I did end up taking one of the essays "A touch of the Con" and rewriting it in the first person instead of the second person. Now it's written from the point of view of the con
"that's exactly how we want it! Tired little sheep, running around..."
I think it sounds much better that way. Incites people to rebel and disagree with THAT force rather than feeling judged or attacked
but anyway
look at the BIP within this memetic framework.
Personally, I think the Black Iron Prison metaphor is the product, and the pamphlet is the packaging.
Velocity - a measure of how fast an idea spreads from one party to another
I'd say it has a slow velocity. It is a somewhat complex idea which relies on metaphor and abstractions. This takes a long time to communicate.
The sound-bite 'you're stuck in a prison made up of your choices and conditioning' doesn't sell it well. To get the full experience, you have to read the essays and be in that mindset. Which takes a bit longer.
The PDF has high velocity because it's easy to link someone to something
Hive
Well the PD hive is infected with this ideavirus, and we've tried to spread it to other hives as well. The BIP pamphlet is very much tailored to our hive - it's an interesting thought experiment to visualize how the BIP pamphlet would look if we tailored it to other hives.
How would it look if we re-wrote it for SomethingAwful?
How would it look if we re-wrote it for wicca.com?
How would it look if we re-wrote it for the Prairie Homemaker forum?
Smoothness - how easy it is for someone to sneeze the meme.
again, it's very easy to link to a PDF
There is a certain type of person who will read the BIP pamphlet and want to tell others about it. It is very smooth to them, but not to others. what factors make it that way?
The BIP metaphor has nothing about it which relies on Discordia. It could theoretically exist without Discordia or this website.
In some ways I think it's spread within us so deeply because it's connected to this idea we all like - that it's a Discordian text and can accomplish the same sort of awakening that some Discordians strive for.