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How to infiltrate communities and influence people

Houseman

Zealot
Sanctuary legend
Messages
1,068
Are you a member of a fringe group that wants to grow?
Want more support for your political or social movement?
Or do you just want to wipe out the opposition?

Well have I got the guide for you! How To Infiltrate Communities and Influence People is on sale as an e-book now, only $14.99! Here's a preview:

Step 1: Post something political, yet innocuous. For example, you might post fan-art of characters or mascots re-imagined as agents or leaders of your movement. Post a picture of Wolverine reading Karl Marx (if you're a socialist), Chester Cheetah commuting to work on a bike with a resignation letter in his pocket (if you're anti-car and anti-work), or write some fan-fiction about how the Linux mascot was affected by prejudice.

Make sure it fits the rules of the community so that it isn't TOO obvious what you're trying to do. Don't make any sort of statement yet, just show the characters or mascot engaging in, or supporting, whatever your thing is.

Step 2: Wait for the smart and brave people to object to what you're trying to do. They'll know. They can smell your wokeness and your devious ulterior motives. They'll say things like "stop bringing politics into this X-Men/Cheetos/Programming community!" This is a well-known dogwhistle for "I'm a bigot and I hate you and your movement and I want you and everyone like you to literally die to death". Once you've collected a few of these, move on to step 3:

Step 3: Complain to the mods. Tell them how you your life was threatened and you were a victim of hate speech because of an innocuous drawing. Call them -phobic and describe how -ist they are. Make it an open letter. Put the community on blast. Invite your friends to speak up. Make up a sob story about how you had to move and change your name. Describe how you were so viscously attacked for just "being who you are" or "being a good person" and make it about how it's a "human rights issue" and how you're "on the right side of history". Don't let the bigots try and say that your cause is off-topic, or that they should keep politics out of the community, no, everything is political and your group has a right to exist in EVERY community.

Demand that the mods do something about it and punish everyone who made you feel this way. Threaten to take away the small amount of power they have as internet janitors, unless they want to be known as an alt-right hate group.

When they bend the knee, then you have won.

That's it! Now you can post whatever you want in that community without fear of any pushback. You've scared all the fence-sitters into silence by making an example of those who criticized you. Nobody would want to be seen as a bigot for contradicting you. The community is yours now. You may even be made a mod in recompense for the time you spent on the cross.

For an example of this in action, see here:



This user infiltrated a mobile game meant for children about monkeys and balloons by posting fan-art of some monkeys holding up flag for their cause.
When people inevitably complained, they made an open letter to the mods, shaming them and the community. We can see the mods capitulate to their demands and agree to moderate more harshly. Now this group is free to influence the young children that play this game with their theories about gender.
 

Signa

Libertarian Contrarian
Sanctuary legend
Messages
764
Since I'm getting mixed messages from a few of the responses here, let me quote myself, because this happened here in 2018 as well. I shut it down with this post.

Hooo boy, I totally passed over this conversation going on in here. I have plenty to say or respond to, but for the interest of staying on topic of forum changes, I just wanted to point out what this is, on the macro level, in case anyone wasn't paying attention. What we have here is the beginnings of a progressive infiltration into our community, and and Silvanus, intentionally or not is playing envoy. It always starts like this: whether it's gaming, comics, Magic CCG, Warhammer, or atheism. It starts as a plea for making the hobby/movement into a more welcoming place. No one should ever be mean to each other. you guys are decent people, why would you want to allow meanness? Most reasonable people agree, there is no need for meanness, and we do want to be welcoming to newcomers in our group. But then after everyone agrees to the rules, then the real problems start happening. People that are a little rough around the edges get pushed out because they are too passionate and are off putting to the newcomers. Then you get some more people who are cordial, but argue for the passionate people's sake, but then they get accused of wanting the unpleasantness, so they get branded with unsavory titles (ie, nazi, bigot, white supramasist) until the whole community collapses in a purity spiral.

The thing is, it's hard to argue against civility, and if this community grows to the size of The Escapist at its zenith, the argument will be even harder to ignore because you will have some actual problems to address at that point.

Tl;dr: too soon Silvanus, too soon.
 

Arnox

Master
Staff member
Founder
Messages
5,285
Since I'm getting mixed messages from a few of the responses here, let me quote myself, because this happened here in 2018 as well. I shut it down with this post.
There was no need to do even that though really. The core ideals of Sanctuary don't change, and if they change, then I shut Sanctuary down.
 

Signa

Libertarian Contrarian
Sanctuary legend
Messages
764
There was no need to do even that though really. The core ideals of Sanctuary don't change, and if they change, then I shut Sanctuary down.
Oh, I know. Not worried about it happening here, but there was an attempt made using the same tactics that Houseman was highlighting on Reddit, and some people seem to have not believed it/understood the tactic. It's very devious, and unless you spefically know what the tactic looks like, there's little reason to inoculate yourself against it.
 

vinny the vindicktive

There was no need to do even that though really. The core ideals of Sanctuary don't change, and if they change, then I shut Sanctuary down.
Oooooo, so freedom of speech is the freedom to speech until your butt begins to hurt and then the freedom of speech stops.

Is this it?
 
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