the-real-numbers:

So here’s a silly thing I found interesting today

I Tried To Run A Minecraft Server Like A Communist Dictator

A YouTuber has been running social “experiments” on minecraft servers with the goal of setting up a cooperative, productive world. He had a free-for-all that had constant griefing and another experiment that didn’t go so well.

So he decides okay, maybe I should take a page out of the Stalin playbook. It has nothing to really do with communism. He just bans people at random. Like literally employs different number generators and odd conditions for bans. Every time, he goes “X has been banned”, and gives no explanation. He says he hopes it makes people nervous and want to be good.

What happens is kind of amusing. The first time it happens, it’s kind of a novelty. He gets questions about it, but says nothing. The next few times, the same thing happens. But eventually, some people start justifying why. “This person was cheating? Okay.” Or “Ha look at them go”

At one point he asks several people to pick a number and decides that he will ban whoever guesses the number 6, and then he does almost immediately after. I don’t think anybody says anything.

The effect on the server is strangely… positive. The people cooperate, they build things together, and in general the architecture of buildings on the server gets progressively better, unlike the free-for-alls. They even build a massive, ugly building they adorably nickname “The Union”.

Once other people get power though, it goes to shit. The last day or so, he gives two people admin permissions and they come back hours later and grief the server by making a massive end-portal and sending everyone to the final stage of the game where you fight a very strong dragon. People are not happy about this. It’s kinda funny.