AbbyGasm

[Golden Applesauce]

Yeah, I thought pretty hard about how to write something for Savage Love and just drew a whole revolver full of blanks.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I had an idea using something about fisting and apples, but decided it sounded too improbable.

[Gundam Agriculture]

Here's my go, let me know what you think:

Dear Abby,

I'm afraid my sixteen-year-old daughter has started to hang out with the wrong crowd at school.  She was "going steady" with a nice boy for almost a year, but now she's been going out on dates with older boys, sometimes with two or three at a time!  She often seems depressed or moody at home, only looking happy (too happy!) after a night with these boys.  She's started wearing a yin-yang symbol (from Chinese religion) around her neck instead of the cross she's worn since confirmation.  I'm afraid these boys may be trying to recruit her into some sort of pagan cult or new-age religion.  One day she got a letter from "Howard" saying nothing but "August 23: immanentize the eschaton".  What does this mean?  What should I do?

- Concerned Parent

[Triple Zero]

slightly too obscure reference to discordia there. unless they get a bunch of other letters explicitly referencing discordia AND the columnists put research into discordianism, they're going to for the yin-yang thing because they know that and keep it general.

[Gundam Agriculture]

Yeah, there is a tricky tradeoff between under-the-radar and ludicrous. What if I change "Howard" to "The Discordian Society" or somesuch?

[Verbal Mike]

Well, you can't expect the columnist/staff to figure out obscure references. If you want them to talk about how to deal with a dangerous cult like Discordianism, you have to spell it out for them. You have to actually say, "my loved one is a Discordianist doing scary things and I'm scared". The point here isn't to get amusing things printed, it's to get real buzz going. And buzz has to be comprehensible to people not in the know.

[Gundam Agriculture]

IMHO, if this is an orchestrated campaign, it needs to have a good mix of letters in the range between paranoid-frightening and concerned-subtle.  If "Dear Abby" gets 50 letters and they're *all* over the top, it just screams "prank", and all the letters will be fast-tracked to the wastebasket.

On the other hand, if the consensus is that *all* the letters need to be over the top... we'll trash this one and I'll write some more.

[Verbal Mike]

Again, we're* not each sending a letter to each and every one of the columns - each column will, at first, receive just one letter. The goal is not to make the columnists think this is a major thing going on, it's to leverage the columns to make other people thing something major is going on. And for that we need to make sure our fake crisis is visible in as many columns as possible.

*Those of you in the US, that is. So not I.

[Verbal Mike]

I've created a basic wiki page for AbbyGASM. It occurred to me while writing this that the fake Devival should be a GASM of its own (because it can be leveraged for other projects as well) so I've made a red link to a DevivalGASM page. Someone will have to decide to actually do the whole fake Devival thing for it to happen.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Dear Advice Columnist,

Me and my best friend Josh have known each other for practically ever... we even went to first grade in the same class. We always have spent almost every weekend together and sometimes we go on vacations and camping with each others families. We are both juniors at Lincoln High, and we are planning to start applying to the same colleges soon so we can go to college together. He is pretty much the person I am closest to in the whole world besides my sister and my mom... we tell each other EVERYTHING. About six months ago Josh started talking about this book he read, called the Principia Discordia. It was pretty cool and he got me to read it, but I guess I didn't think it was as deep or whatever as he did... it's mostly just a bunch of goofy stuff written a long time ago, like when our parents were kids. Anyway, after a couple of months of trying to talk to me about it, he said that he found some other people who are really into it online... The Discordian Society or something like that... and now he says his religion is Discordian and he's going to this thing called the Devival, which is a big festival where they all get together and, I guess, worship.

Here's the thing that I'm really having a problem with, though, is that because I'm not into the Discordian Society, this is the first time Josh has ever gotten all excited about doing something WITHOUT me. I feel so left out, and he doesn't seem to get it. I thought we were best friends, and it's like he's forgotten all about it. My mom says that when people grow up sometimes they can grow apart, and nobody seems at all concerned about what he's doing, but honestly it's WIERD. It's not AT ALL like the old Josh, and not like the stuff we used to do together. He's not even excited about looking at college brochures anymore, and he talks about doing things that sound, well maybe not illegal, but definitely things that sound like trouble, I can't really go into details because he doesn't talk about it to me very much anymore. Please help! Nobody will listen to me! All the adults I know just tell me not to worry or they say that I'll get over it, but I am not the one who needs to get over anything! I just want my old best friend back.

Sincerly,

Becky Strodtmeyer

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I was thinking that an awesome way to handle the Devival page would be to make a fake front page with a welcome paragraph saying something like:

Welcome to Devival 2008! Word is spreading, and this year's Devival promises to be the biggest, best, and most debased in Discordian history. If you have found this page, most likely it is because someone sent you the invitation; please enter the password below.

If you do not have the password, you must have found this page by accident; if you would like to know more about Devival and possibly join in our revelry, please seek out your local members of the Discordian Society for debriefing.

Then there can be a password box that always tells you you've entered the wrong password.

[Verbal Mike]

and
great letter, and a great idea.
is any of our interweb wizards around and willing to do that?

[Triple Zero]

sure, how's this look::

http://www.principiadiscordia.com/devival2008

(you better tell me it's awesome, cause i spent way too long on it)

[Cramulus]

THAT'S.
FUCKING.
AWESOME.

[Triple Zero]

aww you're just saying that ..

i almost wish it was a real party, now.