Narrative Warfare: Full Copyleft! How The Hobbyist Seizes Control Of The Hobby (Prelude)

This week's been a harsh one for hobbyists. Stupid British Toy Company did a dumb, and Magic-Users replaced the Head Wizard, both of which were not good for the hobby.

Yes, I have a response. Beige Shiba beat me to the summary, so I'll use his.

Before GW kiboshed it, EmperorTTS was literally putting out better lore than the official stuff.

— Mr Beige Shiba (@MrBeigeShiba) April 20, 2024

This is a lot more than what I can put into a single blog post.

This will be my subject all next week, as each element requires a post to itself.

Tomorrow is the Introduction, where I take that thing Shiba says above about this being a broken compact between the Publisher (who is superfluous to a healthy hobby scene) and the Hobby (which is a User Network, a Network Effect to itself, and thus the source of the value that the Publisher taps into).

But you're going to ask "How do we do this?"

I will answer you with another quote:

"THE INTERNET PERCEIVES CENSORSHIP AS DAMAGE AND ROUTES AROUND IT"- John Gilmore, 1993

There is a catch: the network a human--a social--entity, one enhanced and empowered by technology but not replaced by it. The core nodes of the network need to actively get out there and hook people up into it, but this is not a hard sell because a hobbyist network is not a profit-seeking entity so it has "free" and "dirt cheap" as strong selling points to along with "not funding people who hate you".

The rest is all addressable, and with all of the tools and resources now available, readily defeated by a few driven hobbyists acting as if centrally directed.

There's folks saying that this can't be done. They are wrong. They are wrong because they adhere to rules and presupposition that no longer apply, rules and suppositions that have been weaponized against the hobbyists and thus the wider culture for political--for religious--ends by a hostile party. If you want to win, you must do what it takes; that includes discarding anything and everything that's been turned against you.

We're in Samizdat territory now, publishing under occupation, so the game is different now. You can cry about if when they're dead and gone, and no sooner.

Welcome to the real Cyberpunk dystopia, chummer.