Narrative Warfare: This Is What "Make Your Brand A Cult" Turns Into

Following up from yesterday, Arch cut this video today.

If you want commentary about the specifics of this incident, Arch is your guy. Me? I'm taking a different tack here.

It is alleged that Alex ratted out the whistleblower for the purpose of ingratiation with Stupid British Toy Company. Said company has recently been hiring staff whose job will be to sniff out things like violations of this NDA, anything they can throw DCMA claims at, and the usual copyright and trademark infringements.

In short, they're looking to set up a snitch network as part of a corporate intelligence operation. This would not be thinkable if the company had not been spending decades trying to turn their business of selling miniatures to boys into a full-on Pop Idol cult, and it is a cult-building attempt that has been very successful. Just as D&D dominates tabletop RPGs and Magic dominates CCGs, so does Warhammer dominate tabletop wargames.

The toy company's positions, revealed by behavior, is that they believe they can control access to the idols of their cult by waging lawfare using snitches to inform them as to whom to attack and where to hit them. They believe that properly rewarding snitches will create this control mechanism and make it work. Through this intelligence operation, they intend to deny outsiders the capacity to go outside their control.

This is why they are threatened by the rise of commercially-available and increasingly-easy 3D printers. This is why they are threatened by NDA disclosures. This is why they do their best to yoke fan creators if they can, and choke them out if they can't. It's all a threat to their control over their Pop Idol cult.

It will fail. It is failing.

The NDA disclosures could have been dismissed as rumors if the doxxing didn't act to confirm them. The 3D printing could have been turned into a strength by refocusing on selling 3D sculpt licenses over physical product. The fan works were already proving to be better marketing than anything they were doing in-house. But, due to an irrational obsession with control, manifesting in Not Invented Here stupidity, they torched all goodwill they had and burned a lot of bridges in the process.

In short, they did more damage to themselves trying to prevent loss of control than any possible harm would have been to work with the changes in the situation to a mutual benefit instead.

Now the toy company is going to find out what being left behind is going to be like.

The 3D printers that could have brought in lasting revenue via IP licensing are now going to be weaponized against them by flat-out copying their sculpts anyway. Their paints will be ignored in favor of cheaper alternatives. Their rulesets are already being shared digitally in multiple formats. Fan creators continue to produce fan works, and those that they previously absorbed persist in unaltered forms online in multiple places.

In short, they just screwed themselves. It's going to take years for the harm to make itself obvious, but this is a Dolorous Stroke and you're watching it be struck as it happens.

They can't stop the signal now about how bad they are. Sure, the invested Pop Cultists now won't turn away, but it will get increasingly harder to replace those recruits and in large part that will be due to being able to play the game without paying the toy company a penny or to invest in the hobby financially or emotionally. By turning it into a Normie-friendly pastime, the Cult collapses because it cannot continue without fresh meat to consume.

Proving once more that Captain Harlock is a friend to all free people, and Normies are the norm for a reason.

Break the Muh Specialness spell on a thing, and you'll be surprised how fast the Cult psychology wears off. Turning hobbies into pastimes does that real quick.