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Re: Rebranding micronations

Posted: Sun Jan 16, 2011 4:26 am
by Brian Barry
I think 'micronation' is perfectly fine. Also remember that if this standard is changed, a lot of things will have to change their names (including the MCS itself).

Re: Rebranding micronations

Posted: Sun Jan 16, 2011 4:41 am
by Andreas the Wise
The MCS is the easiest one, it just becomes Micras Cartographical Society. :wink:

Re: Rebranding micronations

Posted: Sun Jan 16, 2011 1:12 pm
by siriain
Courtesy of Google:

Micronation: 26,200
Simnation: 5,730
Geofiction: 3,380

Re: Rebranding micronations

Posted: Sun Jan 16, 2011 11:15 pm
by Artz
Changing things for no purpose.. 'micronationalists' is perfectly fine. Are you scared to talk about it to RL people because of the name?.. no.. most people haven't even heard of any sense of the word and so aren't really swayed by the name.

Re: Rebranding micronations

Posted: Sun Jan 16, 2011 11:23 pm
by dr-spangle
Chrim and I discussed this subject earlier...

Basically, I think the main reason people want to change the name is that we don't want to be associated with people like George.

I likened the situation to the one with the islamic religion at the moment, A lot of islamic people are moderate and nice. A few islamic people are extremists, the extremists give the rational people a bad name, in their case, Al Quaeda and such, in our case, George.

Of course, the thing is, the islamic religion doesn't change it's name just because of the extremists... It's not really got much point.

I hear that apparently this is at least partially sparked by the apparently fact that some people get labelled as terrorists when calling themselves micronationalists, as there are extremists in micronations, (see also http://micronational.net/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1247 ) however, all that is needed is a proper introduction when telling people you're a micronationalist. Hence we don't need to change our name, change everything we do, change everything we've made and dissociate from a lot of other micronationalists who are nice, we simply need a "Coming out of the micronational closet - A guide" thread stickied somewhere.

Re: Rebranding micronations

Posted: Mon Jan 17, 2011 1:51 am
by Guido Zambelis
Well going by his form of speech, he's somewhere on the freeman spectrum, so really not worth associating yourself with.

Re: Rebranding micronations

Posted: Mon Jan 17, 2011 2:42 am
by Aster
lol I was just thinking about this whilst listening to the new ART this evening.

I just don't think it's worth the effort - George and his secessionist ilk are, to my mind, the most egotistical and sad example of the hobby. However, occasionally using a different term dependent upon the audience could be useful - governmental simulation would be a good one, although that's far too specific for the broad spectrum of simulations that many micronationalists in our area of the hobby toy with.

On balance...meh, just keep using the term.

Re: Rebranding micronations

Posted: Mon Jan 17, 2011 12:25 pm
by Craitman
In all fairness, George and Atlantium don't self-associate with the term "micronation" :wink:

Re: Rebranding micronations

Posted: Mon Jan 17, 2011 1:34 pm
by Aster
^ oh? Fair dos.

In any case, I think changing the term would be a bit of a waste of time.

Re: Rebranding micronations

Posted: Mon Jan 17, 2011 1:37 pm
by Lewis
I don't agree that we should change it to anything unless it's something which people can relate to. Think of how new people get here through google and so on. I found it through googling "micronation" I think and it brought me here. This means that if we have an appropriate forum name then people will find it.

Re-branding takes into account a few factors;

First what are you trying to do; attract people? Be concise? I'd rather be attracting new people to the hobby and picking up people interested in micronations.
Second; what type of people do you want? You then brand it to how they would be most incline to like it.

No offence, but the name suggested sounds horrible in my head as it merely just defines this hobby but sounds unrelated to anything I've heard of. The options really are between sim-nations, micronations, political simulation, mock parliament/mock politics or something along those lines. They'll all bring different people, so it's either sim-nations or micronations which will pick up the type of people who are commonly seen as the current hobbyist.

Re: Rebranding micronations

Posted: Mon Jan 17, 2011 3:59 pm
by Maximos
Frankly I think this proposal is, though of course well-intentioned, symptomatic of reading too deep into micronationalism.
It addresses a problem which simply doesn't exist; the majority of people here are happy with the term 'micronation', not to mention the sense of historical continuity which would be lost if we all diverged into a hobby under a completely different name and the effort it would take to edit every single map, board, and micronational constitution in the sector with the dreaded 'M' word in it.

I just don't see it as an issue- if anything one could argue that it was our using the term 'micronation' simultaneously with seccessionists such as Danny Wallace which resulted in the large influx of new micronationalists in 2005-6.

Plus 'Collaborative Conworlding' evokes a larger degree of neckbearded basement-dwelling than 'Micronationalism' ever could. :P

Re: Rebranding micronations

Posted: Mon Jan 17, 2011 4:40 pm
by Nick
Image

"Wurdurdurdurdur" - Mating call of the warmeling neckbeard.

Re: Rebranding micronations

Posted: Mon Jan 17, 2011 6:41 pm
by SaiKar
Maximos wrote:Frankly I think this proposal is, though of course well-intentioned, symptomatic of reading too deep into micronationalism.
It addresses a problem which simply doesn't exist; the majority of people here are happy with the term 'micronation', not to mention the sense of historical continuity which would be lost if we all diverged into a hobby under a completely different name and the effort it would take to edit every single map, board, and micronational constitution in the sector with the dreaded 'M' word in it.
From my understanding of it, it's less about making ourselves happy with a term and more about getting outsiders to become interested in the hobby, and also to get those secessionist wackjobs to leave us alone for good. Mostly that first one, I think. Elaborater recruitment campaign idea.

You have a point about how much work it would take to change stuff over, and I'm not too fond of the exact term "Collaborative Conworlding," but I do agree in principle that the name "micronations" just isn't working out too well for us. It really doesn't describe the hobby. It also makes sure the only interested newcomers by random chance we ever see are more interested in secessionism and leave our corner as they see what it is about.

Really, the people that like this idea don't need the permission of anyone else to just decide what to call themselves, so it's not like this is up for debate. At least for me, the only detail that matters is finding a name we like that doesn't invoke the rare and majestic neckbeard.

Re: Rebranding micronations

Posted: Mon Jan 17, 2011 9:09 pm
by Nathan
Obviously we are too small to be called micronations... So we should just keep the spirit of the term and start calling ourselves nanonations or piconations. 8)

Re: Rebranding micronations

Posted: Mon Jan 17, 2011 11:58 pm
by Malliki Tosha
This sounds like a part of the plan to bring all of Micras into the Bastion Union, aka Bunion.