Revision as of 22:04, 14 July 2008

In January 2008, I began to organize OMGASM, a network which would facilitate the Discordian Society's desire to propagate large scale pranks. The Discordians, an irreligion composed of tricksters and lunatics, reject any central leadership. This makes it difficult for them to organize themselves to complete their goals. The OMGASM is my attempt to network pranksters, lunatics, and other cool people so that they can share resources for pranks and projects.

OMGASM is an acronym. OM stands for Operation Mindfuck. It is an ongoing Discordian project to challenge existing assumptions and provoke critical and creative thought. GASM stands for Golden Apple Seed Mission. It's a meme which indicates a project needs assistance. A Golden Apple Seed Mission is a project which "would be more fun for all of us if you helped out." We are using this codeword to tag different projects and make them accessable to each other via the web.

OMGASM is about largescale pranks which require a lot of participation. For example, one of successful missions was Colbertgasm. On his TV show, Stephen Colbert occasionally expresses a desire to join the Illuminati, the secret conspiracy which allegedly controls all Western culture. In Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminatus! Trilogy, the Illuminati and the Discordian Society are polar opposites. I felt it was an amusing twist to encourage Discordians to masquerade as Illuminati to win over a faux-conservative like Stephen Colbert. Our operatives were instructed to write to Colbert on behalf of the Bavarian Illuminati and offer him a position. To accept this station, he would have to use an Illuminati code-word on the air during the week of March 5th. We supplied him with several possible code-words to choose from (including the infamous "23 Skidoo"). We knew that most mail doesn't actually reach Colbert, so flooding him with snail-mail would be necessary. We estimate that during our "buzz week", he received some two hundred pieces of mail. The mission was a success - he dropped at least five of our code words on the air, confirming that he was listening and he was in on the joke. I feel the real accomplishment, however, was motivating all those people to actually write letters.

There are several ongoing missions within OMGASM, including my favorite pet project, POSTERGASM (see also: http://www.blackironprison.com/index.php?title=POSTERGASM). POSTERGASM encourages people to Modify their environment, reclaim public spaces, surprise people out of their daily rut, and encourage creative thought. We have a large quantity of posters in PDF form that anyone can print out and hang up on trees. The posters' content ranges from silly to thought provoking, and from absurd to surreal. For more information, check out my essay "Why I Put Up Posters", located at http://www.blackironprison.com/index.php?title=Why_I_Put_Up_Posters.