More of a complaint than a rant; it's about you.

[Cramulus]

I was reacting to this:

It was a GREAT troll. One of the most successful troll projects I've seen Discordians do. Your degree of annoyance (a year later) is proof.

So if it's a GREAT projects, because Twid got upset, then it should be a GREAT project if we return the favor.

Or is it that Twid's being annoyed somehow doesn't count?  This isn't a jab, Cramulus, I'm honestly trying to understand what the standards are here.

Twid posted that it wasn't even a good troll.

And honestly, I have to disagree, in terms of being a troll, it was wildly successful. There were 10,000+ people in the Discordian Society facebook group. In 24 hours, they had reduced it to under 8,000. The group's wall was overflowing with anger and flounce posts. If that's not a successful troll, I don't know what is.

Please don't confuse that with me patting them on the back or shitting on Twid or something.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I was reacting to this:

It was a GREAT troll. One of the most successful troll projects I've seen Discordians do. Your degree of annoyance (a year later) is proof.

So if it's a GREAT projects, because Twid got upset, then it should be a GREAT project if we return the favor.

Or is it that Twid's being annoyed somehow doesn't count?  This isn't a jab, Cramulus, I'm honestly trying to understand what the standards are here.

Twid posted that it wasn't even a good troll.

And honestly, I have to disagree, in terms of being a troll, it was wildly successful. There were 10,000+ people in the Discordian Society facebook group. In 24 hours, they had reduced it to under 8,000. The group's wall was overflowing with anger and flounce posts. If that's not a successful troll, I don't know what is.

Please don't confuse that with me patting them on the back or shitting on Twid or something.

So, they destroyed 20% of their own user base?  That's fucking AMAZING.  Are they tea party members on the side?  Because that's the only group I know that sets out with the specific purpose of randomly driving off their own members.

They sound like utter assholes.  I mean, fuck, it's just HILARIOUS that Twid is angry a year later, right?

I mean, because he's an existing customer, which means what he feels about it is immaterial in the face of a "wildly successful troll". 

PD:  The second-class citizenry of Discordia.

[Scribbly]

I was reacting to this:

It was a GREAT troll. One of the most successful troll projects I've seen Discordians do. Your degree of annoyance (a year later) is proof.

So if it's a GREAT projects, because Twid got upset, then it should be a GREAT project if we return the favor.

Or is it that Twid's being annoyed somehow doesn't count?  This isn't a jab, Cramulus, I'm honestly trying to understand what the standards are here.

Twid posted that it wasn't even a good troll.

And honestly, I have to disagree, in terms of being a troll, it was wildly successful. There were 10,000+ people in the Discordian Society facebook group. In 24 hours, they had reduced it to under 8,000. The group's wall was overflowing with anger and flounce posts. If that's not a successful troll, I don't know what is.

Please don't confuse that with me patting them on the back or shitting on Twid or something.

So, they destroyed 20% of their own user base?  That's fucking AMAZING.  Are they tea party members on the side?  Because that's the only group I know that sets out with the specific purpose of randomly driving off their own members.

They sound like utter assholes.  I mean, fuck, it's just HILARIOUS that Twid is angry a year later, right?

I mean, because he's an existing customer, which means what he feels about it is immaterial in the face of a "wildly successful troll". 

PD:  The second-class citizenry of Discordia.

You can admire the success of something without endorsing the purposes to which it is put.

I'm pretty sure that's what Cramulus is doing. I'd have to agree with him; if trolling is all about getting an emotional impact, well, you can't fault them in terms of success.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

You can admire the success of something without endorsing the purposes to which it is put.

I'm pretty sure that's what Cramulus is doing. I'd have to agree with him; if trolling is all about getting an emotional impact, well, you can't fault them in terms of success.

Okay, I'll buy that.  I expect, of course, equal admiration if I can get their top 3-10 posters equally upset, preferably to the point where they quit the group in disgust...and then laugh about it with the folks here.

[The Rev]

That "troll" clogged up my inbox and my page. I went in and made some setting changes and removed a lot of people from my contact list. People like Twid, who use their page for more than posting mindless jabber were seriously disrespected.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

That "troll" clogged up my inbox and my page. I went in and made some setting changes and removed a lot of people from my contact list. People like Twid, who use their page for more than posting mindless jabber were seriously disrespected.

We don't count.

TGRR,
Existing customer.

[The Rev]

That "troll" clogged up my inbox and my page. I went in and made some setting changes and removed a lot of people from my contact list. People like Twid, who use their page for more than posting mindless jabber were seriously disrespected.

We don't count.

TGRR,
Existing customer.

Point.

[Cramulus]

so just some background on the eventgasm ---- and let me be clear that I'm just describing what happened and why, there are no value judgments in this post.


In early 2011, The Discordian Society FB group had 10K people in it, but there were only about 1-3 posts per day.

At the time, the most fun "Discordian" thing happening on FB was Nigel's add-everybody group. You guys remember that? Nigel found out that you could add ANYBODY to a group that you admin. For example, you could start a group called "the justin beiber fan club" and add everybody on your friends list without their consent. People got really angry about this, but Nigel, laughing all the way, told them it was satire with a point - it was supposed to send a message to facebook that they should change the way their groups work.

When the embers of that prank died down, a bunch of Discordians (three or four people tops) wanted to keep running with it. They realized that FB had another issue to exploit: if you're a member of a facebook group, you can turn off notifications (likely the case with 99.5% of the people in the huge-ass Discordian Society group), but you still get an e-mail if somebody in the group sends you an event-invite. So they thought it would be really fun to message 10K people at once. They started a silly non-event and sent it to everybody.

Without any kind of organization or ringleading, other people in the group started to follow suit. By my count, there were 30 or 40 people sending invites at the height of it. As group members started flouncing and getting annoyed, it just fueled the pranksters further. In some of their minds, they were "cabbage hunting" - weeding out people that couldn't take a joke. They said they'd rather have a group of 1K active members than 10K lurkers. (let me be clear this wasn't the consensus, this was the opinion of the people sending the invites)

After about 120 event invites had gone out, the two group admins shut it down. They banned a bunch of the people who sent multiple event invites, and turned off the group's event-invite function. Lehua (one of the admins) said the eventgasm fucked up her schoolwork because her e-mail (via a slow-ass campus connection) was jammed with invites. They were kinda pissed off.

It's been a year. Anybody who wanted to join the group again was allowed to. The admins turned the event-invite function back on and said it's cool as long as you use it responsibly. (a week later, I used it to snag participants for the Discordian Society vs the Tea Party gasm. People responded really positively to the event invite as long as it was connected to a good joke or a real project).

The DS-fb group is active again, and now there are about 6 splinter groups for refugees of the original eventgasm. The main lasting effect of eventgasm is the "really real discordians" meme spread to facebook -  you basically get ceaselessly mocked if you try to tell a Discordian that he's not acting like a real Discordian. There's also a big group of them who identify themselves with the label "fake discordian".


I watched this whole process with a detached sense of horrormirth and history repeating.

[The Rev]

Cram, once would have been funny. Once.

[Cramulus]

yeah, I was pissed as hell

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Without any kind of organization or ringleading, other people in the group started to follow suit. By my count, there were 30 or 40 people sending invites at the height of it. As group members started flouncing and getting annoyed, it just fueled the pranksters further. In some of their minds, they were "cabbage hunting" - weeding out people that couldn't take a joke. They said they'd rather have a group of 1K active members than 10K lurkers. (let me be clear this wasn't the consensus, this was the opinion of the people sending the invites)

1.  How many active members did they drive off, as opposed to lurkers?  And although I frequently rail about lurking, I have never told anyone to GTFO if they won't post. 

2.  Can THEY take a "joke"?  Say, if there was an exploit that allowed someone to post reams of horrible shit to someone's personal wall?

[Cramulus]

1.  How many active members did they drive off, as opposed to lurkers?  And although I frequently rail about lurking, I have never told anyone to GTFO if they won't post. 

beats me! Before the eventgasm, there were maybe 5 active posters. Now there's at least 30, maybe 50. So in the long run, the net effect was to increase the amount of group activity. Sadly, in doing so they drove off some really cool people, including some authors and publishers. I remember being really pissed when Adam Gorightly (Kerry Thornley's biographer) flounced. He left a post to the effect of, "If this is your idea of a mindfuck, then your mind is fucked."

2.  Can THEY take a "joke"?  Say, if there was an exploit that allowed someone to post reams of horrible shit to someone's personal wall?

depends. I've seen a few people get their walls spammed/imagebombed and their reaction is amusement. "Awesome, keep going!" Others get really paranoid when they feel like somebody's out to get them and they launch into hysterical overreactions. Somewhere out there, there's a facebook group whose sole purpose is to post screencaps of me trash talking the eventgasm (). So they do have the potential to flip out to hilarious levels. But still - hard to generalize about Discordians, especially when they're so disorganized.

The only person I've seen actively troll the DS group this year was Patrick Livingston Hayes (?). He posted "Order will eventually win." This caused a lot of people to flip out at him. Every time they tried to engage him, he'd post something like, "See? Order is winning." Rinse. Repeat.

After three days, the group had gotten tired of interacting with him, and jacked the thread into just squawking about whatever. They keep the OP bumped, and the thread is about 20K comments long now. Several people made fake profiles pretending to be that guy and friended all his friends. I think he quit facebook a few days later, thoroughly trolled. ("He's right! Order won!" they cheered.) I think he's still the #1 running joke over there.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Frankly, I have to agree with Thornley's biographer.

These assholes are definitely totse2 material.  They are a brand of Discordianism that serves only as a smokescreen for my kind of Discordian. 

Also, it's kind of personal.  I LIKE Twid (and Charley, and the other members of this board), and the fact that they got so much glee out of "trolling" or "GASMing" a guy like him, who never fucks with anyone, puts an even heavier slant on things.

Hell, even if I didn't know Twid, etc, the fact that they decided to shit on their own house, and then use the standard passive-aggressive "CANCHA TAKE A JOKE?" as an excuse to fuck with them harder, when there's hardly a lack or worthy targets...Well, what good IS there to be said about them?

And it makes me wonder what the act of getting involved in GASMs is associating myself with.  Or who, for that matter.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

In addition, this highlights one of the most misrepresented lines in the original PD.

"Discordians must stick apart."  So far, I have seen 3 basic concepts inspired by this line.

1.  Discordians must never centralize, as it makes them visible.

2.  Discordians must never organize, as it instills dogma.

3.  It's perfectly okay to be a complete and utter shit to anyone you please, for any reason or no reason at all, provided it's you that's doing the shitting.  It was the excuse Lauren, Hugh, and the other shitbots used for fucking with peoples accounts and PMs, it was the excuse for Malaul shutting down threads if Horab was losing an argument with someone, etc.  Going after a legitimate target is one thing:  Shitting on fellow Discordians is quite another.

Guess which meaning is used 90% of the time people mention that phrase?

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Having thought about it a little, fuck trolling them.  There's no point.  Trolling, to my mind, is primarily a way to get individuals in a group to wake up out of the group...And given what's considered admirable over there, there's no one to wake up, and no ideas worth examining.  They have nothing to say, and they said it really loud.

Twid, Charley, etc...My advice is to just do what you - and I, for different reasons - have done.  Just leave, and never give them another thought.