The Culture: We Are Now Seeing Second & Third-Order Network Effects

Late last weekend, Jon Del Arroz cut this video on the end of Rise of the Merlin.

Near the end he makes plain the same thing that Professor DM did with regard to his YT channel: if you are not talking about The Dominant Thing YOU DO NOT MATTER!

YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Google (i.e. SEARCH ITSELF) deliberately tanks whatever is not the dominant thing in a niche; this is a Second Order Network Effect because what is happening is that one technology utterly dependent upon Network Effects exerts its power over a lesser (and yes, Trek is lesser than Social Media in itself) Network by culling all discussion within its network of anything but The Thing On Top within that niche.

This is before any deliberate manipulation. The technology, by its nature, does this.

You can't blame Elon, Dorsey, the lizardman at Meta, the Illuminati, or whatever for this. This is entirely on the Nomries themselves. What the technology did is give real power in real time to the Revealed Preferences of the anonymized mass of Normies, Tourists, and Casutals that dominate all niches within the global culture industry.

You are seeing, in real time, just how difficult it is to fight against an undesirable position when Network Effects are so strong a factor in How Society Works.

No, you can't Thousand True Fans your way out of this; mass media, by its nature, cannot be splintered down to such small silos that you can have that be a viable option and yet maintain the mass media cultural institutions- nevermind seize control of them.

What this means is that a lot of discourse about the corpo-controlled mass media brands and their Network Effects is 100% wrong.

Paramount gave no fucks about JDA's book. Paramount brought out the big guns against Axanar, and Paramount is dog-fucking Seth MacFarlane over The Orville. The Revealed Preferences are the tell. Books DO NOT MATTER. Comics DO NOT MATTER. Film, Television, and Streaming matter.

We see this repeated in Tabletop. WOTC ignores most of Tabletop because Not-D&D DOES NOT MATTER. Games Workshop only cares about minis (still, for now, the cornerstone of their business model) and tie-in mass media (i.e. videos and Vidya). Not-40K? DOES NOT MATTER. Not-Fantasy? DOES NOT MATTER.

Normies, et. al.--i.e. THE AUDIENCE YOU'RE AFTER--will not, even if God Himself said so, turn away from the Brand until it is so disgusting and repgnant that it triggers a critical mass of them all at once; then something equally ruinous (for us) happens- they switch off THE ENTIRE CATEGORY permanently, barring successful rehabilitation attempts (rare, expensive, but possible), and nothing will convince them otherwise- and no, you're not going to rehabilitate it.

Network Effects are the strongest Walled Garden system that there is. They reinforce Brand Loyalty by making the friction for defection so high as to be ruinous for Normies to do so, until it is preferable to amputate that cultural element entirely than suffer futher.

If you want to win, you have to be seen by the people you're fighting over. Like it or not, "Complain about Brand, then offer The Same But Different alternative actually fucking works and moves the needle. No one would care about the Bros if we didn't talk about D&D. No one cares about what Josh Strife Hayes says if he didn't talk about World of Warcraft. You get the idea.

You are not fighting this war as an equal. You are waging an insurgency. Your job, right now, is to generate and sustain support by the population. You cannot do that outside the Network, so you cannot succeed outside the Network; you have to learn how to leverage it to your advantage- the Bros successfully did this by changing the discourse about The Only Game That Matters such that YT grifters try so hard to either steal them for their own gain or to defame the Bros to the same end.

Therefore a different approach must be taken, one that well-meaning dissidents will balk at, but the tells from the corpos show--by their fears--what needs to be done.

Make your own Branded material. Corpos play dirty; you gotta play dirtier to win, and the tools they use--information disparties, global arbitrational arbitrage, etc.--are now at your command also.

Make that 40K fanfilm. Host it where GW's lawyers get told to pound sand. Hide your names behind global privacy rules. Learn how outlets like Caribbean Thule publish and distribute actually banned books and shamelessly copy their methods; this includes their finances. Make that Trek series; host it where takedown requests get routed to /dev/null. Make a 40K rulebook that isn't shit, share the PDF freely and include a POD-friendly version so folks can run off their own copies at-cost via unlisted Lulu uploads (or something like it). You get the idea; this is Samizdat Territory, so act like it.

Then promote the hell out of it; show off your hardcopies on your socials. Screen it at cons; have QR codes on hand for folks to access it online. Get folks to donate to Uncle Gene's Better Space Literature Society and be surprised (LOL) at getting your own copy of The Trek Show That Paramount Won't Make arrive in a 20 disc BD boxed set a month or so later.

"But that's-"

No one cares. Normies run off vibes; corpos went hard after Axanar because it has better Trek vibes than anything official so the Normies embraced it as legit. That is what must be done; make things with superior vibes and shove it into their faces. Trek, Star Wars, D&D, 40K- you name it, it can be done. Now YOU control the Netwok Effect, and that vast mass media audience will default to listening to YOU.

That's what the enemy understands--go read Edward Bernays; this has been in the open for over 100 years--and it's time to face that these are the rules of the game.

The Business: WOTC's Digital Primary Pivot Confirmed

The Pundit reported early last week confirmation on what I've suspected is the play out of Wizards of the Coast.

WOTC is going Digital Primary. Beyond is the primary outlet for The Only Game That Matters going forward; print is now depreciated and no longer considered important.

This is part of the larger shift to D&D (and Magic) as Lifestyle Brands.

As I said would be the case many times over the last year and change, WOTC knows that their Network Effect is so dominant that they can start squeezing out everyone else from the hobby entirely. This will work over time.

The reason is friction. If you go with the flow, friction reduces to zero. If you go against it, friction increases well past your Quit Point. The mass audience does not go out of their way for anything; they abhor friction like it was the plague. They will applaud the Walled Garden and be grateful for it; this means they will adopt it and do so with enthusiasm and in great numbers.

WOTC will cease support for Muh Rule Zero within a few years accordingly because Normies Hate Calvinball and Corporate wants Normiebux. This is how WOTC gets their Billion Dollar Annual Revenue Brand for D&D, and boy are the Conventional Play Cultists going to get mad when they get rugpulled.

There is no future for the Cargo Cult. There is only Official D&D, be it Current Edition or Past Edition.

The Business: Does This Look Like ANYONE In Tabletop To You?

I'd mentioned previously that my interests intersect with some moneyed people now and again. One of them, pitching his business incubator, had this as his sales copy. I've edited it to remove the hard sell salesman vibe. Just imagine this with far more obnoxious formatting.

Let me tell you the simplest way to make money online. Not the prettiest. Not the sexiest. But the one that actually works.

Because the truth is most people trying to make money online are doing everything backwards. Here’s the reality: you don’t need a funnel, you don’t need followers, you don’t even need to know how to solve the problem yet- you just need a market with money and a problem they desperately want solved. That’s it.

Here’s the simplest system on Earth.

1. Find a market already spending money. Competition is good. It means wallets are already open. Trying to invent some genius, never-seen-before niche is the fastest way to starve. Instead, find a group already being sold to such as realtors or local businesses. If people are selling to them then there’s money there.
2. Identify their #1 painful problem. Every market has one. You don’t even need to know how to solve it yet. Just identify the pain.
3. Send 50–100 personalized messages every day. Instagram, X, Email, LinkedIn, Cold calls- doesn’t matter. What matters is this: don’t talk about you; talk about them, their problem, what it’s costing them every month. Then tell them you can help fix it.
4. Give them a call to action. “Want help with this?” “Want to talk more about this?” “Want me to show you how this works?” Simple.
5. Follow up. Most deals happen in the follow up, so follow up until they say “yes” or “please fuck off.” Both are useful.
6. If you can’t solve the problem, find someone who can- seriously. Partner with someone. Hire someone. Contract someone. Just make sure you know your costs BEFORE you price the offer.
7. Collect payment. This is the part where it becomes a business.
8. Do everything possible to get them results because results create the next step.
9. Ask for testimonials and referrals. Now you have proof. Now the flywheel starts spinning. Clients → Results → Testimonials → More clients.

Simple. That’s it. No funnels. No ads. No viral content strategy. Just find problem → offer solution → talk to people.Every day.

This is NO ONE in Tabletop.

You think there would be--the VTT guys are closest--but no, they're not. Wizards of the Coast--as often as they shoot themselves in the foot--are still the closest because they, at the very least, have the language necessary to describe the problem while everyone else refuses to accept it: FRICTION.

Network Effects serve to reduce, and in time to remove, friction if you adhere to the Network; if you defy it, friction increases exponetially because you're swimming against a deep and powerful current.

The VTT guys were the last people to make any serious progress towards solving the Tabletop problem before the Bros came along to solve it by correcting the frame of reference; the only viable form of business in Tabletop is the one that reduces friction to ZERO, which being a PDF Merchant (yes, that means selling anything that isn't The Game That Matters) or YT shillfag (ditto; they admit that their own metrics punish them for going away from The Game That Matters) does not do.

What is the biggest friction point in Tabletop? Playing the fucking game! What does being a Rule Zero jobber do? What does not playing The Game That Matters do? What does ankle-biting the Bros do? Increase the friction by wasting time relearning a game!

Therefore the only viable business left in Tabletop is offering a secure Third Space with a curated, gatekept membership of committed participants. Not shilling on YouTube. Not shoveling product. Running the fucking Continental.

The only viable business left--if you deign to call it such--is the Clubhouse.

The Culture: The Big Proof Of Concept That The Bros Recovered Winning Secrets Returns!

Remember the massive Proof Of Concept that proved the BROSR correct, the Drakonheim Campaign? They're back, they're on Dunder Moose, they're talking Winning Secrets, and they got Jeffro and Rule of Thule to come on with them.

You can all sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up now. The receipts are to the moon! You can read for yourself when you back Winning Secrets.

There's plenty of commentary to be had. Players deserve less. Frustrated Novelists deserve nothing. Muh 50 Years Are Always Wrong, and The Bros Proved Themselves Right.

The Culture: Roll For Combat Demonstrates Why Conventional Play Must Die

Roll For Combat talks Hobby As Brand Identity.

First, Muh CONSOOM PRODUCT!

Second: MERCHANTS DESERVE LESS!

It took a while, but they did hit on the core of the "problem": Wizards of the Coast, and TSR before them, used Economies of Scale to artificially set the price below what would otherwise be profitable specifically to get prospects into the Acquisition Funnel and thus link them into the User Network.

This means that everyone else has to get into that level or get dumped, and that's before "Who will play this with me?" comes in to derail the purchase.

The reality is this: Dead Tree--something you can hold in hand--has value, and intangible digits does not. Secure locations you can gather and play in have value. Useless widgets that exists only to Spread The Brand like you're appropriating religion to shill cheap crap to suckers does not. The entire "industry" is in the Upside Down and needs to be brought upright again.

This is why not only do I not fear the collapse, I welcome it; this should never have become a Consumerist pursuit of Pop Cult Idolatry, but here we are and it's long past time to smash all the idols- and, so doing, restore the hobby back to its roots as a hobbyist avocational pursuit as it was back when this got started. We need the Clubhouse and the Real Game, not whatever that is.

Back Winning Secrets for more.

The Business: The MMO Guy Gets Why Network Effects Work

Josh Strife Hayes, again, uses World of Warcraft to explain Network Effects in gaming.

Dungeons & Dragons also set an impossible standard for Tabletop.

Yet that standard is what Normies, Casuals, and Tourists expect and demand from all Tabletop products. They expect to be able to go wherever and play The Game--not your game, The Game--and if they can't do that, they quit.

Tabletop, therefore, cannot be a "Thousand True Fans" thing and Wizards of the Coast knows this. That's why their smarter, more successful moves are those that reduce or kill an element of friction keeping those three segments from playing the game (and thus connecting to and engaging with the Network Effect).

Publishers that refuse to acknowledge this are those that fail. Ryan Dancey recognized this, which is why he tried to reduce that friction by introducing the Open Gaming License (reducing/eliminating friction between products). Some of his successors at Wizards of the Coast have tried to do this from other angles--this is why Beyond is now the primary arm of the D&D busienss and not any form of retail; digital Walled Gardens have far less friction than dead tree books and in-person meetups--while others fucked things up.

What Network Effects do is reduce friction in the most fundamental manner: the ability to do the thing at all. The larger the Network, the easier it is to do the thing and the more likely that other friction-reducing powers come to bear to further reduce overall friction inhibiting Doing The Thing. If you play D&D, you are likely to Do The Thing; if you play it properly--i.e. as the #BROSR has described--in a Clubhouse environment that is globally-networked that reduces friction to near-zero; you'd have to play WOW to get a comparable situation.

Just Play D&D.

The Culture: Jeffro Talks Winning Secrets With Jack McCarthy

Jeffro was on with Jack McCarthy last Sunday.

This one is good when it comes to Jeffro going on the attack.

He's good about hammering this point: Dungeons & Dragons is a Braunstein.

He's also good about hammering that wankers like Grifting Beast constantly try to steal from the Bros in order to get in front about the parade. His culture commentary is some of the best partes of this Winning Secrets promotional tour.