Three friends from Lancashire in the UK have set out on a mission to create a new world order by offering aspiring revolutionaries the tools to lay territorial claim over their local townships and turn them into their very own independent virtual nation states.
The medium through which this global revolution is taking shape is BreakawayRepublix.com (http://www.breakawayrepublix.com), an interactive
new website which enables people to claim virtual rights to any real world town and customise it with a personalised flag, national anthem, constitution, citizens and many other features
based on governing an actual real world country. Under the latest offer, new users to the site can declare their first town's independence completely free of charge.
Many major towns and cities have already celebrated their independence, along with lots of other smaller villages, towns and cities across the world.
''With citizen joining rules, the ability to appoint ministers and even ally themselves with other republix this is the nearest people are going to get to running their own country", says
Sheraz Arshad, one of the creators of the site.
''Right at the local level, everyone who registers has the opportunity to create a free social network for their town", says co-founder Matthew Cowan. "It's a virtual replica of the real
world, with the subtle difference of there being potentially 4 million countries instead of 192!"
Ownership of a breakaway republix is unique, meaning that once a town or city has been claimed, no one else can own it, except of course if the incumbent owner chooses to trade their
claim.
People can use the tools provided to interact with people they know or with people who share an affiliation with a given town or place, by using the site's communication tools. All
villages, towns and cities in the world are available to be declared independent, no matter how big or small they are. ''It's even got my small home town in Finland, which has less than
600 people living in it", says Olli Aro, the third member of SMOG Media, the organisation set up to manage the website.
Republix owners and citizens in this new virtual world communicate, interact and trade with each other, with "republix" exchanging hands at prices agreed between owners, and citizens
being selected to serve as Ministers within the republix that they have chosen to reside within. Republix owners can even sell links to local businesses or publish adverts relating to
their local town or city, thus making real money out of their republix.