The Culture: Brand Cults Are No Less Bad For The Hobby Than Death Cults

Pat wants to share a secret with all those crying about Stupid British Toy Company and their mini prices and ranges.

Yes, Pat decided to share the Sooper Sekrit method of "Buy other minis and kitbash together what you want."

You might feel the need to mock this. Yet, due to decades of said Stupid Company deliberately promoting a literal Cult Mentality in its audience--starting with "...the (BRAND) Hobby..." being considered separate and distinct from tabletop miniature wargaming. Some Lippeman/Bernays 101 applied persistently and consistently over decades and here you are- a mindkilled group of people slaved to (BRAND).

Yes, this means that Pat here is actually doing something useful in reminding and showing said Brand Cultists that they have options.

If you think this is weaksauce, try to convince a Brand Cultist that 3D Printing their own is a viable option.

God forbid you just use tokens, counters, or stand-up figures like you see in Car Wars or BattleTech.

All this is to remind you that the Death Cult uses the Brand Cult as a stalking horse to poz targetted populations, but the Brand Cult is not in itself a deliberate operation by the Death Cult.

No, this is a Mammon Mob operation. It's born entirely out of commercial incentives to make Line Go Up forever.

By inducing Cult Mentality in an audience, you make it easier to turn them into mindless CONSUME PRODUCT man-animals. If you can convince someone via Cult Of Officialdom that BRAND is what matters, and doing what BRAND demands is what defines legitimacy in the hobby, you can (in theory) convince them to do a lot more than that. Mammon Mobsters don't care about anything more unless it makes Line Go Up Faster, which is why it's been beneath the notice of many for so long.

Don't you ever forget that the shit we see in the hobby today began with Brand Cults. Without those--without all this commercialization--the Death Cult could not be doing what it's doing (and done) because it wouldn't have the in that using the Brand Cults allowed via their weaponized commercialization of a hobby that heretofore encouraged and celebrated hobbyist skill, acumen, and the sharing thereof. (The change in White Dwarf from D&D fanzine to company House Organ is the receipt pile here.)

This is why I insist that the future of the hobby is anti-commercial. Even if we got rid of the Death Cult tomorrow, the conditions that allowed it to come in would remain and thus we'd be fighting this again in another generation or two. Get rid of what made it possible and you solve the problem permanently.

Reject Commercialism. Return to Hobbyism.