Narrative Warfare: Active Engagement Is Required For Alternatives To Win

You are going to have to go out of your way to find the alternatives to the pozzed offerings our seized institutions produce these days.

You would think this is obvious, but consider that many people are no different from the Fandom Rejects: they whine and complain about what Big Brand produces, but they won't take their own side and so much as lift a finger to seek out alternatives. They want to be part of something big, and only Big Brand makes themselves convenient enough to just be there at the touch of a button.

It's also why you see smaller-scale versions in more niche hobbies. How many whiny weebshits only watch what's on Crunchyroll, Funimation, or Adult Swim and never bother to even consider watching subtitled anime or stuff older than 10 years or so? How many poseur players that don't like Wizards of the Coast nonetheless turn their nose up at anything that isn't the latest D&D edition?

Network Effects aside, the fact remains that normies never inconvience themselves for their entertainment- whatever it is. Professionals in marketing will tell you this to your faces; poseurs will front about it. While the alternative producers are increasingly accepting of the reality of self-promotion, there are barriers that inhibit reach and most of them come down to Pareto efficiency issues and logistics. In real terms, it means that they can only go half-way to reach prospective audiences within Normieland; those prospects need to move themselves to close the connection.

By the way, this is without active interference by Big Brand and its frends to freeze alternatives out: leaning on payment processors, messing with algorithims to rewards friends and punish enemies, refusing to sell ad space to disfavored parties, and so on. The enemy has no obligation to promotes its enemies to the normies, and it views everything it neither owns nor controls as enemies to be conquered or destroyed.

You see why I say that you're going to have to go out of your way to find alternatives now, yes?

Now explain that to normies disatisfied with Big Brand. Most will weasel their way out of bothering and it will come down to "Muh Brand makes me feel like I'm part of something"; those people don't need an alternative entertainment- they need Jesus and a living, faithful church. Get at them to Go To Church.

A few will be sufficiently disengaged from Big Brand emotionally to accept the logic and will be willing to listen to you guide them to alternatives. Yes, you have to walk them through each step from Normieville to the alternatives as if you were teaching them how to drive a car. They're that far behind the curve, and if you do not hold their hands during this process they'll backslide out of frustration back to Big Brand.

Yes, it is literally the same process between their ears that the first Matrix film dramatized and sensationalized over 20 years ago:

That's right, they never had to do for themselves before. You'll see this a lot in Millenials and Zoomers, who never had to go hunting for anything because they never knew life before the Internet- and the case of Zoomers, before it got scrubbed clean and made piss-easy due to the rise of smartphones with the iPhone in 2007. Older normies tend to act in a similar manner, having not been online much before that same point due to how inconvenient it was.

Yes, there's a lesson in that, for another post.

TLDR: Indie makers are learning the promotion game, but they can only reach so far between limited resources, optimal expenditures, and a hostile mainstream. You--their audience--must be the ones to bridge the gap between them and prospects in Normievielle who would be willing to follow you away from Big Brand to altneratives. This is not going to change anytime soon, especially if the hostility ratchets up significantly. You want the change? Be it, and bring it to others.