Opensource discussion on O:MF and what comes after.

[Payne]

Good stuff Net, I'll get some replies to this tomorrow. If I can think of any,

As you say there are a lot of generalities and not much substance, but I'll try 

No, you have more substance than generalities IMO, it's just I'm overly sensitized to general language from studying hypnosis. Which is probably how you got that impression (besides being too hard on yourself).

I probably was too critical. Or not supportive enough, it's an inspiring post. Most of my questions are to build on what you have, and are pointed at my own brain as well.

No, I like it. I WANT this to be sliced and diced, and you are certainly qualified to do so, as a poster on this board if for no other reason.

[the last yatto]

the trick is can you this with a bucket over your head and singing Polly wally want a cracker?
Actually forget the bucket, lets go for uh a squid... ideas IDEAS think of it.
Something should be painful but not too much, to squirt something far worse than mere ink and more OF it as well.

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

the trick is can you this with a bucket over your head and singing Polly wally want a cracker?
Actually forget the bucket, lets go for uh a squid... ideas IDEAS think of it.
Something should be painful but not too much, to squirt something far worse than mere ink and more OF it as well.

[Payne]

Most of my questions still apply, especially surrounding this theory of mini-egos (which is compelling though I think it's inaccurate).

If our methods are ambiguous, our goals, our "reasons" are more so. Such is the nature of discord, I suppose.

Mine aren't. Mostly.

This is fair enough, perhaps I was painting with too broad a brush when I made that statement. I suppose I also have to be more aware that many of our personal gigs and gags are subject to KYFMS

However, I would probably say it is no bad thing to have diverse and "ambiguous" reasons and/or goals. It may not give us strength in depth, but it creates a wide pool of expertise and resource to call on.

We bring almost as many personal viewpoints and prejudices to the table here. The tension this can create has been noted many times and exploited a few times (nothing like a bit of tension to get the creative juices flowing, right?). But ignoring the tension for a moment, multiple viewpoints mean we have a broader field of fire. We can attack one person, idea or concept from many different angles at the same time. In almost any circumstance, we "have you surrounded, come out with your hands up!"

Why aren't we taking more advantage of this? As I look around here, I see quite a number of projects going on. Good ones, and almost all of them are Crams or are being kept going by him.

I'll tell you what holds me back. There's little to no criteria for failure or success for most projects. The ones with better defined criteria have gone much farther—look at Colbertgasm and Postergasm. Colbertgasm succeeded because there was a testability to it and specific real world action to take, however providing plenty of room for creativity. The same is true with Postergasm. You succeed if you put up posters and take a few pictures of it. You succeed if you make posters that someone else puts up. You succeed big time if you hear about a poster making an impact on someone. But it's also possible and very likely IMO, that most of your successes will never be known, that you really made someone's day or royally pissed someone off but they had no way to contact you.

Valerie suggests that the arguments made in Postergasm materials are weak, but I disagree. I doubt she's very familiar with the project... Which ones are weak?

Addressing firstly, the measurement of success in a project, I always feel that the best projects have some kind of goal included in the initial pitching of an idea. Not all of them have grand aims (like Colbertgasm), but I think the most effective ones are when we do aim high and go all out to achieve it. Even getting Colbert to throw out some of Discordias more recognised memes and jokes would have gotten a whole bunch of people excited who were in no way connected with this site. The benefit of this is yet to be really assessed, but as an achievement of our personal goals, it is priceless.

Postergasm, I always feel, is done more for personal reasons than for it's impact. I did learn some things with the spree I went on with Syn, Trip and Broken AI in Edinburgh last month, though.

It's good to have an actual back up piece of literature to hand to someone if they ask you what you're doing, complete with contact details. This was suggested more for people who seemed interested and excited in what we were doing, but holds just as much for people who are hostile to it. This should probably be addressed on (at least) some of the posters themselves.

I don't speak for Valerie, I'm not sure which ones she thinks are weak, or for why.

It's good that we have someone like Cramulus who can manage a project, push it through,get people motivated to take part. Cram is a good guy, and has all the qualities of a good leader, but we need more people to take up the reigns, to push through these projects, to create more of their own.

What do you attribute to his success?

Cram is charismatic, driven and well liked. People listen to his ideas because they work, and, building on past successes, he is able to galvanise a core of people into action on a specific short or long term goal.

Mostly he is successful because he actually puts himself into a position to be so.

We need more varied ideas and people who are willing to step up to the plate and have their ideas heard and implemented.

How can YOU help make this happen? And how badly do you really want it to happen?

I'm going to practice what I preach, and try and throw out some ideas. How badly do I want it to happen? Not sure, where this is a call to action, I believe it now hinges on my first experiment on changing my self-perceived role in PD from my usual WOMPing, fluff specialising caricature of myself into one (which I've always wanted to try, but never actually done for a sustained period of time) that writes interesting thought provoking articles and the like.

If it works, great. If it doesn't work, then I need to revise my hypothesis again.

Roger recently called for us to start fucking with the media. I agreed then, and I still do, but I'm begining to think that what we have discussed so far for this "plan" is too small time, is not pushing our limits. We DO need to jack the media, but I think we need to do it directly, or at least more directly than I have been thinking about.

We need people on the inside. OK, so we're not going to get a news anchor, or even the guy that does his teleprompter, but we need to start speaking with people who ARE involved with the mass media, with students who shortly will be. We need to raise our sights a little and focus our attention on places and people who, if we can affect change there, will have a larger and broader effect. We almost had this with the Adam Weishaupt Society (another of Crams projects), we need to revisit that idea and REALLY put some effort into it.

I'm interested in how I can help to collectively fuck with the media. I know there are a lot of other people who have a similar inclination, however the devil is in the details... I've come to expect that when I press discordians for the details of their plans that they probably won't have them and may even actively avoid fleshing things out with some half-baked rationalization about disorder. It's a flying by the seat of your pants gamble that usually doesn't even occur because people lose interest as soon as they realize how much effort is required to make it happen.

You're talking in glittering generalities. What kind of larger effects? What people and places? What will speaking with insiders and students do for you? I'm a student of the mass media, albeit a subsection, but that is the environment where I'm being taught to succeed at. It's quite possible that I'll be much further inside the belly of the beast in the next few years, but then what? I hope you don't think that I'd risk my entire design career for a prank. Well, maybe I would, but it would need a much better mission statement than, "Let's fuck with the media, LOL."

What got me about Roger's call to action was the potential for the "social fiction" meme. That's hella juicy.

My problem with pushing my ideas forward with regard to jacking or fucking with the media is I'm so far removed from the actual scene and, I admit, unfamiliar with how much of the system works. General ideas, I'm good for in this case, actually pushing for specific details and assigning people to different tasks, I would need to collaborate with someone who DOES know the system. And that's what we need, to assign people tasks and hope that they do them.

I'm not suggesting that people risk their careers on a prank, I'm suggesting that having a sympathetic ear and voice in areas where we are trying to affect change is not a bad thing. If our target is the media, then it's not a bad idea to have someone on the inside who can tell us when something is not going to work (for example). Yes this is another generality, but this is just an idea I've thrown up to see if it has any merit, it's not a detailed call for action. Maybe we DON'T need people on the ground, maybe we can do everything from our computers.

And yes, Rogers social fiction idea is awesome. Just hitting message boards with it isn't going to have a great impact though.

I will try to think through a couple of ideas for it, and post them in the relevant thread today.

For the media, we can read all sorts of other things. Popular Culture, large institutions, maybe (a real long shot here) the underbelly of Government.

This is what we should be doing if we are focusing on effecting change with O:MF outside our own minds.

This is why nothing gets done. It sounds good on the surface, but really you're not saying anything in real world terms. Once you embellish these ideas with concrete, testable elements they'll grow legs.

Working on it.

Within our own minds, O:MF as a self-mindfuck, we should perhaps be considering adjusting our roles more often. Within this community many of us seem to have a well defined niche, a certain service, viewpoint, shtick that we are noted for having or providing.

This is all well and good, it's nice to know that there is a certain constancy, a familiarity in our interactions on this board. It lends a small amount of stabiliy to an otherwise fractious group of individuals, but it tends to stifle a great deal of creativity, (of which there is still plenty, but we can always do with more).

Lead by example. A lot of people like you and respect you, myself included. If you started doing something like that you'd be assured to influence people.

Could you really go a week without WOMP though? Do you remember when Roger got all nice? People were terrified.

How would you know that enough people are playing more roles? What can one do to encourage it?  When would it be contraindicated?

Working on it.

When we step up to the plate and announce our ideas, I believe we need to be more willing to adopt a different role in seeing them implemented (we could possibly find ourselves auto-mindfucked into taking a leadership role, so that Cram can get on with the projects he enjoys taking forward more). We need to see more people willing and able to take on any role, be it leader, artist, writer, ranter, thinker, debator and a myriad of others.

And again, how to do this?

I've been considering writing a rant recently but there is little of my writing that doesn't implode from the force of my own analysis.

The leadership idea is good too. I'd like to see that happen as well, but I could see hostile competition between would-be leaders fucking everything up.

Perhaps what we need more of is taking initiative and collaboration not necessarily someone explicitly playing "leader."

About your writing, fair enough. God knows I've started plenty of pieces of writing which I've scrubbed and never posted. By the same measure though, the WOMP perspective that I've been honing the last year or so, that "it doesn't matter if it LOOKS rough, someone will find merit in it, even if it's only you" is something I've applied more and more to other things.

It isn't really about the quality of writing, for me, it's about having my ideas heard. And the good thing I've found about this board in particular is that while most of the attention is paid to the ideas who show up in Mercs wearing suits, the ones who come in looking like a diseased tramp will ALSO have some attention shown to them.

I haven't yet been completely torn down for anything that I've written, but I have to of course admit that that could be because I have a certain reputation on here, and people don't want to hurt my feelings or some shit.

The leadership idea isn't to give everyone a sense of authority entitlement. If they've been doing their homework, they should already have that, and I don't see an outright war on the boards over it. I see it more as helping people here to develop skills that they already have, but never exercise. If it leads to some friction, so be it. (look to my quick analysis of why Cram is so successful for what I'm trying to promote in others, myself included. We are all capable of it, but few of us are actually trying to achieve it.)

It is in this way that I feel the mini-egos and One Self idea I began with in this thread can be resolved. It is by truly pushing ourselves and over reaching that we will discover more about hidden aspects of our personality, about what we can use to achieve more with less effort, and what we can then turn our attention to "fixing" or "improving".

While this all is helpful, I'm not sure I agree with the theory of mini-egos versus the One Self. In lieu of an operationalized idea of "mini-egos..." I'm not sure the model is very useful either.

I think you're absolutely correct about pushing ourselves and overreaching though. RAH!

Maybe the model isn't useful, my experiment should help test it. My One Self, I see it as the WOMPing fluff artist. My "Mini-Ego" in this case, the one that never gets it's chance in the spotlight, is the more intellectual and serious side of me. I'm trying it on for size, to see if it changes my perspective, or improves my skills in any way.

Also, thanks for the second part. 

[Golden Applesauce]

As far as postergasm:
I've been putting an email address on mine.  So far two whole people have emailed me. 

Then again, I don't see GASMs as persuasive or evangelical at all.  I just wanted to bring a little weirdness to my campus, and so far people seem to like it.

ETA: Thanks for the ideas about the mini-egos, by the way.  So far I've identified Cerebral (intellectual and withdrawn,) Animal (impulsive, likes to do shit,) and Turtle (likes to idle.)

[Valerie - Gone]

Valerie suggests that the arguments made in Postergasm materials are weak, but I disagree. I doubt she's very familiar with the project... Which ones are weak?

Ohh, no no. I wasn't trying to say that arguments made in posterGASM materials are weak. I was just saying the first thing that came to mind when I read that quote.

Well, Postergasm is just one tentacle in my bag of tricks. Also, you're not accounting for the sleeper effect or priming, which arguably Postergasm could function through.

What is the sleeper effect and priming?

How do you define a mindfuck, Valerie?

I'm not quite positive what I define a mindfuck as. So far, I have that it is something that causes a person to stop and think, if only for a second. It jolts them out of their daily grind. That's kind of in terms of poserGASM, but that's all I have.

So far two whole people have emailed me. 

What have they said?

Then again, I don't see GASMs as persuasive or evangelical at all.  I just wanted to bring a little weirdness to my campus, and so far people seem to like it.

This is more responding to Net than you GA, though I don't really see posterGASMing as persuasive or evangelical, either. Unless you're using Roger's rants, there's not really enough material on them to be persuasive or evangelical. I've only done it once, but I didn't do it to preach or persuade. I did it for fun, for the lulz. I did it in hopes that someone would see them and be amused, or see them and wonder what the fuck it was about. And I did it because it feels like something that's illegal or against the rules and I got a thrill from doing it.

When I get to do it on my campus, it will also be to bring some weirdness to my environment. I believe Cram said in one of his posts (possibly Why I Put Up Posters), that part of why he does it is to reclaim his environment and make it his. I see value in that, too. There are a lot of flyers and stuff posted around my dorms. I figure that if I have to look at posters and flyers in my environment, they should be ones that I would enjoy looking at, or that have meaning for me.

That's how I feel about posterGASMing. In my last post, I mentioned the aim of "waking people up". I mentioned that aim because I think I read it somewhere on here, though now I'm thinking I didn't and that I just made it up. It isn't one of my personal aims, it was just the aim that occurred to me when I read that quote.

[Payne]

Going to chart my progress here, if anyone is interested.

http://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/index.php?topic=17809.0

[Ianna]

I am new here but this thread really got me thinking.

I have to admit I've been reading too much conspiracy-stuff, and my head feels like it's exploding. Messing with the media sounds like a good idea especially since it seems that media is heavily biased and serves corporate interests.

I was thinking that one way to do the MindFuck would be to plot some kind of an misinformation campaign. We would basically need one really good story and ridiculous amount of weird rumors about it. I have not quite figured out if this would work or not, but throwing in some ideas might be good anyhow.

The way I see it is that the worst that could happen to the prison guards (and to the prison itself), would be to realize that people know what they are doing and disagree with them. In other words some kind of display of global resistance, or unity would possibly be unnerving.

[Payne]

I am new here but this thread really got me thinking.

I have to admit I've been reading too much conspiracy-stuff, and my head feels like it's exploding. Messing with the media sounds like a good idea especially since it seems that media is heavily biased and serves corporate interests.

I was thinking that one way to do the MindFuck would be to plot some kind of an misinformation campaign. We would basically need one really good story and ridiculous amount of weird rumors about it. I have not quite figured out if this would work or not, but throwing in some ideas might be good anyhow.

The way I see it is that the worst that could happen to the prison guards (and to the prison itself), would be to realize that people know what they are doing and disagree with them. In other words some kind of display of global resistance, or unity would possibly be unnerving.

Hey there, yes we actually had a misinformation campaign going, search the forum for "Adam Weishaupt Society" or AWS. Quite successful, but as I recall, a lot of hard work.

I don't know exactly what you mean by the prison and the prison guards. If you're talking about the BIP, then the prison and the guards are both YOU. If you are talking about the Con instead, well any kind of unexpected behaviour can confuse them. Unity where there should be factions and splinter groups, or vice versa. Things along those lines.

Also, welcome to the boards!

[Ianna]

Hey there, yes we actually had a misinformation campaign going, search the forum for "Adam Weishaupt Society" or AWS. Quite successful, but as I recall, a lot of hard work.

I don't know exactly what you mean by the prison and the prison guards. If you're talking about the BIP, then the prison and the guards are both YOU. If you are talking about the Con instead, well any kind of unexpected behaviour can confuse them. Unity where there should be factions and splinter groups, or vice versa. Things along those lines.

Also, welcome to the boards!

Oh wow. AWS seems like something I would really have liked to be a part of. And also a kind of thing I had in mind: secret societies and stuff. I should perhaps lurk here awhile so I wouldn't post ideas that have been posted hundreds times before..  I have to be more cunning next time.

I'd love to see a bigger plan in work, but then again, those are not so easy to come up with.

[Payne]

Hey there, yes we actually had a misinformation campaign going, search the forum for "Adam Weishaupt Society" or AWS. Quite successful, but as I recall, a lot of hard work.

I don't know exactly what you mean by the prison and the prison guards. If you're talking about the BIP, then the prison and the guards are both YOU. If you are talking about the Con instead, well any kind of unexpected behaviour can confuse them. Unity where there should be factions and splinter groups, or vice versa. Things along those lines.

Also, welcome to the boards!

Oh wow. AWS seems like something I would really have liked to be a part of. And also a kind of thing I had in mind: secret societies and stuff. I should perhaps lurk here awhile so I wouldn't post ideas that have been posted hundreds times before..  I have to be more cunning next time.

I'd love to see a bigger plan in work, but then again, those are not so easy to come up with.

If you want to be part of it, resurrect it. Nothing like getting stuck right in, after all.

As for proposing ideas that have been posted before.... This entire forum is made of Cock, Repost, Lail and Fail.

Most everything has been seen at one point or another already, what you bring to it is perspective, and arranging the puzzle pieces of disparate ideas in new and amusing ways.

[AFK]

and puns. 

[Payne]

Yes, puns too.

[LMNO]

NO FUCKING PUNS, GODDAMNIT!

[Payne]

No puns, no Rule#34. Those are the terms, I believe.