Island2012
From CaseyPedia
Island2012 is a website started by noted fraudster Casey Serin with the purported purpose of generating revenue to purchase a tropical island by 2012.
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[edit] Origins
After the Angel Lynn debacle, Casey disappeared for some weeks, claiming to be living in the woods and panning for gold on "Yankee Jim's" land in the Sierra foothills. At the time virtually all Casey-related activity, speculation and occasional news releases took place on his brother Steve's Blog.
On August 10, 2009 Casey reappeared from his sojourn in the woods and launched something he called the "Serin Favor Network" using social networking platform socialgo.com. As with most of Casey's enterprises, it was vaguely-defined. Casey spoke of attracting a large community of people and charging them a membership fee to be in the club, which offered vague promises of "profit sharing." The site was eventually closed by socialgo after numerous Haterz™ complained that Casey appeared to be running a scam or Ponzi scheme. Casey then moved his operation back to a blog hosted on the serin.us domain.
On August 13, 2009, while sleeping in the woods during the annual Perseid Meteor Shower, Casey claims to have awakened and seen a huge meteor, complete with flames and sound effects. Haterz™ immediately noted that what he claimed to have seen was not plausible and most certainly would have caused significant damage on impact had it occurred, and attributed his vision to drugs. In addition, Casey claims to have suddenly had a revelation of sorts, indicating the way forward. In a typical fit of Walrusism™, Casey refused to divulge the contents of his vision, and instead announced that he would have an announcement on August 16th.
[edit] Launch
On Saturday August 15, Casey announced his vision to his family in their living room with a simulcast on UStream.[1] In the video, Casey appeared to be rather disheveled and typically incoherent. While he promoted the event on his socialgo site and seemed to hope for a large audience, he didn't even attempt to look businesslike and instead wore a "wife beater" shirt. In a rambling presentation lasting longer than 45 minutes, he revealed that his great idea was to set up a website with 1000 sponsors, collect money and use it to purchase a tropical island by 2012, for use by himself and the sponsors and other believers in the project who would co-own the island with him.
To justify the possibility, Casey unveiled a "financial plan" that called for 1000 sponsorships, the cheapest of which is $1 per month and each additional one costing $1 more. He calculated that this scheme will yield over $500,000 per month, once all sponsorships are sold. In Casey's mind, apparently, the money already existed even though the website did not exist, benefits for the sponsors remained vague and not a single sponsorship had actually been sold, even at the lowest ($1) price. Casey noted that this would yield over $10m by 2012, which he believed would be sufficient to cover the costs of an island, preferably a fully-developed one with pre-existing sustainable facilities.
[edit] Reaction
Haterz™ met the proposal with laughter and derision, as apparently did one family member who noticeably walks out during the presentation. Even brother Steve could not contain his disbelief, posting on his blog that "I’m still very speechless after all of that…"[2]
Commenters who managed to regain their composure began asking questions, which in typical Casey fashion went unanswered. In particular, critics asked two questions: How did Casey plan to recruit sponsors and how did he really expect to pay for an island that could accommodate the numbers of sponsors and other supporters he envisioned. FalseCasey posted one particularly scalding analysis[3] on their blog as well as to the comments area on Island2012, but no response was every received from Casey. In response to Casey's repeated statement that supporters and sponsors needed to have "faith" and not worry about the details, which would be worked out in the future, FalseCasey stated that "faith is not a viable plan."
[edit] Follow Up Activity
Casey's primary follow up to his great reveal was to do nothing.
Gradually over time, the Island2012 project became more and more self-centered, and eventually Casey ceased referring to the island as "our island" and instead began calling it "my island."
In further comments on i2012 during the following week, Casey backtracked on the idea that sponsors would be part owners of the island, and instead said that they would be entitled to "benefits," which might or might not include use of island facilities.
He somewhat refined the initial presentation, which he offered to the "History Makers," a group of young wannabe entrepreneurs who meet in a church basement. For this second presentation[4] he began wearing a tropical "island style" shirt which would become his trademark throughout the Island2012 saga. He described the project as an "open social fundraising experiment to create a world-class sustainable resort offering benefits to the Island2012 family and sponsors as well as entertainment for fans," a description that caused BelowTheCrowd to comment that "He seems to know how to string buzzwords together. Too bad he doesn't know what they mean."[5]
Immediately after this second presention, Casey began seriously "net-working" on Facebook and Twitter as well as laying the groundwork for The Party in the Park which was to be the "official" launch of Island2012 as well as his birthday celebration. This planning took up the bulk of the next two weeks and resulted in Casey sitting alone in a park with a webcam waiting for his fans.
Shortly before the party, Casey removed all blog content and replaced it with an embedded UStream channel. He engaged in irregular video streaming and talk-casts over the next several weeks.
[edit] Talkshoe, Ustream, Facebook, Twitter, Wordpress, PayPal, YouTube, and Casey
By September 30, 2009, no noticeable progress had been made toward getting people to buy him his island, but the Island2012 online presence had mostly stabilized. Casey stated he wanted most of the interaction to be through Facebook, but he re-launched the blog as a Wordpress site with commentary enabled anyway (strictly moderated, of course). He started streaming video with integrated chat for several hours in multiple sessions every weekday, but soon decided the chat was too negative and shut it off, allowing textual interaction via Twitter only.
His morning sessions highlighted "Casey at Work," showing him at his computer, diligently applying himself to the task of building a multi-million-dollar exotic real-estate enterprise from scratch in two years. Strangely, this seemed to consist mainly of tweaking the blog title, surfing the Web, then tweaking the blog title some more -- which seems odd, but he's the Internet professional, and we aren't.
The afternoon session (nominally 4 PM Pacific time) was simulcast on Talkshoe and featured conversation with callers, which made it necessary to access both Talkshoe and Ustream at the same time (with Ustream muted) if you wanted to hear more than Casey's side of the conversation. If you wanted text chat and wished to avoid Ustream's miserable IRC implementation, it was wise to also run an IRC client (while Casey still had chat enabled) or Twitter (after he didn't).
Observers concluded that only an Internet professional like Casey could figure out a way to do a webcast that requires the audience to connect with an audio stream, an audio/video stream, and a messaging application or chat client just to observe. To participate also requires an app like Skype or a phone call to Talkshoe.
After Modestogirl mercilessly ripped into him on several talkshoe sessions (no one could figure out why he let her do it; most people get cut off if he thinks their tone of voice is even slightly critical) he decided most call-ins were too negative and the afternoon sessions (with rare exceptions) became rambling monologues of Casey soliloquizing. The Talkshoe streams are available for download, and select video clips from the Ustream archive were edited by him and put on YouTube to satisfy the public's appetite for Casey's trademark wit and wisdom.
He announced a "sponsor model" on Oct. 6 and had it loosely implemented by about the 8th (if you count a column listing the numbers from 1 to 100 as "implemented") so at best he was about a month behind his schedule calling for it to be designed, implemented, tested, and deployed by Sept. 12. The first two sponsor slots taken -- at $100/mo and $99/mo, also the two most expensive -- were bartered, so he received no money of the sort you can actually use to buy an island, a sandwich, or anything else. All non-barter payments have to be done through PayPal. He seems inflexible about this, although there is some reason to believe the $1 spot is done on a cash-exchange basis.
The definition of "sponsorship" oscillates between offering a) nothing but advertising on a seldom-visited blog for an outrageous price to b) part ownership of the island. It was pointed out that soliciting investors equates to selling securities, opening a vast legal can of worms and scrutiny by government agencies. When he got some legal advice that told him the same thing (apparently from a first-year law student, judging by Casey's mention of the gentleman's "class of 2012" keychain) he immediately took steps to make it clear that sponsors would receive and could expect nothing but advertising. As it sank in that advertising alone (at rates far above the cost of banner ads on sites with a hundred thousand times the traffic) offered nothing of interest to potential sponsors, he began to drift back. As of mid-October 2009, he is again using the wording "We are buying a tropical island", clearly implying investment. If he ever acquires a sponsor that pays significant actual money, his breezy dismissal of the legalities may present problems.
Casey has stated that, through cunning investments, he will multiply sponsor income many times over to obtain enough capital to purchase an island. Given Casey's track record with investments, the possibility of sufficient funds being available to close the deal by the 1/1/2012 deadline is a matter of some debate.
At one point, the blog title mentioned buying the island with no money down. If this is still his plan, it is unclear what he needs any money for in the first place. After all, buying real estate for no money down worked so well for him the first several times, and made him the celebrity he is today. With sufficient cash back at close, he could make the payments without needing any outside money at all.
With the rapid-fire tweaking the blog title, subtitle, etc., have undergone, it is difficult to tell what's permanent and what isn't, but he may have adopted the slogan "Got a Dream. Building a Team. Saving The Date. Trusting Our Fate." Unfortunately, the slogan is followed by some Law of Attraction drivel, instead of the obvious and much funnier "BURMA SHAVE."
[edit] Law of Attraction
Much like conspiracy-nut drivel was a recurring theme in the crazier days of TrueCasey, the Law of Attraction has featured heavily in many of Casey's later Island2012 postings and Twitter messages. One of Casey's sponsors, Sarah Prout, is involved in consolidating paid essay submissions into Law of Attraction-related books (additionally, her Island2012 sponsor position was granted by Casey in exchange for her giving him a $1000 chapter spot in one of her books).
[edit] Party on the Island
One recurring theme that has been present since the first conference where he revealed the island idea to his immediate family is the New Year's Day 2012 party. He wants all the sponsors / investors -- or at least those he approves of or invites, it's hard to tell -- to join him at the stroke of midnight, January 1, 2012 for a huge party on his new island.
The first day of 2012 falls on Sunday, so a big party would seem to be out of keeping with Casey's stated observance of the Christian Sabbath. However, he is not a Details Guy.
[edit] References
- ↑ Island2012 - First Presentation, on UStream, August 15, 2009
- ↑ The Island, on WWB, August 16, 2009
- ↑ We've Been Out of it..., on FalseCasey, August 28, 2009.
- ↑ Island 2012 Plan 0.9 Video #3 with Casey Serin, on YouTube, August 30, 2009
- ↑ Comment on CH.C, August 31, 2009
