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I can never say enough about how big our community is, maybe because I was so late in really seeing it. I always had a lot of skepticism about how many of us there could possibly be, which was easy since in our first year we added about 800 people total, something we now do in a month. And then as the numbers on the TMF kept climbing, I kept making excuses like "Well a lot of those are duplicate identities because people lose their password, or spambots who came here to advertise."
But eventually it just couldn't be denied, because right now the TMF is ranked number 25,824 on the entire Internet. At first glance that seems like a high number, but when you think about all the sites you would just assume are going to be top-visited sites, like google, walmart, amazon.com, and so on, being number 25,000 is pretty respectable!
In fact, considering that it's a website exclusively for people into tickling, it's incredible. The odds are that, unless it's 2 in the morning, if you go and look right now at the number of people visiting this site at the same time as you, that number will be anywhere from 750 to 1,000. So while it's questionable how many of the 80,000+ registered members we have represent individual people, it can't be denied that there are a lot of us.
And large groups of people can do things that individuals can never hope to achieve. Which brings me to the subject of this blog.
I was reading an article about something called <A TARGET=NEW HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other_World_Kingdom">Other World Kingdom,</A> which is a micronation devoted to femdom bdsm. And while my interest in femdom bdsm begins and ends with knowing it exists, my interest in micronations goes back to the first time I read about <A TARGET=NEW HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand">the Principality of Sealand.</A> In short, a micronation is a self-proclaimed free state that is not claimed by any recognized nation, and Sealand is an abandoned at-sea battle station from World War 2 that was occupied by some crackpot along with his family and friends, who claimed it as salvage and declared it as an independent nation.
They were even invaded by a rival explorer group or something, repelled the invaders, and took a prisoner. The prisoner was a German citizen, and to get him released, Germany had to send a diplomat to negotiate with Sealand. The best part of the story is that Sealand claimed that by asking them to recognize Germany's diplomatic papers, Germany was implicitly acknowledging that Sealand is an independent state.
But the subject of my musing is the Other World Kingdom, which is a privately owned estate in Czechoslovakia, with what amounts to its own bdsm flavored legal system and currency. It functions in part as a resort, charging for room and board and services, and apparently it also has taxes for people who are considered citizens of the state. I doubt that it's self sufficient, but on the other hand, it could be. And even if not, it's somehow being made to work and that's what matters.
Wikipedia, which we all know is never wrong, says it's being valued at around fifteen million dollars. Now that's more money than I could ever hope to put together. But it's not a sum that exceeds the imagination, and it's making me start to play What If inside my head a lot.
As in, What If the TMF was a real place instead of a website, a micronation devoted to tickling and other related activities.
As ridiculous as it sounds, it's clearly not impossible.
I'm going to blog more about this, I'm just laying a foundation right now...
Jimi Hendrix said:
I can never say enough about how big our community is, maybe because I was so late in really seeing it. I always had a lot of skepticism about how many of us there could possibly be, which was easy since in our first year we added about 800 people total, something we now do in a month. And then as the numbers on the TMF kept climbing, I kept making excuses like "Well a lot of those are duplicate identities because people lose their password, or spambots who came here to advertise."
But eventually it just couldn't be denied, because right now the TMF is ranked number 25,824 on the entire Internet. At first glance that seems like a high number, but when you think about all the sites you would just assume are going to be top-visited sites, like google, walmart, amazon.com, and so on, being number 25,000 is pretty respectable!
In fact, considering that it's a website exclusively for people into tickling, it's incredible. The odds are that, unless it's 2 in the morning, if you go and look right now at the number of people visiting this site at the same time as you, that number will be anywhere from 750 to 1,000. So while it's questionable how many of the 80,000+ registered members we have represent individual people, it can't be denied that there are a lot of us.
And large groups of people can do things that individuals can never hope to achieve. Which brings me to the subject of this blog.
I was reading an article about something called <A TARGET=NEW HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other_World_Kingdom">Other World Kingdom,</A> which is a micronation devoted to femdom bdsm. And while my interest in femdom bdsm begins and ends with knowing it exists, my interest in micronations goes back to the first time I read about <A TARGET=NEW HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand">the Principality of Sealand.</A> In short, a micronation is a self-proclaimed free state that is not claimed by any recognized nation, and Sealand is an abandoned at-sea battle station from World War 2 that was occupied by some crackpot along with his family and friends, who claimed it as salvage and declared it as an independent nation.
They were even invaded by a rival explorer group or something, repelled the invaders, and took a prisoner. The prisoner was a German citizen, and to get him released, Germany had to send a diplomat to negotiate with Sealand. The best part of the story is that Sealand claimed that by asking them to recognize Germany's diplomatic papers, Germany was implicitly acknowledging that Sealand is an independent state.
But the subject of my musing is the Other World Kingdom, which is a privately owned estate in Czechoslovakia, with what amounts to its own bdsm flavored legal system and currency. It functions in part as a resort, charging for room and board and services, and apparently it also has taxes for people who are considered citizens of the state. I doubt that it's self sufficient, but on the other hand, it could be. And even if not, it's somehow being made to work and that's what matters.
Wikipedia, which we all know is never wrong, says it's being valued at around fifteen million dollars. Now that's more money than I could ever hope to put together. But it's not a sum that exceeds the imagination, and it's making me start to play What If inside my head a lot.
As in, What If the TMF was a real place instead of a website, a micronation devoted to tickling and other related activities.
As ridiculous as it sounds, it's clearly not impossible.
I'm going to blog more about this, I'm just laying a foundation right now...
