Recruiting the unrecruited

[Cramulus]

So one of the reasons I think some of us have no patience for the old PD jokes, or n00bish meaningless dada bullshit is twofold:

1. The old PD jokes are no longer absurd, as they are familiar
2. The dada bullshit is a carrier with no content. 

So the use of humor and nonsense and non-linearity is by no means verboten.  And comedy without reason or meaning is still funny.  But to say that absurdity is inherently Discordian is only half true. 

Absurdity is the Astroglide the Discordian uses to sodomize your brain.

I think I agree with you overall, but I disagree about point 2 - that the dada bullshit has no content. It has little to no content in itself, but I think it elevates / saturates the "content / meaning" around it.

I recall that the pattern-recognizer employed at Cramulus' Brain Inc nearly shorted out after trying to make sense of the absurdity in the PD. One thing I payed special close attention to was the one-liners in the margins "Mr. Momomoto" and the King Kong Cabal and Niels Bohr all that jazz. And in trying to connect all those ideas, I connected them to some of the more meaningful bits. It caused me to think critically about which bits were important and which bits were fluff. And how arbitrary that is.

The danger to me, it seems, is when the absurdity overwhelms the content. A lot of Discordian websites and texts out there have such high levels of nonsense that my brain goes, "okay this doesn't mean anything" and my meaning-maker shuts down. Once I smell a shaggy dog joke I generally just skip to the punch-line.




Somewhere else on this forum we talked about RAW's "buffer overload" technique, of listing a bunch of really absurd stuff, and at the crescendo where your mind is shorting out from trying to correlate it, you throw in one really shiny blip of truth, and it makes the whole page explode at once. I think that's a really useful absurdity-technique which I thought was worth mentioning.

[Cain]

OK, makes sense.  You short circuit someone's 'rational' (third circuit rationalization, not true/actual rationality) reasons for not believing in/ignoring something and hit them with a hefty dollop of Troof once the state is achieved.

This could also be done with different emotions, could it not?  If we're using the irrationality of the brain against itself, emotions of all sorts would be the obvious target to aim for.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

OK, makes sense.  You short circuit someone's 'rational' (third circuit rationalization, not true/actual rationality) reasons for not believing in/ignoring something and hit them with a hefty dollop of Troof once the state is achieved.

This could also be done with different emotions, could it not?  If we're using the irrationality of the brain against itself, emotions of all sorts would be the obvious target to aim for.

Well, with Bob's experiments, the key seems to have been shock (no matter how its achieved), consider the sex scenes in Illuminatus!, or the Rehnquist in Schrodinger's Cat. In Masks of The Illuminati, he has some great examples of attacking someone's first circuit. There are examples of Bob attacking the reader via the way he laid out the story (bouncing between Einstein/Rational POV, Joyce/Absurd POV, Crowley/Trickster POV etc.) and of Crowley attacking the first circuit of Sir John Babcock through scaring the shit out of him at every opportunity.

So I think you're right, Cain,  shocking or tricking a sufficiently embedded (believed/ingrained/brainwashed/etc) existing program may provide an opportunity to inject a new idea.

[Cain]

Although....there is going to be a problem with diminishing returns, with certain target audiences.

While no doubt your average Baptist type is going to be very easily shocked (embed an Illuminatus! sex scene in the middle of a sermon on a flyer, for example, then hit them with a Bible quote at the end which might change their mind about certain things) your average, jaded, savvy and cynical 17-40 demographic are going to be much harder to deal with.

Trying to brute force such people might not work.  They've probably already seen a lot, thanks to slick marketing schemes that do the same thing.  In such cases, I think, it may need to be a subtle blend of very strange with the ordinary, along with a touch of the unknown or mystery.  Otherwise its just a descent into ever increasing shock tactics which will end up being possibly counterproductive, as well as hard to maintain.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Haha this is awesome!

[AFK]

I think your services were requested in the PD sub-forum. 

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I think I agree with you overall, but I disagree about point 2 - that the dada bullshit has no content. It has little to no content in itself, but I think it elevates / saturates the "content / meaning" around it.

I recall that the pattern-recognizer employed at Cramulus' Brain Inc nearly shorted out after trying to make sense of the absurdity in the PD. One thing I payed special close attention to was the one-liners in the margins "Mr. Momomoto" and the King Kong Cabal and Niels Bohr all that jazz. And in trying to connect all those ideas, I connected them to some of the more meaningful bits. It caused me to think critically about which bits were important and which bits were fluff. And how arbitrary that is.

The danger to me, it seems, is when the absurdity overwhelms the content. A lot of Discordian websites and texts out there have such high levels of nonsense that my brain goes, "okay this doesn't mean anything" and my meaning-maker shuts down. Once I smell a shaggy dog joke I generally just skip to the punch-line.




Somewhere else on this forum we talked about RAW's "buffer overload" technique, of listing a bunch of really absurd stuff, and at the crescendo where your mind is shorting out from trying to correlate it, you throw in one really shiny blip of truth, and it makes the whole page explode at once. I think that's a really useful absurdity-technique which I thought was worth mentioning.

I think the above is important.

Absurdity is a tool that can leave your brain wide open if it's used right... it forces your brain to think in a new way, which instantly shocks it wide-awake and heightens its ability to recognize new patterns. Of course, stuff is only really absurd the first time, which is why those of us to whom the PD is familiar no longer respond with wide-openness to the 23 pineal fnord stuff. But the newbies either haven't got to the point where it's familiar yet, so it's still working for them, or they're asshats who think it's an endlessly reusable formula that makes them cool. Our project is to sort out which is which, because if they come in here spouting 23pinealfnord stuff, it's possible that it's still working for them, which means they are wide open and ready to learn if we can get through their PD-euphoria.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

[Cain]

Noice.  You should do a golden version of the apple, with two rifles behind it, in a cross.  Maybe surrounded by a pentagon?

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Black and Angst Filled for Vex

[tyrannosaurus vex]

i fail at making good pentagons.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

Also,

[tyrannosaurus vex]

i will shamelessly turn this thread into my graphic design resume'.

[The Apex, The Harmony Of]

I havnt read the whole thread yet, so if I just recycle whats been said then 

I think you can make alot of impact on people if your like a walking enigma. If you look and act like a normal person, but actually have a whole waredrobe of unmentionable vices/ideas/funny humour people seem, from my experience to have alot more willingness to join in because, well, they dont feel like they have to join a certain scene by looking/acting a certain way. I have so many what might be called secrets that I dont reveal to some, but to others I will happily reveal others.

A few years ago I use to dress well emo, before that well goth, before that total wigga hip hoper, before that a total geek loser (and other styles inbetween shifts). Now that I just dont really bother to make an effect to look like im signaling im different to everyone or that I belong to a particular scene, I can get people to, for example, sit with me and listen to a whole myriad of musical genres and get them interested and they dont seem to feel tense or nervous like im recruiting them to a scene. I thinks its important to show them they can still expose themselves to alot of information (music in this case), and not become products of it by looking or acting certain ways.

If I meet someone new I will normally go pineal (but not constantly all day to them so they get annoyed) too get the laughs going and loosen them up. I dont act like a mastermind (I dont think so anyway) but will attempt to answer, even if only briefly, difficult issues (such as philosophy) as well to show that I  do have a working brain and im not a total idiot. If I show them that im very willing to literally ATTEMPT anything knowledge, humour, actions etc it has had great effects in getting others to join in because I can act as the initiator - alot of the time it seems thats all people need, a cue to talk or act about what they havnt previously had the chance to, but have always desired even if in a small way. I think thats important to show people thats its ok to attempt to try there luck at intelligence, humour, etc and its ok to be wrong and not to fear that.

I like exposing people to stuff outside of there reality tunnels for the fun of it. And alot of the time it ends up fun, or ends up in deep discussions.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

i will shamelessly turn this thread into my graphic design resume'.

That's so beautiful I may cry.

So do we need a topic on the forum that is obvious for recruits? Maybe with stickied essays etc?