The Fake Town Where Everybody Knows Your Name (theoutline.com) 58
With a population of over 87,000, Lower Duck Pond is the largest, friendliest, and oddest city that's not on the map. The Outline: Located somewhere on a plane of nonexistence, the rapidly growing town of Lower Duck Pond rests, isolated, without even an official city map. Its locals don't get lost, though. They know their way around quite well and discuss their comings and goings through postings on the subreddit r/HaveWeMet. The community's 87,000-plus "residents" share constant chatter about which buildings in the area need repairs, which sandwich shops have been changing up their menu, and which streets need repaving. It's not unusual for newcomers to feel confused by the whirlwind of information and every resident's seemingly picture-perfect memory of their surroundings. It helps to remember that they're all pretending.
Strange, new places do take some getting used to and it might take you a few minutes to get the hang of subreddit r/HaveWeMet's premise, where users roleplay as longtime neighbors in a non-existent town called "Lower Duck Pond." The joke's attracted over 87,000 users since the community started two years ago, making it the fastest-growing open-source fictional town on Earth. While the residents, streets, and buildings are fake, the absurdity, purity, and sense of community for its daily users has become very real. Reddit user u/Devuluh, who's really a sophomore computer science major named David (he declined to share his last name), started r/HaveWeMet in early 2017 when he was still in high school. The idea was to create an online space where everyone pretends to know each other. "The original idea for r/HaveWeMet was not a sub mimicking a fake town, but rather simply just people pretending to know each other, and later it evolved into much more than that," David told me. "If you want to have a deep involvement in r/HaveWeMet, it's almost necessary you get to know people's characters. Some even go as far as getting to know the members behind their characters, too. It's like one big universe created collaboratively, just through peoples' interactions with each other."
Strange, new places do take some getting used to and it might take you a few minutes to get the hang of subreddit r/HaveWeMet's premise, where users roleplay as longtime neighbors in a non-existent town called "Lower Duck Pond." The joke's attracted over 87,000 users since the community started two years ago, making it the fastest-growing open-source fictional town on Earth. While the residents, streets, and buildings are fake, the absurdity, purity, and sense of community for its daily users has become very real. Reddit user u/Devuluh, who's really a sophomore computer science major named David (he declined to share his last name), started r/HaveWeMet in early 2017 when he was still in high school. The idea was to create an online space where everyone pretends to know each other. "The original idea for r/HaveWeMet was not a sub mimicking a fake town, but rather simply just people pretending to know each other, and later it evolved into much more than that," David told me. "If you want to have a deep involvement in r/HaveWeMet, it's almost necessary you get to know people's characters. Some even go as far as getting to know the members behind their characters, too. It's like one big universe created collaboratively, just through peoples' interactions with each other."
Yet these same people... (Score:5, Insightful)
...probably can't be bothered to attend their own real town's meetings and get involved in its issues.
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and the mailman is at the bar just about every night
Re: Yet these same people... (Score:2)
Re:Yet these same people... (Score:4, Interesting)
Lower Duck Pond has no crime, no zoning conflicts, no property taxes, no traffic, no unemployment and so on. Real community is much harder to build as it has to deal with both positives and negatives.
Re:Yet these same people... (Score:4, Funny)
Lower Duck Pond has no crime, no zoning conflicts, no property taxes, no traffic, no unemployment and so on. Real community is much harder to build as it has to deal with both positives and negatives.
So you're saying they finally found a perfect utopia. The trick is to not have any people there.
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Same thing, some people need other people to be miserable.
Hell is other people.
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So you're saying they finally found a perfect utopia. The trick is to not have any people there.
The ideal resident for nowhere is no one.
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everyone is a NIMBY about something. I'm pretty sue you wouldn't want you neighbor to open a coal plant, as an extreme example.
Re: Yet these same people... (Score:3)
Which is why residential is zoned away from heavy industry. That's not something that comes up in council meetings, because there are existing regulations that handle the problem. NIMBY become players when there are no dangerous externalities. Like putting up a solar array. Those are not equivalent.
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Which is why white residential is zoned away from heavy industry.
FTFY - A 2007 study showed that heavy industry in California [latimes.com] is more likely to be in a minority and/or low income neighborhoods than white neighborhoods.
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Which is why white residential is zoned away from heavy industry.
FTFY - A 2007 study showed that heavy industry in California [latimes.com] is more likely to be in a minority and/or low income neighborhoods than white neighborhoods.
That on the surface tells nothing though. What came first, the heavy industry or the minority/low income neighborhoods? Heavy industry is often located outside city limits or in less populated areas where land is cheaper, therefore you're more likely to have poorer people nearby. Also, people tend to prefer to live near where they work so people who work in heavy industry (more likely to be lower income) are going to want to live nearby. Alternatively, if they neighborhood is there first and a factory m
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What came first, the heavy industry or the minority/low income neighborhoods?
I've seen it go both ways in California.
Now, if the local government is handing out permits to raze down a block of already existing housing in a low income/minority area to build a factory, then you might have a point.
In San Jose, a low-income, Hispanic neighborhood was razed for the convention center 30 years ago. Another low-income, Hispanic neighborhood will be raze down for the forthcoming Google Village campus (20,000+ employees). All the heavy industry and warehouses are located on the east side, which Gerardo Rivera called the "ghetto" on his live cop special in the 1980's.
NIMBY become players in plenty of other cases (Score:2)
Buddy of mine got run off his land so a dump could be built. If he'd had more time to organize he could have stopped it, but both him and his wife worked full time. It really screwed him. He had to move his mobile home, and you can imagine how well that worked. Poor bastard was still working on repairs last I caught up with him.
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Re: Yet these same people... (Score:2)
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Around here we have two types of meetings:
One is where input is requested and given in a fairly civil manner, but the activists complain that it's bullshit because the only people who attend are old white homeowners, yet the activists don't seem to be able to rally anyone to go and shift the community feedback.
The other is where a bunch of black people protesting racism show up and shut the meeting down with protests and interruptions, even though the meeting's purpose is nothing controversial, like whether
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Which is, of course, why real towns have town councils. So the small fraction of residents that might care at the time can select some people to worry about the town every few years and then not think about it in between. Of course, that doesn't prevent complaining about what a lousy job the chosen people are doing.
In case it isn't clear (which it isn't), the above is trying, and almost certainly failing, to be funny. People really should take an interest in what is going on in their town. Town councils do
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So what? The article is describing a form of entertainment by people having a good time. Maybe they don't find attending actual town meetings to be a fun time? It's not that hard to understand.
It RLRPing. Real Life Role Playing.
I see a trend (Score:1)
Fake news, fake wars, fake leaders, fake weather, fake towns, fake people, why the fuck not!
Obligatory (Score:2)
Is the bar named "Cheers", by any chance?
Known Location (Score:2)
Mornington Crescent Rules Repository (Score:2)
I hear they have delivered some world class players of Mornington Crescent and they have an office where you can request the rulebooks for just about every variant of it.
Sad (Score:5, Interesting)
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I disagree, for the same reason that I disagree that my 2yo daughter should make actual tea.
Point taken, but 2yo can make actual tea (Score:2)
OK, this is off topic, but it can be a fun thing to do with your daughter.
Show her how to make sun tea.
Get a small container with a lid that is optically similar to glass but won't break if dropped. A half-liter water or juice bottle with a wide lid MIGHT work, do a dry run yourself to make sure.
Put in 1-2 cups of water.
Put a tea bag in it and make sure the tea is in the water.
Put it out in the sun.
Do this 1-2 hours before dinner, more if you don't get good sunlight.
Tell her "after you wash your hands for
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:)
Brother, we're in Alabama - sun-tea is a delicious household norm. I'll have to keep drinking the imaginary tea that my daughter serves because little girls don't wait for the sun as well as the rest of us.
Thanks for posting the info. I'll bet that there's a lot of folks here that don't know what sun-tea is, or why it's delicious.
Cheers!
Re:Sad (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate to sound like the King Orange, but that's the best way to describe this, as far as I can come up with If these people would spend the same amount of time and energy in the real world, the world would be a much better place.
Not necessarily. The people participating in this are recreating. To them it's just creating fun. It's a great way to relax, which is important for mental health. Downtime is important.
There's a difference between flying a 747 full of living, breathing passengers, and getting deeply interested in minutia in an accurate flight sim.
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The difference is that flying a real 747 takes many years of commitment. Interacting with your neighbors to govern your local community involves.... interacting with your neighbors.
These aren't the neighbors, though. They're a self-selecting group of people who chose to come together, sort of, in a virtual space, sort of. That's different from who you happen to live near, which is as much about circumstance as anything else. Some people live where they choose to live, and some people live where they ended up living.
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They've spent their free time there exactly as productively as your free time here.
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They've spent their free time there exactly as productively as your free time here.
Shows how much you know! I only surf slashdot at work, not on my free time!
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They could literally do the exact same thing they're doing online, in real life, with the difference being that they could produce some actual results, as opposed to just make-believe results.
Yes. They could. And that's why they don't.
I was trying to be brief, but the point I was making is that there are disadvantages to doing things "for real". For instance, your neighbors could be shitty people. Or your skin colour might not be compatible and being comfortably accepted to social events might be impossible. Or you might be highly attractive and don't feel like being hit on. Or you might be missing an arm and don't feel like coping with people who stare, more than you need to. Or you mi
"Our Town" play, collaboratively-written? (Score:4, Insightful)
My first thought was "this sounds like what the backstory to the play Our Town might be if it were crowd-written."
I can see the draw in this. As a fantasy, it can be healthy. As a way to stimulate the brain cells, it can be healthy. For younger people or people who have trouble establishing real-work relationships with others, it can be good practice.
I can also see how it can be very additive, much like Sim City and MMORPGs can be. I can also see people who, out of fear or other reasons, prefer not to have real-world relationships as using things like this, or for that matter MMORPGs, as poor substitutes for real-world relationships.
Remember, unlike a real-world relationship, of something happens to you IRL where you need support and that part of your real-life isn't also part of your "character," your online friends either won't know, won't care, or will be massively confused. Like "you and your husband are having your first child? Congratulations, but I thought you said you were a celibate nun" or "your child has cancer? I'm so sad but I though you said you were single and childless."
Speaking of addition/self-reply (Score:5, Insightful)
If they had something like this when I was young and more prone to "falling into fantasy worlds" than I am now, I would've become very addicted to it and probably become completely isolated from most of my real-world relationships. I would've thoroughly enjoyed it at the time but I would've been worse off in the long run for it. We did have on- and offline multi-person make-your-own fantasy worlds back then, but they weren't as immersive or as 24/7 as this seems to be.
A word of wisdom from someone who has been "lost in fantasy worlds" to those who are still young: If you tend to get "sucked in" to fantasy books or movies AND you don't have strong real-world relationships, do yourself a big favor and make or strengthen real-world relationships before taking this on as a hobby. Your future self will thank you for it.
If you are over 25 or so, you probably already know that either this bit of wisdom is not applicable to you or you already know from personal experience how true it is.
I...uh...what? (Score:5, Informative)
I clicked through on a link from the article, just to see what this is all about. Apparently they had a ban on milk, but it's been relaxed [reddit.com]:
Howdy folks, Councilman Everetts here. Just wanted to pass along some new info regarding the ban of milk products from our store shelves.
The ban on milk sales has been lifted. Anyone who disposed of their milk will be reimbursed in the form of meal tickets from our community college cafeteria (go Fighting Loaves!) and milk will be sold again in stores following the next shipment due in tomorrow at noon. However, new restrictions are in place:
Milk will only be sold to those over 18, ID will be required for purchase
All stores now have a designated dairy department and cash register, and the cashiers are being supplied by the Council of the Nine, so don't try to outsmart them. They're...different than you and I. Quieter and more observant.
All purchases are limited to one (1) gallon per person, per day, city-wide. This will be strictly enforced, as the Council of Nine (remember, NOT our city council, of which I am a proud member) has introduced a new system that tracks your milk purchases in all stores within our city limits.
Skim Milk will no longer be available, and anyone found in possession of skim milk will have their milk wirelessly converted to 2%.
Thanks for your patience during these trying times. Now, go enjoy your milk! And don't forget to come to the local city official meet & greet at the community college (go Fighting Loaves!) next Wednesday from 2-4. Jan won't be there, as she has lunch scheduled that day.
All the best,
Tom.
Most of the top posts at that link are worth a read, if only for their absurdity. Frankly, if that link is indicative of what to expect, I could see this being some rather entertaining escapism for people.
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I want to know how one "wirelessly converts" Skim Milk to 2% Milk. Is this town in some future Sci Fi setting?
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By replacing the cream I would imagine.
Now I want to know how you imagine wires would be involved?
Old is new again (Score:2)
He essentially created a MUD/MUCK/MUSH on Reddit. That's all.
Old Troll Rising... (Score:2)
... Played too many combat based muds. I don't last long on a MUSH before they ban me. Worst case was a MUSH written in LPC that didn't disable combat. I killed my way thru so many "beloved" characters before getting the axe that time.
Wonder if I would fit in in this town or not.
Lake Woebegone (Score:2)
sad love status in hindi (Score:1)
Stories like these... (Score:1)
Wait a minute, (Score:2)
I thought facebook was a place where everyone pretends to know each other...