a milieu of posters who have typically leaned to one side or posting against one side. It's typically against the side that is considered to not be as "gud" or  adept. The only real big divides/exceptions on the OWF were Papers Please and when Partisan made his callout of TKR when he moved everyone to NK. I'll only go back so far.  In Oktoberfest, Covenant was ridiculed and not a lot of people were posting back and when Clarke trolled back people doubled down. In the war after that, the OWF just mostly trolled Rose for the blitz leaking and such. In every war since then, it was mostly whoever Syndi/EMC was fighting getting trolled and relatively little posting from the other side.

The forums aren't really the end all be all. They could be more interesting if the people who liked to post on here butted heads, but they typically avoid confrontation with each other. Partisan clashed with a lot of his old friends previously rather publicly on here in October, but there hasn't been anything like that and it's largely been undone by this. He's become the belle of the ball once more.

The unprovoked narrative has an easy response. "you're playing the victim." Sympathizing with victims is not how the OWF works here. It's a pro-predatory behavior environment.  if you're vulnerable to hits, it's all on you. If anything Partisan  recruiting all these for the task of hitting the most disliked group gained him tons of brownie points at a time where he had previously lost a lot of popularity, so there's nothing to gain by saying we didn't do anything to provoke it. He gained PR by doing it in spite of that if anything. We could have been his biggest fans and people still wouldn't seen an issue with him doing it. Everyone knows that's the case. They just don't like IQ so IQ getting hurt is good.

 

 

31 minutes ago, Holton said:

It appears I struck a nerve.

You can spin it into "Holton has a grudge" all you want but the truth is I have nothing against you other than what I've been openly stating. Furthermore, take note that none in this game are off-limits to my criticisms. So please stop dropping full-length essays about how I'm trying to witchhunt against you or your group because of things that happened in other worlds years ago. At least engage my points if you're going to bother responding.

 

Somehow the big bad community of roughly 20 regular posters has managed to create too toxic of an in-character environment for the majority of the game to even attempt to engage with?

I'm not goading you, or anyone, to create content for me... I want to see the world thrive and try to free the overwhelming majority from being locked in a self-imposed exile.

I didn't limit my response to exclusively that. I brought up how you were wanting something that can't exist now to come into being.

It's really not just twenty posters, but even if it were, people don't want to have fret about flooding them out especially since it doesn't particularly impact the backroom dynamics. The people that support the TJ/etc. posters aren't going to change their minds if IQ floods it. If anything it'd just get them more upset if that's possible. Often times when people who aren't part of the mainstream culture start posting, it incenses those who are.

Edited February 17, 2018 by Roquentin

[Edward I]

18 minutes ago, Buorhann said:

I don't think NPO is evil (Not in the context that you're presenting here).  I do think they're killing the game (As well as other major alliances not doing anything, so NPO isn't the only one).

My issue with NPO is the fact that you guys are very...  disengaging.  Like the one person that sits alone at a house party, for example.  Why are you there if you're not engaging yourself?

You got yourself a tightly knit sphere, then just sat there.  In the past, wars/conflicts or even forum drama of major alliances bickering back and forth, normally occurred every 3-5 months.

NPO isn't killing the game, the economics of long term growth, tiering and resource production are. The same thing happened in CN; it's not a new phenomenon. If you want wars to happen every 3-5 months, then you need a world with smaller economic disparities between rivals. IQ + Acadia have 41 nations above 2500 score and, unless I missed one or two, zero above 3000 score as of this post. This is out of 509 member nations and, while it may have been a higher number a week ago, is still ample evidence that IQ lacks the upper tier that historic powerhouse alliances have benefited from.
Tiering has almost always been discussed as a military reality, but in the long run it's primarily one of economics. If you want an explanation for IQ's choice not to initiate any wars during the past months, then consider how our resource and cash stockpiles likely compare to those of alliances that have maintained largely intact upper tiers for years.

37 minutes ago, Buorhann said:

This war was a good way to paint Partisan (And myself since I've been meme'd) as villains.  You didn't provoke us.  You didn't say or do anything stupid.  You were innocent just sitting there alone, and suddenly you got hit.  You couldn't find any interest of spinning that?  Hell, Partisan and folks messing with Kayser/TKR was more involving than this and they're not even in the conflict.

To reiterate what Roquentin has already said, why bother when your audience is a group of posters who seem to be happiest when they're reposting and upvoting the same meme in response to everything? Or, to put it another way, who, exactly, do you think we'd sway out of a group of players who claimed to believe that IQ was insurmountably powerful a week ago and now take every opportunity they can to post about how it's losing a war to 23 nations?

8 minutes ago, Holton said:

I think the distinction you've missed is that being self-interested and being "the villain killing the game" are two separate things.

I didn't because, as you just explained, you believe the two to have been all but synonymous historically. You said NPO was ruthless, self-interested and prone to holding grudges. None of these are "good" traits in a moralistic sense. I disagree that NPO is killing the game, as I explained above.

22 minutes ago, Holton said:

Things like not allowing yourself to be in a bloc unless you're the/a leader of it are self-interested moves. Creating a sphere around yourself is a self-interested move. Both things your alliance does well and should be modeled by others.

The overwhelming popular conception of IQ is of a bloc that is informally led if not outright dominated by NPO. You seem to share this opinion. You complaint wasn't that NPO didn't hold a leading position in a bloc or have sphere; it was that we didn't actively recreate "Old Pacifica's public image". As an "old" player such as yourself would surely understand, "Old Pacifica's" reputation was that of a hegemonic tyrant that trampled on the freedoms and supposed rights of everyone not in its inner circle. Don't invoke CN innuendo and then pretend you didn't.