In the time since I left The Black Hawks, every now and then, I receive a returning question which asks the rationale on which my defection was based. In the time since I left The Black Hawks, every now and then, a subject arises which is directly linked to that rationale, where experience has influenced my opinion. To the outward observer, those opinions may appear random or disjointed, possibly biased or hostile. They may be difficult to understand without context and without additional information. Consequently, I have elected to compile that context and information into this format for the purposes of consolidating what would otherwise be perceived as chaotic assertions into a cohesive presentation. May this document serve as my personal testimony and analysis.

There are several different forms of raiding, and there are several different motives behind why someone might raid. Even within the same organisation, these motives and methods will vary not only across different leaders, but across their component updaters as well. That those motives have the same objective is what allows a raid to take place. Some of these motives are healthy and beget healthy social dynamics. There are others which are an exercise in sacrificing individual comforts to uphold a legacy, or are a way to lash out at a social enemy. There are motives such as a singular interest at promoting someone's own self-image at the expense of those around them. For motives such as those, therein lies a danger to create an environment that damages more than just native interests.

The structure of raiderdom is complex, and more so than can be conveniently described; yet, to the best of my abilities, the following is an analysis of the most relevant components of my ideological conclusion.

The Meritocratic Model

A staple component of a military structure is a pre-established set of milestones upon which an updater's self-worth may be based. Milestone such as these are professed to be reached by virtue of one's merit and display of capability. These milestones are known as "ranks" and are used as shorthand for how valuable an individual is to the organisation. In a literal sense, some amount of that is true. But more or less, this general concept is an illusion not dissimilar to how the profits of a company are derived from its workforce and not its management, yet the management is disproportionately compensated, regardless.

The contentedness towards this status quo remains, however, and with it the impression that individuals at the top of the roster are the most necessary towards the organisation's success. This is reinforced by the constant reminders of these people making public statements and getting in positions of prominence during occupations. High-profile raids, however, rely on a vast volume of World Assembly members, largely gameside-only pilers, who joined as a result of labour from an army of volunteer recruiters whose work is often unsung. The function of a point is to provide defence of an occupation with early access and half priced banjections of liberators. This, too, requires attentiveness and general competence, but this position is often seen as one that has made the raid possible to begin with, while triggers with their volumes of calculations and estimations lie discarded in a narrow ditch.

The attention on a select few individuals lends itself to creating legends and idols, as intended, to inspire novices within the group to envision themselves in their position with the same fanfare. Lower ranking players see their colleagues as competitors for a privileged seat, and will generate self-perpetuating activity, attempting to have more name recognition in the raiding sphere by demonstrating their utility. In theory, as long as that competition is active and remains active until the seat holder wishes to discharge themselves of the prestige, the system is working.

Players' belief in their organisation is what compels them to invest their time and energy into it. Yet the investment does not benefit them, but those already in power. Whether those already in power are military officers, or officials in a region's government, the dynamics remain the same. While, a majority of the activity in these organisations is carried out by those in competition among the lower ranks, the establishment continues to get credit for the work the competition generates. In raiding, this means that if someone has tossed together a raid theme idea, they will be credited for its genius. Those who carry out the switches, jumps, and tags will amount to an afterthought at best.

Exploitation is, therefore, the foundation on which raiding organisations are based, while meritocracy is as much a myth in gameplay as it is in economics. All power is distributed according to a system of approval from those already in power. Across weeks and months, those providing the actual work will be used to death and burnt out, if they do not end up becoming the users, themselves. For the leadership, it is of no concern; for as long as there are naive recruits willing to carry the organisation, there is an income stream of reputation to the organisation's coffers. A meritocracy's stability is derived from only allowing into influence those who are interested in maintaining the status quo.

As a result, functionally, there's no such thing as proving your abilities so much as proving that you are socially compatible.

The Necessity of Oral Tradition

In the process of carrying out normal work on NationStates, there usually exists some kind of record of what's been accomplished. For region-building, there's a lot of pride in being able to look at a space where there once was nothing and see a thriving community instead. Issue writers may encounter their work, presumably, until the end of time as their issues are randomly handed out to nations that fit the requirements. In World Assembly affairs, even resolutions that are struck out and repealed survive with the original text publicly accessible for future generations of international legislators.

For activity in gameplay, such records do not necessarily exist. Researching an organisation or individual largely means digging through three hundred thousand posts in eight year old threads in the Gameplay Board, observing various political posturing in the Security Council, and piecing together broken data entries from what scant few regions remain in their original states. For players in these areas, the continuity of their history is as stable as a chalk drawing in a rainstorm.

The only counteraction to the passage of time and slow decline into irrelevance, is the constant regurgitation of past accomplishments and exploits. For this reason, gameplay chats are the most heated and toxic of any other area on NationStates. The nature by which they are such is also intrinsic to their function. When one player recounts their history, their political opponent of the time is provided an opportunity to retell their own history within that event, casting shade on the first player's success, or bringing to light the harm it caused. From nothing, the conflict of the past is returned to the present and no resolution of it will ever be found.

To the outside observer, these spaces serve no function but pointless heated debate. However for anyone who is exposed to the content of that debate, the maintenance of all involved players' memory is preserved. As long as memory remains, so does some shed of relevance, even if the recitations take place in an entirely insular manner. To return to World Assembly affairs, a General Assembly legislator's legacy may continue to live on for years without additional intervention if their original writing was a quality contribution. For raiders who wish to have a legacy, however, they must lock themselves into this cycle of rehashing the same conflicts from their armchair for the rest of all time.

Those who do not are swiftly forgotten, for nothing is retained after a career in raiding, save for a disrupted sleep cycle.

The Nature of Deception

Depending on the social circles to which you are presently aligned, you will hear the following talking point at some level of intensity: Everything that takes place within the gameplay sphere is In Character unless it is a moderation issue.

The argument being that all gameplay activity equates to actions carried out by a fictional government personality, operated by an Out of Character personality, where the fictional government is able to either protect or attack a region and its residents. With what I have presented so far, this should be taken as an odd circumstance, as these events cannot take place in a vacuum. We know that a player who is professing their history in a gameplay chat does so to preserve their Out of Character relevance and reputation, but we are also reminded in no uncertain terms, that the player's past gameplay actions ought to be considered to be acting In Character as well. The result is a situation where an "In Character" action is done for Out of Character reasons, to cause Out of Character effects.

There are notable implications for this conclusion on the topic of infiltration. The function of infiltration is to provide in-roads for a raiding organisation to seize control of a region where it would otherwise not be viable. The technique is often effective because there is no degree of separation where a player can remove themselves from the social circumstances where NationStates takes place. There are no mechanical thresholds at which something ticks over past an objective point of safety. Infiltration is, therefore, inherently a process by which a player, "In Character", uses Out of Character subterfuge in order to achieve In Character ends. It is inherently a process of exercising the manipulation of feelings that a player cannot separate themselves from, even if it were possible or healthy to do so.

What matters to the leaders of any organisation is the continuity of that organisation. What gets this done in the raiding world is being talked about, being perceived as substantial, being able to appear anywhere and demonstrate that no one is safe. Any target is, therefore, on the table, and any avenue by which it is able to be conquered is fair game. Manipulating people into giving their trust, and preferably endorsements, regional officerships, passwords, or perhaps pushing for a change in laws that damages the community or its security - all is a valid route towards the objective. Be it corrupt, so long as the ends are reached, all is fair.

This tactic is not necessarily unique and, indeed, a raiding organisation may be targeted for infiltration as well. At that point, it falls to the raider staff to detect the threat, even if it is a test from one of their own. Living in this world of constant suspicion, where it is known that not every infiltrator will be detected, generates a particular environment. As an infiltrator may linger on and rise through the ranks, ultimately there is no guarantee that anyone is telling anyone else information that is accurate and truthful. Raiders will tell other raiders information that is expressly false in order to test if the disinformation will be leaked somewhere observable. Raiders will be held back from advancement if their loyalty to the cause is considered less than lock-step with leadership, on the chance that it belies a hidden allegiance. Even to the end, suspicion of a fellow raider's true nature will always remain.

Ultimately, there is no guarantee that anyone is telling anyone else information that is accurate and truthful. In a world where it is known that personal testimony from an ally may be a deception tactic, there forms a passive state of unease and cynicism that you cannot trust anyone. It becomes impossible to know where reality stops and where manipulation begins, and whether someone's feelings and reactions are genuine, themselves, or whether it was all an act meant to serve an agenda. There's naturally even less ability for an outside observer to determine whether something is a trick, for it often is. The result is a situation where someone's Out of Character disagreement or distress may be discredited. The consequences, at large, for a life of manipulation run deep. The atmosphere's effects are best able to be felt when one is no longer affected by it.

The Case for Moralism

A region which has the population of one nation in the World Assembly can be raided by a military and be referred to as a tag, because it is considered to be a place of no consequence or value. A region which has a population of fifty nations in the World Assembly would most certainly be a target for occupation. So what is the difference between the two? Although the motives for selecting a region can be up to the raid's particular circumstance, its value as a target is primarily linked to scale. Scale being caused by the individual number of people personally believing and invested in the region. That belief and investment comes from region-builders' work and, without such work, there would be a vacancy in place of a community.

Fundamentally then, there cannot be a raid report of a quality that would capture the world's attention if it weren't for the work of people creating things that could be burned down.

Although it is certainly not as common a sentiment as it was in the past, there exists within raiding the type of player with a diehard devotion to the cause. This is a type I would refer to as moralist raiders. Players who genuinely believe that natives are bad, destroying the things they care about is good, and what emotional injury they can add along the way contributes to the salty reward. That mentality disturbs me greatly, and although the optics of these people existing is inconvenient, as leadership tries to stow them in a bin out of sight, they very much exist and influence the course that an occupation will take. Their beliefs are based in the same vein of thought that whenever someone infiltrates a forum or chat server and irreparably destroys all of its content, the community deserved such damage for not being competent enough to prevent it.

In most regards these players have been relegated to the pages of history, although some remain in powerful positions of authority still. Far more common are the dissociative types. The general notion that the action of raiding can be disconnected from any of its effects. That it must be viewed in an isolated light, detached from its consequences. Therefore, in modern raiding circles, this trending rationale for carrying out a raid revolves around the idea that NationStates, and all of the activity that is contained within it, may be collectively thought of as being "just a game". As before, some amount of that is true in a literal sense. But, and while not always the case, NationStates regions are communities.

One thing that I observed early in my exploration of this site was that, often times, a region's community is exclusively NationStates-based, and their friend group is entirely region-based. These communities may be home to people who have no other place to go and which house their only friends. They may be home to players who have passed away and can only be found in ancient RMB posts. They may be home to creative works, which took hours upon hours to complete. All of that material is the content which must be burned to generate a raid report of sufficient notoriety to prop up a raiding organisation's relevance. Such activity should be considered morally wrong, and that is the basis on which my own defender moralism is founded.

A certain metaphor involving sandcastles is inescapably apt, especially after having witnessed such unironic joy expressed of others' misfortune. It is, further, difficult to not sympathise with the plight of natives in their own home, lamenting the work that they put into their community, then being torched for the amusement. It is difficult to relegate that to a box labelled "just a game" when clearly only one party is of that opinion. Yet it's my personal interpretation that this disconnect is not done out of the predisposition for deception that I mentioned earlier, but out of a general unfamiliarity of why such community work may be considered personal.

The Democratic Model

Even outside regions that only exist as a military, there are governments which follow meritocratic models and are, correspondingly, raider-sympathetic. In many cases, there is a substantial cross-over between the leadership of raider militaries, and the leadership of meritocratic regional governments. This should not be surprising, for the viability of raiding lies in its ability to market itself as a legitimate part of NationStates and a fundamentally valid lifestyle. To this end, raiders are deployed to various democracies around NationStates, some by their own volition and some by gentle suggestion from a superior.

The goal is to become a political force and push back on ideas within the target region that work against raider interests. A raider may participate in the democracy to serve their political ends, but democracies as a general concept will they criticise. As stated before, in a meritocracy, power is derived from those in power, and supplied to individuals who are interested in maintaining the status quo. One does not acquire power without the blessing of the establishment. Players in democracies, however, are not appealing to an establishment through their social connections, but to a public format through their accomplishments which can be easily see, or critiquing circumstances which ought to be changed. For any situation in which an outsider could possibly disrupt the established norm, it may be considered a threat if your power depends on that norm.

Large, active regions are active because of their tremendous engagement. Tremendous engagement can be intrinsically linked to democracies because no player will care about a place where they have no chance to have their voices heard, where they will have no chance to make a difference. While opinions and trending powers may come and go, democracies tend to skew defender by the collective sentiment of protecting what has been built, and believing in the rights of self determination, even towards foreign regions which may be only seen from afar.

As a result, the raider individuals who have been commanded or self-assigned to engaged with democracies have a vested interest in applying meritocratic ideals to their target regions. They have a vested interest in causing stagnation, where possible, order to reduce the general engagement, and therefore resistance to political concepts which would otherwise be seen as a bridge too far. Such can be recollected in 2019, where a key component of the attempted coup in The East Pacific was to cause stagnation and an uncomfortable atmosphere within the region. With members driven out from influence and government, the pushback for passing legal reforms that directly harmed the region's security was minimal, and ultimately led to the attempt to end the East's democracy entirely.

There is only so much community building which can take place within a raiding organisation before its level of activity moderates it to the point of ineffectiveness. There is only so much cultural activity that can be had before a raiding organisation turns its attention away from raiding or a meritocratic structure completely. Community building is, then, inherently anti-raider, as it is work that tries to make a thriving, positive, and active region. A region whose political leanings will likely desire democratic engagement and participation. A region of diverse players who come for the nation building, but stay for the community they accidentally ran into. A region of people who play games and write RPs together, and possibly defend from time to time.

A region which would be the perfect target to burn down.