February 2025 – Behind-the-Scenes Update
Added 2025-01-31 18:00:12 +0000 UTCHello, dear patrons! Here's your behind-the-scenes update for February 2025!
Teenage Virtual Democracies: A Retrospective.
I've been blown away by the positive reception that the virtual democracies video has received and I'd like to take the time to thank you all for your continued support and to welcome any new patrons who subscribed because of the video!
If you've missed it, the video caused a "Slashdot effect" where a surge of new players suddenly joined some of the sim gov communities I highlighted. I wrote about this "Trollipocalypse" here.
In particular, since the release of that video, the Discord population of r/SimDemocracy—being used as the introductory case study—has increased four-fold. Only time will tell how this pans out for it.
A lot of the research used in the documentary was done for a previous academic draft paper I wrote titled "Public Law in Virtual Worlds." I've written a behind-the-scenes retrospective about that paper and the presentation I delivered here.
Next video.
Research for my next video is underway and I have already reached out to several experts to help me with the research process. I can't disclose any further information at this stage, but I thank you all for your patience.
Billing.
It's my understanding that Patreon has not actually charged for the month of January 2025 as they have not actually migrated my account to monthly billing yet (despite having set the migration date for the 1st January 2025).
Over the past month, I have contacted Patreon three separate times and unfortunately, it appears they have not yet resolved this issue. As a stopgap measure, I will be manually charging for this post which you will be billed for in February 2025.
