Trapped on a Desert Island with all the SDMB members? Virtual SDMB Civilization!

In My Humble Opinion
1

Ok let me set the scene: you wake up tomorrow morning, on a large tropical island, no land in sight anywhere. You look around and there are other people rousing on the beach, not just a few people, but several thousand. As a matter of fact there are close to 33,000 people on this large tropical island. In square footage you judge the island to be close to the size of Grenada, so quite small. Some people are frightened, others are becoming excited, wondering whats going on. Some people recognize each other and soon the word spreads that the entire island is now inhabited by dopers. The lot of’em, every doper who is a member. Young people, old people, large people, small people, light people, dark people etc…etc…

Now what do you do? There is a man running around saying that he is Cecil Adams!! Some people believe him, then another man says “No, I’m Cecil” .

As no one really knows what Cecil looks like, no one is sure.

Chaos starts to errupt, Opal Cat stands on a rock and calms people with her glittering feline wit, whilst Libertarian and ** Collounsbury** just sit in the sand, staring out at the sea, waiting for the hoards to digress back into the forest to look for food so they can have a Rational conversation and try to make sense out of whats happening. Cal Meacham wonders over and sits down next to these two, and devises a plan to find our longitude and Latitude when night falls and the stars come out, Chronos soon joins him.

Some of the masses start moving further inland, some stay behind and plop down on the sand. Some of the SDMB more outdoorsy types decide to walk around the island and see what they can find. Other’s start making shelter. And those who have not posted in more than a year are really wondering what they hell they are doing on a desert island with 33K other dopers, many of whom they have never met, some of whom they know they do not want to meet.

Some dopers start to comfort others, bands of people soon form, 30 thousand people all on one island is a lot, some people get overwhelmed.

In your opinion, what would happen? Assuming this is not like Stephen King’s the Langoliers, and there is something out there, beyond the scope of sight, how would be get back. Would different societies form? Would we have a mass SDMB Lord of the Flies situation on our hands? Would Cecil get hopelessly lost if no one believed he was who he said he was?

2

I imagine within a week we’d have a nice orderly election to try and get some order into things. Have a committee who decides what groups should be formed and what tasks they should perform.

We have a boat built fairly quickly and we send out a small well prepared group to deliver our message and request for aid to the outside world. We’re off the island 3 or 4 months tops.

I’m an optimist.

Eww nasty thought though. All those people who signed up only to flame us in board wars or just regular assholes would be there too. We might have to make a clique to shout them down.

3

Yes, of course we could build a boat and get back to society. But would we want to? Why not set up the Libertarian Democratic Meritocracy that we all yern for, with Cecil of course as Monarch.

When the food gets scarce who would we eat first?

4

Can I be Mrs. Howell?

5

The first person who asks that question, I bet. Or whoever runs the slowest.

This is reminding me a great deal of Das Bus, the Simpsons episode parodying Lord of the Flies. I have a feeling the results would be more like that show than the actual Lord of the Flies (thank goodness; I couldn’t stand that book).

6

I choose …

YOU.

:smiley: [sub]'cause bippies are sweet.[/sub]

7

Everyone will have their most recent post count tattooed on their forehead and whenever two people meet, the one with the higher number will assume control. There will be much griping that registry dates should have been used instead.

My real question is, do we also get to have the items selected in the many “What album/book/luxury item/etc. would you bring to a desert island?” threads?

Personally, I think we’ll be a major economic power within three generations, and will have the political clout and military might to shape world policy by the end of the century.

Do we have a name? I nominate StraightDopistan.

8

Where did my bloody post go?

I want to be the guy who disappears under mysterious circumstances, then reappears years later with a small inland empire and an army of trained monkeys that answer only to me.

9

While I think I would survive well and get along with people, part of me is pretty sure I would sneak off to live on my own and surreptitiously prowl the outer portions of the encampment to pick off the outlying dopers one by one.

Might as well make a sport of the strandedness.

10

On first reading, I read that, “We might have to make a clique to shoot them down.”

I was lost in a wondrous, spectacular daydream.

Then I reread that, and all was lost.

11

I get to build the pumps, signal towers, bicycle-pedal cars, & particle accellerators out of vines & coconut shells!

12

I’d try to find a charismatic Doper with a desire for power but no firm ideas on what exactly they want to do with that power, and try to help give them advice and assistence in coming to power through the use of persuasion/seizure of control of food supply/violence/whatever. If we got organized and moved swiftly, we could probably get a good deal of power pretty quickly - not the entire island, but we’d be a major Straight Dope Island power. I’d go for the head honcho slot myself, but you really need some degree of charisma to set up the cult of personality I’d want for this sort of deal.

Of course. this is the same thing I’d do if I were dropped on an island with tens of thousands of non-straight-dope people. That might be a problem, because Dopers tend to be pretty damn smart - thugs could be hard to come by.

Hmm. Are the lurkers/infrequent posters on the island as well? And how many trolls are there?

13

I’ll cook.

14

Trolls would be our initial food of course, until Mangetout found the best way to catch and eat the fish he would be cooking. Then of course we would be in our culinary hayday, as I am sure Mangetout would make the best coconut truffle calamari…

I do wonder how we would figure out who Cecil was. I mean wouldn’t be terrible if he was left in the dust, because someone came around staging a very good claim that He was Cecil.

I think things on the Island would improve vastly when someone found the wild grapes and started fermenting them.

I’d love to kick a few back with Cecil. We could tell blathering stories back and forth all night. I’d tell of my trips to visit mescalito, and he could tell us about how he registered under a false name to test the mood of the boards at any particular time.
Remember that old troll BZOOOOO :eek:

15

Upon further reading this thread, it would seem that Cecil would pose an unacceptable threat to my own plans for empire. So long as Cecil could be indentified, he would have the greatest claim to legitimacy as a ruler.

He would have to be purged. In such a way, hopefully, that the Excellentistas were not implicated. Doable, on an island with no medical facilities, and who knows what dangerous animals.

I’m a little too comfortable with thinking like this, I think. :slight_smile:

16

Actually, Mr.Excellent there are quite a few dopers who would share your sentiment. And you would most likely have a decent following. That is of course if you are able to best me in a cocnut throwing game of dodge ball!!!

17

Actually, I’d really be torn - if it was a smaller group, I’d just do what needed doing, but with a large group, there are all sorts of complicated social needs too; in a small group, I’d probably hunt, fish, build the shelter, make fire, cook, make tools and join in the fireside entertainment, but all those hungry doper mouths would probably mean that I’d have to limit myself to one or two tasks in order to remain productive.

Fishing would be easy; we could use the trolls as shark bait.

18

Pardon me that should read COCONUT!! :smack:

19

Yeah Mangetout you are right, maybe we can change the criteria slightly to make it all 33K dopers were stuck on a continent the size of Australia. All Aussies besides Aussie dopers would be gone of course.

20

Don’t worry Mangetout, I’ll be your sous chef/organizer.

The Dopers would naturally develop a “needs based” society - but, because we all tend to procrastinate and spend too much time standing around yammerring, a leader would emerge.

Let’s just home it’s not Randall Flag.