LDD Sermon 6: Going Viral

[P3nT4gR4m]

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to design some hienously libelous anti-discordian propaganda. Discordian rituals involve baby raping, drug taking, flag burning, terrorism, satan worshipping and staying up late on sundays.... Discordian organisations are a front for mafia money laundering, al quaieda, snuff porn, racketeering and barry manilow cd's.

[Cain]

I'll do some later, but they hardly help in going viral.  Unless you can get the Pope or a Grand Mufti to denounce.  There is the problem of no shared medium for it to enter into the wider consciousness.  Its a good low level and local tactic, but thats all.

[P3nT4gR4m]

I think you're going to have to accept that you gotta start grass roots. The only chance of success lies in maintaing the subterfuge long enough to build the momenum and set the snowball in motion. It begins with one article in one local paper. Only when it's spread to a dozen local press will it attract national interest, then international, then global paranoia. I'm ready to do my bit, fucking with the establishment is totally my bag, another couple of hundred like me and we might get this thing off the ground.

[Cain]

I disagree.  One stunt, media concentration and the internet can and have successfully fueled such things before.  Which is of course the point of the thread.

[Messier Undertree]

LDD Sermon 6: Going Viral

When something goes viral, it means that people start to pass it along to their friends, and they to their friends, until ultimately everyone's talking about it.
- Alex Shifrin

"Nonviolent actions are almost completely useless when deprived of media exposure."
- Antonio Negri


So I've laid out the plans and shown you all how Discordianism could become even more decentralized and effective.  I've talked at some length about how subversion is our ultimate tool and should inform any strategy the activists among us intend on.  What I haven't done is told you how to get to this stage.

Quite simply, Discordianism needs to go viral.  It needs to be springing up like weeds, everywhere with no sign of how it appeared, with self-starting Cabals becoming more and more common.  Of course, this process is already underway, thats how Discordianism works.  Someone reads the book, passes it onto their friends and the next thing you know they're a cabal.  What I propose is a refinement of the process, to speed it up.

The first thing is that there need to be numerous sources on it.  As things stand, there are about 5/6 professionally done Discordian sites and the rest are largely personal pages.  Now, this isn't too bad, except that most of the dissenting and differing opinions are on a few big sites and nowhere else.  To lay the foundation for what I suggest, everyone should probably create their own site (look up Geocities and other free hosting places) and put a few of their own interpretations on there, as well as a links page to the rest of the sites and the larger forums.

Thats the base.  The next stage is where it gets tricky.  The next stage would be to gain media coverage, to draw attention to Discordianism.  Unfortunately, the most effective example in going viral in recent history is Al-Qaeda.  Once a unified terrorist organization, in the space of 5 years it has become a bona fide movement, with self starting cells being set up in over 60 countries.  Say what you like about their aims, but from a marketing point of view, thats a huge success.

Of course, I don't suggest something as retarded as blowing up a building.  Thats just stupid.  What I am thinking of, however, would be some sort of massive jake.  Something that would embarrass the powers that be, that is distinctive, but most importantly something that can then be linked to Discordianism.  I'm sure if we thought about it, we could think of something.  A video of whatever it is would be good too, maybe a follow-up one as well, a sort of mock statement from so-and-so of the Something or Other of the Discordian Society.

Step three would then be to make sure that the media coverage was backed up with our own spreading of the event, via things like MySpace and YouTube.  People see what happens, get interested and check it out via the web.  And what do you know, there are all these sites all over the place....I would suggest it happened in the USA, however.  The USA has the largest concentration of cable channels and media outlets in the world and so is the obvious place to stage anything.

From there on in, it is most likely out of our hands.  We will have created some runaway monster of some description.  This should be no problem for us.  We should be naturals at this.  Look how Banksy's stock went up after one trick. Hell, look at Fathers4Justice, they took one gimmick of dressing up as superheroes and mounting protests and ran with it for as far as they could go and still got national coverage up to the bitter end.  We really should've done stuff like this a long time ago.

I finally got round to reading this. I'm glad I did. You say that we shouldn't blow up a building, which I understand. But how about destroying something symbolic of those "powers that be"? I mean, it's those types of scenes that draw so many dissillusioned kids into terrorism. So why not Discordianism?  And I mean something that won't result in innocent deaths.

[Thurnez Isa]

your treading on dangerious grounds when you talk about blowing anything up
anything can happen
people could get hurt - even if you dont want them to
as well I dont think that is type of attention you want
want kind of people will be recruited?

[Cain]

What Thurenz said.  It could be a symbolic destruction, but the symbolism would be in such a medium destruction would be easily accomplished.  Its an idea though.  I'm interested in hearing what input Roger, Hoopla and ECH have though, as they really have the right sort of mind for this thing.  And are probably less tired than me.

[East Coast Hustle]

sorry, I'm probably just as tired as you. got called in to work the bar last night, worked til 2:30am, then had to be back down there at 10am to spend most of the day winterizing the smoking area and taking down the outside tiki torches and bamboo mats, and have to be back down there again at 8pm to bounce tonight, which is DJ night which means the drunks will be even more obnoxious than normal. and to top it all off, we didn't get done closing off one section ofthe deck, which means I'll be chasing underage people out of the place all night as they'll be taking advantage of the BIG GAPING HOLE in the wall that I can't see from the front door.

but tomorrow  I'll try to have something artculate to say.

[Cain]

Ah, OK.  Sounds like a fun time.

[East Coast Hustle]

yeah. they've started finding excuses to take bouncing shifts from other people and give them to me even though I originally specifically said that I only wanted one night a week. but they offered me a 25% raise in my hourly pay and free meals, and I couldn't refuse. aparently, the extra costs for my services are more than offset by the fact that no one EVER starts a fight, steals bar glasses, or walks out on their tab when I'm working.

[Triple Zero]

i agree with sillycybin though. need more of a mission statement, more of a "what's the point"

what LMNO said, however a very nice ad rem soundbite:

Worldwide jailbreak.

is slightly too vague for me.

i dunno i've been chatting for a long time on these fora, BIP and other places about discordianism and related subjects. but whenever the talk comes to something of action, it's either

- another mediocre jake
- a good jake that takes too much effort for anyone to actually perform it
- some kind of action with a purpose i don't condone or just don't have much feeling for
- flyers/pamphlets etc, i've printed off a few (in quantities of around 5-50), spread them around at university, public transport etc. unfortunately most are either too americanocentric or too vague and general or "advanced" discordianism for people to care about.

only with a few very good friends i got some success, which was actually kind of dissapointing, cause when they finally understood and agreed with my views, some (unfortunately very temporary) feeling of hopelessness got to them, and basically they froze like a bunny gazing in the headlights of a speeding car. metaphorically speaking. you probably seen it yourself.

ok, so the question is

WHAT IS DISCORDIANISM ALL ABOUT??

i just have this vague notion, which leads me to agree with plans like "worldwide jailbreak", but prevents me from actually communicating this notion to other people, unless i take long nights, a good bar, couch, some substances, good times and then when outside the pub, on the rainy sidewalk just before our ways part i see this glimpse of understanding which i know they'll completely forget about when they close their eyes in 20 minutes.

[LMNO]

The task is hopeless, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be done...

[Dr. Cow Ass]

Might it be worth demonising discordia? I'm thinking that we could send screeds of emails and letters and the like to our local priests and whatnot, from "concerned parents/ family members" who's children have been indoctrinated into this heinous cult, which is spreading like wildfire on the internet. All the usual culprits will be wheeled out, subliminal tracks in popular music, chatroom grooming, playground touting.. etc.

The clergy already have the media in their pocket so we can capitalise on this by fuelling their paranoia enough to get the tabloids on our case. Once the gutter press decide theres a story there they'll latch on to it and, as is their wont, blow the whole thing out of all proportion. Then a couple of our younger viewers can step forward with all sorts of horror stories about what discordia has done to them, sparking outrage and, with a bit of luck, pressure on goverment to nip this baby sacrificing, animal raping cult in the bud.

If we make it to this stage it would be quite easy to turn the tables by exposing the whole thing as an elaborate hoax.

That's a nice one. That kind of happened with Satanism and various cults. They have these four whackjobs talk about how they were used as breeders so their babies could be used in snuff films, and they get a whole special report on CBS. When in reality it's like four kids who threw a dead cat at a church or somthing.

If you're by yourself then you could easily do it one community at a time. First you do something to get the towns attention, especially the authorites, such as odd graffitie(sp) containg odd quotes and even odder symbols. Then you send out hundreds of letter talking about a "secret society" that exsist among highschool students which has these outrageous rituals to prove loyalty and accelerate the process of reaching their ultimate goal (make sure you get these letters to the highschool administraters.) Then you follow this by a series of letters sent out by the "society" itself, which all have different names and aims, but all have the same symbol printed in the letter in the letter head.

Then you have to do somthing that attracts the media's attention. This has to be somthing relativly big, and blowing up something symbolic could be a good idea (do it like the weather underground did and warn whoever's in danger before the explosion goes off.) Or you can appear after some kind of disaster takes place wearing an all black cloak, leaving in a very mysterious way.

Joining a group, secrecy, and attention would draw alot of teenagers to the cuase, however ridiculous it may be.

[Messier Undertree]

Eh?

Keep it simple Trollax.

[DJRubberducky]

In regards to this, I need lyrics.

I have beats, I have music, but I have no flow.

Consider this a formal request for Discordian lyrics*.

Alas, I cannot provide full sets of lyrics, but perhaps this will seed someone else's imagination:

You're such a good puppy, you've been trained to not see the leash anymore....