Narrative Warfare: This Is What Savvy Pop Cultists Sounds Like

Chris Gore is a Gen Jones film critic and geek. He first broke into mainstream awareness due to MTV getting into entertainment news back in the mid-80s and he's since built up a career as being one of those guys that knows so much about the business while still being on the side of the audience. This is because he is a Pop Cultist, and it shows in this two hour interview with Hellmouth outlet Film Courage posted this past November.

Unlike a lot of his peers and juniors, Chris comes across as a geninue film/TV geek that delves into what storytelling has to be to satisfy and audience. In short, he's better than the Fandom Menance crowd of unwitting assets of the Death Cult's outrage marketing machine in that he is able to articulate not only what is wrong but why it is wrong in terms that make sense to both the business and the creative segments of the business. This is why Film Courage talked to him.

However, he tells on himself by his responses. He cannot see outside of Hollywood, as even "indie" means "Hollywood, but not mainstream" to him (and yes, that includes Europe); he doesn't even dismiss India, Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Russia, etc. because he forgets that they exist. He doesn't regard them as alternatives to the Hellmouth, even when he does remember that these other major centers of entertainment media exist, because he still believes that the Hellmouth is the pinnacle of film and television.

This is, as I mentioned before, what you're dealing with when you're dealing with the Pop Cult. Proven alternatives are dimissed out of hand because they are not Hollywood, which is also often taken as "not in English, therefore crap" (and almost as often "not American, therefore crap"). If OldPub has a very good command over the Narrative of Anglophone publishing, the Hellmouth makes OldPub look like Amateur Hour; getting even otherwise aware dissidents to just turn the damned channel is like pulling teeth at times.

Just as there is no voting your way out of this mess, neither is there any arguing with a Pop Cultist yet unwilling to come out of the Cult of his own volition. It is as much an addiction as it is an affliction, and it has to be handled as such; wait until they're ready, then--and only then--show them what they're missing, and guide them out of Babylon.

Chris isn't yet ready to accept that the Hellmouth cannot be saved. He is not yet ready to walk away from Omelas. Until he is, alternatives are not going to find favor with him even if he claims otherwise because he won't act other than to reform the very system that is working as intended to destroy what he loves.

Instead, he should be shown the following, and from there walked through how the Hellmouth found the means to survive spurning him and the audience he serves.

Chris will not entertain independent alternatives, unless he believes that it will lead to reform of Hollywood. He may like non-Anglo media, but it's going to shock him to find more and more writers, actors, directors, artists of all sorts, etc. abandoning the Hellmouth and its norms for those of competitors- especially those that are actually nationals of those foreign media centers (e.g. disapora Chinese choosing to work out of Taiwan or Singapore instead of Los Angeles, diaspora Indians choosing to go home to Bollywood, Korean and Japanese choosing to work out of Seoul or Tokyo (e.g. AKINO & bless4)) and only maintaining a presence in Hollywood to help sell their real media projects to the Western audience.

Chris will not abandon what he knows until he accepts that nothing he says or does will fix it. The best thing to do until he reaches that point is to let him suffer, but to do so apart from you and yours--as one shuns an addict out of control to protect the rest--and keep watch from afar. Once he hits bottom, then he'll be ready to repent (with all that entails), at which point mercy is not wasted and neither will be what you have to offer him.

And the sooner he sees why "Get Woke, Go Broke" is nothing more than a useless cope, the sooner he'll admit that Hollywood can't be saved--that it should be abandoned--because all of those other media centers? None of them are on the EGS Investing gravy train! Chris may not come to Jesus because of this, but he will come out of Babylon.

And that's how you deal with Pop Cultists; show them that their idolotry is in vain, then that they are powerless to fix it, and when they recover from the shock you show them the world beyond the reach of their false religion.