Our number one goal is to take control of the minds of everyone on the planet, and beyond, using our blogs as weapons. Today, the Speculative Fantabulation Workers' Guild, tomorrow the known universe.
Our number one method is to control the discourse at all times. Dissent must be crushed, or at least brushed aside using Chaffian reasoning and the other techniques we will teach you in the coming months. For this reason, you must use your blog effectively. Read our secret manual. Learn its rules and apply them. Only by doing this will you become a Secret Master yourself some day.
Do not just rely on your blog, however. You must spread the Word of Blog to the unconverted who only use usenet news, discussions groups and the private forums of the SFWG. You must take over these forums. Most imporantly, at all times you must direct these heathens, and hence the discussion, to one of our blogs.
In order to maximise our penetration of the intellectual discourse, we must adopt the full range of pseudo-positions. Between us we must say things that everyone can agree with and disagree with at the same time. That way, our blogs get twice as many comments.
We must be selfish, but we must also care. We must be liberal yet compassionately conservative. The reactionary and the progressive meet on our common ground - our website, promoting our brand name.
Every society is only as rich and as varied as its artists, and we intend to be rich. We must write about space travel, whilst acknowledging that space travel will never happen. We must call for rationality whilst flinging mud in the eyes of our friendly opponents. We must decry ad hominem attacks, whilst allowing someone called Rachel to call our greatest enemy a "lying, incompetent weasel" on one of our blogs in November 2007[**].
In the rapidly approaching future where there are no barriers to publishing, name recognition will become all important. The more outrageous we are, the more we are noticed. And so we must shout as loudly as possible and fling invective in all directions. Insults are entertaining; facts are boring.
Whoever complains about us, promotes our name. Whoever visits our blogs to rebut us, serves us. When the discourse occurs on our websites, we benefit - we control it, we own it. The more you disagree, the more we profit.
The blogosphere prizes speed over thought, rapidity over thoroughness. Vitriol is far more important than veracity. Get it out as quickly as you can, and don't worry about how well expressed it is.
All together now: LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA!
One final note: it's far easier, and far more profitable, to carp from the sidelines than to work to change things. It's much more fun to criticise the Speculative Fantabulation Workers' Guild than to actually volunteer to be helpful. If you're tempted to join SFWG, don't. You risk exposing yourself to the amazing mind-control powers of Vice-President Dr Berk. We and our armies of Blog Zombies have shown his myriad failings throughout the blogosphere. Regardless, he was voted in as chair of the new anti-piracy committee by a Board vote of 18-1. The Internet can't be wrong, so those Board members must be under Berk's telepathic control. Or maybe they're just morons. After all, how utterly cretinous would you have to be to volunteer, unpaid, to help promote speculative fantabulation and protect creators' revenues?
No, we must stand well back from Dr Berk. We must ignore the thousands of creative people who have been helped by his Critiquers site. We must mock his hard work from the smug comfort of our armchairs. Indeed, now that he has resigned as chair of the anti-piracy committee of the SFWG, we must push onwards for our final victory is in sight. We must insist that he and all his supporters be sacked from the Board of the SFWG immediately, rather than wait for the next election which is literally months away.
All together: Now now now now now now now!
[**Lucian: Joe Scampi, to his credit, has pointed out elsewhere, unfortunately I forget where, the inaccuracy of Rachel's worst allegation (not mentioned in the transmission above). I feel certain the other allegations are likewise inaccurate and unfounded.]
United We Stand, Divided They Fall | The Tools of Oppression | 21st Century Rhetoric for Blog Zombies | Our Enemies Must Die So That We Might Live! | Fixlets and Scampi's future | Bio of a Space Tyrant | Power Corrupts | Contacts and copyright