Reconstruction Era

The Reconstruction Era Logo

Reconstruction Era or RE is an internet community that has existed from 2016-present. Primarily focused around gaming and sharing memes, Reconstruction Era is organized on its Discord. Reconstruction Era hosts it's own game servers such as Survival Minecraft and DarkRP. These public servers are both a hangout for RE regulars and a way to attract new people to the community. People have joined RE from all over: There is the old guard, people from civ servers, and a small community who found RE through Gmod. Having also advertised on various discord server lists and communities, the staff have sought to grow RE. Together, the different friend-groups and interests form the basis of RE's sub-communities.

Culturally, Reconstruction Era is very close-knit. There is a healthy amount of in-jokes and memes specific to the server, and a lot of the camaraderie is built around the shared experiences of interacting with the community. RE has its own lingo; for example, to freddo is to use artillery against aircraft. Much of the discussion on the server involves obscure elements of politics and religion.

In addition to the discord, RE is also organized on other platforms such as Steam, Teamspeak, Reddit, Instagram, and this wiki. In any case, the RE staff manage and run the community.

Government of Reconstruction Era

It's not exactly like this...

The leadership structure of the server has its origins in common models for online communities. The concept of admins and moderators is not really new. However there are a few unique traits due to server history. For example, all of the admins are considered equal although Fireball is the owner and proprietor of the Box.

Administrators

The Administration of Reconstruction Era relies on a triumvirate system, with 1234fireball being the First Admin, Freddo3000 being the Second Admin, and Flameoguy being the Third Admin. Each of the Admins are theoretically equal but differ in their skills and contributions to the community. Fireball is the owner and face of the community. Freddo is the main technical contributor to the community, and manages the the installation of new software on the box. Flameo does a large share of configuration and dev work for game servers and other projects. In the social sphere the admins all contribute to different degrees.

Moderators

Often acting like an appointed Viceroy, moderators watch over certain servers or community aspects they find interesting. There are specific moderators for discord, for Arma for Garry's Mod, etc. Most moderators are inactive in practice, as this community requires little moderation.

Developers

The idea guys of Reconstruction Era, they often only contributed ideas compared to configuring or programming. There have been moments when devs were specifically recruited to work on a certain project, but these are rare. Usually people are made 'devs' simply by showing interest in a project. There is a 'development channel' which mostly consists of Flameoguy posting to-do lists and steam workshop links.

In practice

ANARCHY!!!

History

Reconstruction Era, as the name implies, is the reconstructed form of an earlier community. Around 2016, Fireball's friendgroup discord had just recovered from everyone being made admins. To stem the chaos, Fireball removed all of the admins and renamed the community to reflect its reconstruction. Although the community has long since recovered from the damage done, the name 'Reconstruction Era' stuck.

The Early Years (September 2016 - October 2018)

An early screenshot of RE taken by the DenLillePrims, who was kicked out for being a Nazi. You can see the old channel layout, explicit political roles and arguments in #general, and presence of long-gone community members.

The first message in Reconstruction Era was sent by Nox on September 10th 2016. Early Reconstruction Era was much like early Rome, a despotic kingdom made up of outcasts, bandits, and freed slaves or in RE's case Fascists, Anarchists, and Former TheRealmsMC players which much like Rome, caused problems from the get-go.

The major players during this era where Tracer, Mop, and Wouter which often meant there was Civ-tier idiocy in all levels of the community. Tracer would often cause issues along with Wouter due to their beliefs which tended to conflict with the at the time socialist leadership. This was comorbid with the lack of real games for the community to play. The box had yet to be acquired and the Teamspeak was not even set up.

Around June 2017 Slinglend would make a return to Reconstruction Era with the return of Antea being a month later. This would mean that there was a bit of a return to the status quo where the major clique of 1234fireball/Antea/Slinglend returned. A lot of this was just a return to the immaturity of that age, messing with people like MisterJar and Charles Panzer. The major side effect of this is that there was a return of early RE culture and xenophobic tendencies.

The box was eventually set up at the request of Freddo, who set up a multitude of servers including the first minecraft server. There was the first period of drama to occur on the discord, in which Mop interrogated Tracer over her role in the fall of CivEx. There was a major dispute over the server rules and Tracer left the server.

In April 2018, the current logo was designed by Flameoguy. Around the same time the second edition of the RE minecraft server went live. Soon that server would be opened to the public, and for a short time had a lot of activity due to the address being posted on /v/. By July there was significant controversy over whether or not the map should reset, and by August the community had began to split over perceived abuses by the powers that be. This reached an apex with Kodiak and Antea setting up ReRe and attempting to move the majority of the community over to that server. By September the server was becoming increasingly inactive and by November the server had been shut down and in favor of a modded community.

The Deconstruction Era (October 2018 - May 2021)

Reconstruction Era started having changes during this time period, mostly due to Ace joining the community around November 2018 and her relationship with 1234fireball where she held a large amount of social capital. Ace pressured Fireball to take administrative actions on her behalf, such as demoting a long-time administrator of RE along with the exiling of another long-term member of RE. As this shift occurred right at the end of the Drama with Kodiak, it led to a undertones of misogyny from some of the members that RE would need years to reckon with.

There was a moderate expansion to Reconstruction Era, such as the creation of an Instagram page. But for the most part, this saw a decay in the use of existing infrastructure outside of the Minecraft server and Teamspeak. All other servers that weren't these two main servers were mothballed. This created a cycle where there was a lack of common ground for members of the community leading to more inactivity, which led to even less common ground. Reconstruction Era, for the most part, lost its soul.

During the December of 2019, RE deleted its #NSFW and #Gay-NSFW channels. From that point forward, there was virtually no pornography being posted on RE. This caused a small exodus of Coomers, including MudkipGuy. The reason for this deletion was due to the urging of Ace due to her disgust with porn, along with all the distasteful imagery posted in the NSFW channels.

Overall Reconstruction Era underwent a social decline, with the loss of members, activity, and usage of Teamspeak. As the Covid-19 pandemic drove people away from grass, our people mostly played Minecraft, either on the RE survival gimmick servers or Civ Servers. We created a sub-nation of Norlund called Yoslan on CivRealms, which kept the community occupied with civ for a while. The era of decline reversed during a major incident in Ace's and Fireball's estrangement, where Ace left the community, and it began regaining old membership.

The Typhonic Plague (May 2021 - September 2021)

Much of the RE Community spent this period wasting in an opium den in Morocco. This almost led to a really bad business deal with a sheik but it turned out mostly alright with RE acquiring some new friends such as Fynn, KibaCustodian, and Yoshi. The community did come down with a case of exoitic typhoid which required about a year to diagnose and treat.

During this period the RE minecraft server was basically empty on account of the larping addiction.

The Gilded Age (September 2021 - December 2023)

Some have called this period a renaissance. The people of Reconstruction Era have had a fraught relationship with Jötunheimr. The diplomatic tensions came to a head with the Battle of Jötunheimr, although in the months since things have calmed down.

Intermixed with this was the short stint of Reconstruction Era on CivMC. There is also another RE survival modded server which was really active for about 2 weeks, with a people from Gensokyo including Topaz doing magic stuff.

The website saw something of a revival, including a forum and the resuscitation of the chan board. This wiki was viciously attacked by spambots, which Flameo tried to combat. By the end of 2023 the wiki was completely inundated with thousands of autogenerated spam pages. This struggle is chronicled as the Battle of the Box.

Current Events

On January 1st 2024, Freddo completely purged the wiki and prevented the creation of new accounts, and the wiki content was restored from an archive.

There have been quite a few bots joining Discord and adding random roles to themselves, in particular one for an unused DND group.