Verwirrung Blog roundtable discussion

[Cain]

Me and Cram had a productive talk yesterday about the Verwirrung blog and what we'd like to do with it.  However, I think we have probably gone as far as two people can, without having to let other people in on the discussion.  So here it is.

The background

Blogging has, in many ways, taken over from internet forums as a primary method of discussion on the internet.  Its relatively easily to find, keep track of and set up blogs.  Equally, they are designed for feedback and various Web 2.0 style business.  Blog communities, such as DailyKos and Redstate, are big business, and blogs can have wide impacts in fields as diverse as military theory, reporting, science and fiction writing.  In some cases they allow you to leave feedback with people with impressive intellects and ideas, leaders in their chosen field.

The idea

To make Verwirrung one of the primary vehicles promoting the site, ourselves and, by extension, Discordianism.

In depth info

I was primarly inspired by the idea of Imminent.sea, which I have mentioned before.  This blog, which plays a role in the past of some of the main characters of Warren Ellis's latest comic, Doktor Sleepless, was a underground sensation, with experts in various fields commenting on the future of their chosen sphere of knowledge.  For example, they had experts on criminology and intelligence, on security, on sex, on computer-human interfaces, on the environment and several other areas (as of now, unknown).

How does that apply to us?

Of course, none of us are "experts" in the widely understood sense of the word, but with access to the WWW we don't need to be.  We just need to be intelligent, able to write and have access to the right resources.

Me and Cram talked about dividing up the blog into several different conceptual topics, and choosing an author for each one.  Topics would be things that would interest a Discordian, but also be of potential interest for a wider audience.  We drew up a list of the concepts we think someone here could, in theory, write about.  Here is the list, as it stands, so far:

Myself - politics, economics, conflict
Cram - pranks, installation, operation:mindfuck, the Discordian society, ARGs
unknown - "the law of fives", cognitive biases, mind affecting drugs, perception alteration, how the brain works.
unknown - internet culture
unknown - computer tech, hi-tech security
unknown - religion watch (what various religious figures are up to, departures from religious dogma, cults etc.  Not usual atheist "religious people are stupid" blogging, more "this is what people believe, how fascinating/horrifying" POV)
unknown - the wonderful word of sexuality, dating, relationships and sex.

And many more possible topics (such as biohacking and other innovative use of biology, architecture, culture and literature, music and entertainment etc) are possible.  These are just the most obvious ones we thought of.

The idea is to have one author concentrate on each, according to interest.  Their focus in particular would be on ideas in the field that challenge conventional thinking, changes that are happening and things that we have discovered which either impact on the here and now or in the near future. We want to be high on the learning curve in all of this.

We'd also want a decent quanitity of articles published on this.  I don't think it would be asking too much for, say, 2 articles a week minimum on Verwirrung from all the specialist authors.  In addition, all those happy with just doing their own thing would be free to publish links and rants as they please.  And of course, the more posts on the specialist topics, the better.

Other considerations

To get a blog noticed you need to do three things, really.

One is post a lot of material.
Two is to have better material.
Three is to comment on other large blogs.

So, to solve the first, this is why I suggest at least two posts a week (barring holidays and other IRL engagements of course, everyone needs time off) on the topic.  I think we have the second covered, though I have a proposal below which may help with that.  And the third is what I shall deal with right now.

I think we know by now pretty well which audience is most likely to be receptive and open to our sort of writing and topics, from right off the bat.  That wierd countercultural mix that can be found among the former Irreality crew, GPOD and the Mythos Media Gang, Warren Ellis and Neal Stephenson and Terry Pratchett fans, political comedy writers, agnostics and atheists and other skeptics and those various dregs of the countercultural world I cannot be bothered to name.

The idea would be to find a few of these blogs and, between us, comment on them infrequently.  Most blogs, when you comment, have a place for your link, which you could add the Verwirrung URL into.  Getting us known will help us get feedback and improve the blog, plus its always nice to know you are being read by people (also, putting a link on the front page has helped).

As for the second consideration, judicious use of an RSS feed and several highly rated sites in your chosen field can quickly turn someone from a n00b into a fairly savvy observer.  I am more than willing to help people find and evaulate such sites, in order to use them to make Verwirrung a kick ass blog.

Questions and comments?

[Cramulus]

For the "sweet spot" of content, we need about eight people to say "I'm in." With 8 people, each of them only have to write one post per month and the blog will still have two new articles per week. It's really not that challenging to have a hot, active blog when it's tended to by a community like this one. And it significantly raises the size of our e-foot print. (And you know what they say about communities with big e-foot prints... huge e-penises.)

This would be a great time to volunteer for one of the above categories.
I'd like to suggest one more topic to the list so we have an even 8 bloggers. The new category would be the Black Iron Prison - explaining it through different lenses and mediums.

So far, we've got Cain and I signed up. Anybody else?

[AFK]

The schedule is the rub for me.  I'm also not terribly keen on pigeonholing my contributions as thus far I've taken a "jack-of-all-trades" kinda approach to what I put up.  But, if it is the will of the council, I guess I'd put in for some of the BIP-ish/Shrapnel stuff and also cultural topics.  But again, I think the proposed schedule is going to be difficult for most, so perhaps the initial benchmark is covering "all" of the topic areas and then fleshing out the frequency of contributions. 

[Cain]

I was thinking that the BIP would fall under the rubric of Law of Fives, actually.

Another one might be Discordian Theology though.  Writings, rants, little bits of poetry, creative fiction, perhaps discussions based on Discordianeseque works (like Illuminatus!, V for Vendetta, The Invisibles etc).

Also, while one article a month per person sounds good, as a minimum, naturally I would say the more high quality posts, the better.

[Cain]

The schedule is the rub for me.  I'm also not terribly keen on pigeonholing my contributions as thus far I've taken a "jack-of-all-trades" kinda approach to what I put up.  But, if it is the will of the council, I guess I'd put in for some of the BIP-ish/Shrapnel stuff and also cultural topics.  But again, I think the proposed schedule is going to be difficult for most, so perhaps the initial benchmark is covering "all" of the topic areas and then fleshing out the frequency of contributions. 

Well thats cool, too.  If you don't have the time or motivation, we don't want to push you.  We'd rather people who wanted to put in the sort of effort above to volunteer themselves, and the rest to continue doing as they see fit, on the timetable available to them.

I can understand not wanting to be fixed to a single topic either. 

[AFK]

Excuse me, but is has NOTHING to do with motivation.  It has everything to do with having a wife and a 5 year old daughter at home. 

[Cain]

Excuse me, but is has NOTHING to do with motivation.  It has everything to do with having a wife and a 5 year old daughter at home. 

I'm not trying to have a go.  Really.  I'm offering possible reasons as to why anyone, you, me or someone else may not want to do this.

I also mentioned a timetable, if you took the time to notice, and actually had you in mind when I said that.

Jesus Christ, why does everyone think I'm suddenly trying to troll them around here?

[Payne]

I would be well up for this. My stumbling block (for the blog as well as in here), as I think I've stated recently is the comparative staleness of my ideas allied with uninspired writing.

I'm working on it though, I have recently started using my notebook again to write a bunch of random ideas and scraps of inspiration down from through the day before I go to sleep.

If I stumble on anything I like, I'll be sure to let y'all know.

[LMNO]

I think I can handle the Lo5/BIP/Cognitive philosophies bit.  With a bit of prodding, of course.

I was thinking my last couple of NanoWrimo excerpts could be a good introduction.

[Cramulus]

I don't intend on writing a NOVEL in these things or anything. I doubt my posts will be more than 500 words - any longer than that, and you lose people's attention. I bet I can cram out 500 words on pranks each month. Hell, that's about the amount of time it takes me to start a topic, and I do that every few days. A lot of people (myself especially included!) have trouble being creative on a deadline or whatever, so there's definitely no hard feelings if people aren't into becoming regular bloggers.  




I was brainstorming topics that I'd want to write about earlier, and I found myself going, MAN there's so much I'd want to write about that doesn't fall under the heading of "Pranks, jakes, ARGs, games, and mindfucks".

The idea though isn't that people are forced to write at length on that one topic like some sort of blog sweatshop. Of course, people are encouraged (as they are now) to write on whatever they want, whenever they want. It's just that if we have certain bases that we know will be covered each month, we'll have a pretty well-fleshed out blog.

[LMNO]

VERRIWUNG SHOULD BE BLOG SWEAT SHOP, LIKE HUFFINGTON POST.
  \

[AFK]

Excuse me, but is has NOTHING to do with motivation.  It has everything to do with having a wife and a 5 year old daughter at home. 

I'm not trying to have a go.  Really.  I'm offering possible reasons as to why anyone, you, me or someone else may not want to do this.

I also mentioned a timetable, if you took the time to notice, and actually had you in mind when I said that.

Jesus Christ, why does everyone think I'm suddenly trying to troll them around here?

It is the phrase "We'd rather people who wanted to put in the sort of effort above to volunteer themselves..." implying I don't want to put in the effort.  That is what is pissing me off.  It's not about wanting it's about availability of time.   So if it was a wrong choice of words, fine, but you are generally a person who is very precise in his wording so you will understand why I'm suspicious.  

[LMNO]

I propose that we concentrate on the initial point of the thread, and leave the linguistic semantics for another thread.

[Cain]

Precisely Cram.  The specialist topics would be to make sure that, if nothing else, there would be something on the blog that month.  I sure as hell know if something cool happens on Fringe the night before, I'm gonna blog it, regardless of focussed topic.  It also adds to the variety of the blog, and ensures a decently rounded set of topics will be on there.

Also LMNO, I thought that may interest you.  As did Cram, in fact.

My idea would be to give each specialist subject a name and topic tag, which could be used whenever it is being discussed.  That way, it would be easily searchable as well.

[AFK]

I propose that we concentrate on the initial point of the thread, and leave the linguistic semantics for another thread.

fine.  have at it.