User:Rachel Faith

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Rachel Faith or Rachel Faith Anderson or Rachel Anderson is mostly noted for her internet participation in the AOL Senate Simulation and other political simulations and discussion boards. Rachel first played in the 1996 play by email Government Simulation with Ron Bronson. After a nasty and personal fight broke out across the emails, Rachel resigned from that game and continued her daily political chats online in the Cloak Room; a political chat room hosted by AOL's News and Politics Forum. Rachel was 12 years old and in the 7th grade when she began her online politics on AOL after recieving a new family computer for Christmas that year.

As a regular of the Cloak Room, Rachel became very familiar with the various NewsHosts, which were all annonomusly hosting the chat while on duty but were also regular members of the chat room by other names. One of the chief objects of some participats was to guess who was who; that is to see if by style or text or context or even by who was not present during certian chats, it could be determind that so and so was actually one of the NewsHosts. As a staunch conservative and an exceptionally atriculate defender of conservative and even Libertarian principles, she found favor in three different NewsHosts. These relationships convinced her that when she was 18, she would apply to AOL to become a NewsHost herself.

Two year later, in the fall of 1998, Ron Stringfeild, a simi-reglar member of the chat invited Rachel to the newly formed AOL Senate Sim. Ron had observed Rachel debating a very well known Libertarian position for the elimination of the income tax and thinking she was a fellow Libertarian, invited her to jopin his party, The Libertarians, in The Sim. Rachel saw that this AOL Sim, was composed of many of the old members of the 1996 email based Government Sim. She also saw that the election losses had decimated the Republican Party, from 30 members to 6 members. Much to the dissapointment of Ron Stringfeild, Rachel joined the GOP.

Within a week she was Party Whip and with the Leader on a 2 week Leave of Absence, she was also acting Leader. Several of those who had quit in haste following the election soon signed back in and began to act as if this new girl Rachel was not even there or legitimately entitled to her office(s). Rachel saw that all which was needed were names, that is willing players, and votes. She returned to her chat room and recruited dozens of new players loyal to her and supportive of her ambitions. While this stratagey worked for the short run, it made several of the "old" players extremely jealous and many never overcame their open hostility towards Rachel for "taking over the party".

Rachel did take over the party, and from 1998 to the end in 2003, held every elected office in the party and in the Sim itself, except the Supreme Court. Her ability to recruit new players dramatically altered the very nature of the game. When the game first began, it was a small cadre of about 50 people who all knew each other and used more pursuasion and debate to win elections or to pass bills. The Rachel Faith era to the end, became all about numbers and the Sim grew to rolls calls in the hundreds with over 500 members several times. Many who joined left within one term, many simpley voted when asked but never participated in the debates. With so many players, the familiar intimacy of the game was gone, and it became nearly impossible for anyone to know everyone, even in their own party.

Factions within factions formed, of one group of a dozen or so and their Army of Drones, vs another faction. Party and ideology mattered less and less and personal power mattered more and more. It was in this enviromnet which arose the rampant specualtion of Clones and Cloning. Surely not all 500 members could be 500 different people, some had to be fakes; screen names created just for voting power. All it took was for one person to get caught with one clone for the fever to sweep the sim. In 1999, Rush Miller, pulled off the biggest clone heist in Sim history by managing to get two differnt clones of his, elected as Leader in both the Republican and Democratic Party's at the same time. His subsequent outing by Rachel, nearly ruined the Sim, as both parties were distrought with the lies he told and reputations he ruined by going out with a bang and posting IM logs of private chats and outing every dirty little secret he knew on both sides.

The Sim did recover, and it had several more up and downs, but it was never the small cozy Sim again. Drones replaced Clones as the new boogieman and rules were passed to ensure activity or loss of membership. It was here where Rachel excelled even more, making buddy lists, and keeping relationships alive so that when she needed votes, her allies had all been kept active enough to qualify. The very people who had passed the rules designed to prevent Rachel's power had prevented only their own. But it was only on the floor and in elections where Rachel had the power of the people. The real power was in the Rules Committee. A decidedly undemocratic committee composed of only 2 members from each party regardless of party size or representation.

From 2001 on, the new war was fought over who was elected to the rules committee and what rules could be passed to change the very nature of the game itself. No longer was it about bills, or laws or debate. The very game had become the game to win or to lose. It did not mater who was President or who was on the Supreme Court, the Rules Committee had total power over everything. Thus, Rachel began a new campaign to create a new game, and a new set of rules in which power would be returned to the people.

Rachel became a NewsHost, along with several of her closest allies and friends. She worked with AOL directly to classify the Game as a Game and move it From News to the Games Channel where other Hosts who had been hostile to her reform attempts would no longer be able to play favorites and thwart her plans. Her enemies became aware that she was behind the move to Games when AOL Created "The Congressional Simulation" and began talk of merging the two Sims into one game.

But, there were half a dozen who would ensure both games died before such a merger ever happened. In the end, they won. The fighting, and the clones were no longer a thing of secrecy, outright open cloning occured and Party Leaders and faction leaders did nothing to stop it. A vote was to be held on the Merger, and it was all but certain to pass with 2/3 needed, but then clone after clone came out against it, and certain people began to daily harrass active players by spamming their mail box with Porn and threats until they quit.

In the very end, AOL had enough and pulled the plug on the Sims before the vote could be held. Rachel Faith Anderson, was the last President of the two unjoined Sims.

SInce the end of the AOL Sim, Rachel with her Uncle who runs a Game Design company has been working on a concept for a MMORPG code named "Mega Sim". Many of her ideas for Mega Sim have been adopted and pl;ay tested in one form or another across the dozen or so spin off Sims which populate the internet today.

Rachel, though, is hard at work in Law School and has had little time for Role Playing Games or Simulations and has not been an active member of any since the decline of the AOL Senate Sim.

Friends can ocasionally find her on her more leasurely forum at SciFi, posting on Dr. Who or BattleStar Galactica.

Rachel's vision and promise of a Mega Sim, will not rest, and while she herself is occupied, others press on towards making her dream a reality.