by Bobby Digital

Whether or not you choose to acknowledge it, the world in which we live is abundant in absurdity. Sometimes, when day-to-day life becomes too methodic, and too predictable, people find themselves tuning out the weirdness, and passively continuing on around it. Some, have never even noticed the elephant in society’s living room; that in our lives which is strange. Others thrive on the absurd, but are starved for it. They find themselves alienated, freaks in a society of complacent zombies.

As a Discordian of mind and of spirit, I have long felt a personal obligation to highlight the weirdness in the world around me. A few years ago, I was swimming in a lake, when a man in a full three-piece suit pulled up along the water and stepped out of his car. Casually, without removing his shoes or any of his clothing, he walked into the water until it was up to his neck. He turned towards me, and explained, “I do this every day.” He shrugged, walked out of the water, and drove away, soaking wet. The man revealed to me something strange that I hadn’t seen before. It threw me out of my own box and inspired me to stop hiding my own weirdness from those around me. Knowing that there were others out there, other freaks, other casual promoters of the strange, I exhaled.

Over the years, I’ve met many others who like me, share the same desire to facilitate discord. In early 2008, a call to action was launched, urging Discordians and the like to team up and work as a community on projects geared toward this sort of promotion. The ongoing project is called “OMGASM”, or Operation: Mindfuck - Golden Apple Seed Missions. Here’s how you play: anyone can create a Golden Apple Seed Mission, or a GASM. Once a GASM is created, (and promoted), networks of Discordians can join in on the fun simultaneously run with the mission. We’re looking to throw people out of their boxes, to surprise them with unpredictability, to force them to confront what they may not understand, and let other freaks know that we’re out there, pranking, laughing, and making the strangeness of this world a bit more overt. Having a team of people working towards a goal allows for large-scale mindfucks, and so far, the OMGASM project has delivered quite well.

“Colbertgasm” consisted of a mass snail mail letter writing campaign to TV personality Stephen Colbert, inviting him into the Bavarian Illuminati. To accept the invitation, Colbert was instructed to say certain code words on the air. Letters poured in from all over the world. Shortly after the project's letter writing week, Colbert casually uttered a code word, “23 skidoo”, in the middle of an interview. He said it slowly, leaning in to the camera a bit. Those involved with Colbert Mission knew that they’d accomplished their goal. Though this in-joke was invisible to outsiders, the Discordian Society had worked together to create it. We had established an in-joke between our secret society and one of our mascots. Colbert is on our side. The OMGASM Network worked.

“Postergasm” is another example of a game that anyone can play. The mission is to hang up posters in cities, buildings, or anywhere where they will be seen. The project website states the objective: "Modify your environment. Reclaim public spaces. Surprise people out of their daily rut. Encourage creative thought." The posters may include images, single-sentence ideas, general nonsense, or anything else that can serve to throw your average person out of their pedestrian robot mode and announce to the community that weirdness lives. Some of the posters are funny, some serious, and others are downright nonsensical. The message can include whatever the person hanging the poster desires. This is an easy and fun mission, which can be played literally anywhere in the world.*

The best thing about the project is that anyone can start a Golden Apple Seed Mission and invite others around the world to play along. Using the magic of the web, you can search for magic words like "OMGASM" and "Golden Apple Seed Mission" and find others who want help with their projects. This allows a great opportunity for Discordians everywhere to collaborate, and to go out and do something fun and strange. This is the information age. We now have the ability to play together, and really shake shit up. Need more chaos in your everyday? OMGASM is giving you the opportunity to make it happen..

Go ahead, start something big.

(end)

• PROTIP:: After you put up a poster, take a picture of it, upload it to flickr.com, and tag it "POSTERGASM". This will help encourage others to do the same.