The memetic fitness of CoV
« on: 2004-05-22 14:06:08 »
There are some popular series of books called Such and Such "For Dummies" and "The Complete Idiot's Guide" to Such and Such. We need CoV to be easier to enter. Religions and other movements get active participation to the degree that they make it easy for totally unfamiliar newcomers to join, and rope them into becoming active. The Church of Virus is currently full of obstructive flaming hoops to jump through, which in the interest of memetic superiority must be removed. Neophytes will not hunt us down to be infected, we must bring Virus to them.
1. Register www.churchofvirus.org and have it transfer to the existing URL. I will cheerfully donate money for this. "Virus.lucifer.com" is so memetically unviable as a mnemonic device, that it immediately dies in the environment of the brain. Over the past couple of years, every time I want to check on the site, I have to Google it because I can't remember the URL.
2. Put a link to this BBS on the navigation images of the homepage. Google is the only way I ever learned of the existance this BBS. That's staggeringly memetically unfit.
3. Put a link to the Wiki on the navigation images of the homepage. In order to read the Wiki, I had to repeatedly refresh the BBS index page until it appeared in the newsbar.
4. Include in the Wiki page about Meridion how to get your BBS name listed in Meridion. I finally was told today that I have to rate other people in order to get on the list. This is opposite to intuition, but it's fine as long as it is clearly explained. I naturally expected, like anyone else would expect, to not be able to vote until after I was already on the list.
5. Make an FAQ about how to use Virus social software, including all the above information.
6. Be responsive to neophytes' questions, make them feel welcome and get them actively involved. If you become too busy to answer e-mails and private messages, transfer the responsibility to someone else. I volunteer to take a turn.
7. Plaster the cork boards at local university kiosks, comic book shops, game stores and libraries with print ads for Virus. Leave the University of Michigan of Ann Arbor to me, I'll take care of it.
I am happy to do whatever I can to help in any of these tasks. As soon as I have enough reputation to gain access to the Wiki I will be a contributor of a lot of work in making Virus more neophyte-friendly. Give me heavy lifting, give me anything, but take the shackles off of people's hands to help out the Church of Virus.
Any other customer satisfaction comments from neophytes?
He believed in a door. The door was the way to... to... The Door was The Way. Good. Capital letters were always the best way of dealing with things you didn't have a good answer to.
Re:The memetic fitness of CoV
« Reply #1 on: 2004-05-24 00:20:40 »
I think that in addition to all of this, we need to create some sort of hard copy of all of the "Answers to big questions," along with the "Viran Virtues" and "Senseless Sins." Perhaps this could all be fitted onto a flyer with some sort of graphics attached. I could draft something up and post it some places around here (like maybe the UW, and definitely my school).
Let me know if any of you think this is a good idea. I think spreading the word about Virus would be very very good for the world, and perhaps some sort of detailed explanation as to why faith makes no sense when talking about religious beliefs could be added to this flyer as well.
I am just throwing out ideas, as I often do, and would appreciate any feedback you guys have.
2. Put a link to this BBS on the navigation images of the homepage. Google is the only way I ever learned of the existance this BBS. That's staggeringly memetically unfit.
Perhaps you missed the giant link to the BBS on the top right hand corner of every page?
1. Register www.churchofvirus.org and have it transfer to the existing URL. I will cheerfully donate money for this. "Virus.lucifer.com" is so memetically unviable as a mnemonic device, that it immediately dies in the environment of the brain. Over the past couple of years, every time I want to check on the site, I have to Google it because I can't remember the URL.
Good point. I have just registered churchofvirus.net and churchofvirus.org. They will point to the site by tomorrow. Bill Roh still owns churchofvirus.com. Perhaps we can convince him to point it to our IP address. In any event I will try to pick up the registration for the .com when it expires next month.
3. Put a link to the Wiki on the navigation images of the homepage. In order to read the Wiki, I had to repeatedly refresh the BBS index page until it appeared in the newsbar.
I added a link to the wiki in the BBS banner next to the current time.
Re:The memetic fitness of CoV
« Reply #5 on: 2004-05-24 13:23:08 »
Awesome! Thank you!
You know what, I feel stupid, but I really did overlook the link to the BBS on the website. All this time I've been "seeing" it as part of the background decoration of the site. (Which is very attractive might I add.) This may have been for years depending on how long it's been up there, including the many times that I went to the site specifically hoping to find the messageboard. D'oh! The phrase "BBS" has needlessly fallen out of usage and become unfamiliar to a lot of people. Perhaps you need a line saying "The Church of Virus has a messageboard forum. Click here:"
He believed in a door. The door was the way to... to... The Door was The Way. Good. Capital letters were always the best way of dealing with things you didn't have a good answer to.
Re:The memetic fitness of CoV
« Reply #6 on: 2004-05-25 11:51:09 »
I definitely think the explanation line for the image is called for, to enhance the bait and the hook.
First, the acronyms are a poor bait. Everyone who I've shown it to has asked, "what do the letters cov bbs stand for?"
Second, it would provide a hook. The image lacks what advertisers refer to as a "call to action." It needs to somehow get across the message, "click here; I exist to be clicked on.
He believed in a door. The door was the way to... to... The Door was The Way. Good. Capital letters were always the best way of dealing with things you didn't have a good answer to.
Re:The memetic fitness of CoV
« Reply #7 on: 2004-05-27 01:36:28 »
This thread and my own completely random thoughts inspired me to write a set of questions that one could ask about any meme-complex they were part of as a way of evaluating it. Rather than provide my own answers (as I am inexperienced in both Virus and memetics relative to others here), I will ask the crowd for opinions on the answers to my questions. Remember to include things not explicitly stated, but instead subtly implied as well when answering. They are as follows:
1. Bait: What benefits do we promise to our adherents? Can we deliver them?
2. Hook: How effectively do we induce propagation?
3. Threat: How do we encourage adherence and proper propagation of memes? Is this ethical? Can we improve this?
4. Infection Strategy: How are we promoting the spread of our memes via people who don't necessarily agree with them? (making them interesting, etc.)
5. Vaccime: How do we protect adherents from opposing (read: demonstratably wrong) viewpoints? Is this way valid?
6. Meme-complex: How well does this all work together as a coherent system? What can we do to improve it?
Hope this stimulates real conversation and isn't a rehash of anything we've already done. I will post my personal answers to these questions after I have received some sort of response.
And now this, you say you took out the Lucifer yet this was posted before the reply you made to me. I believe there could be an incoherency to your thought process (I always hated stagnant minds any way). (However you may just be targeting a narrow crowd) If you are indeed targeting such a narrow crowd as I have come to believe, the elitism of your organization alone could draw you members if you played it right. Take the Subgenus (p.17par.3) grate infection strategy.
Once again I must humble myself before the seasoned veterans of memetics.
I think that in addition to all of this, we need to create some sort of hard copy of all of the "Answers to big questions," along with the "Viran Virtues" and "Senseless Sins." Perhaps this could all be fitted onto a flyer with some sort of graphics attached. I could draft something up and post it some places around here (like maybe the UW, and definitely my school).
Let me know if any of you think this is a good idea. I think spreading the word about Virus would be very very good for the world, and perhaps some sort of detailed explanation as to why faith makes no sense when talking about religious beliefs could be added to this flyer as well.
I am just throwing out ideas, as I often do, and would appreciate any feedback you guys have.
-Atheist Crusader
Oooh, yes! Like those little pamphlets that those annoying people in the airport try to give me! Yeah, having some flyers posted up will help, I would bet. I'll post some around the campus and around town if anybody drafts some up... I'd try making some myself, but my grahics-design skills are rusted from unuse.
Having some sort of catchphrase or slogan or something might snag a few minds. I know that, for me at least, slogans get stuck in my head and I have to go check them out.
Err, excuse me if that's been said already, I haven't been around long.
Re:The memetic fitness of CoV
« Reply #12 on: 2005-02-19 18:57:11 »
Okay. I am going to approach this idea from the standpoint of PEOPLE.
Let's suppose we had a line on something important to humanity.
I believe I have a line on something important to humanity - I call it 'The Metavirus'
The Church of the Virus believes it has a line on something important to humanity - it's called 'memetics'.
The Level 3 list believes it has a line on something important to humanity - it's called 'Richard Brodie's Communication Model'
The Dead Letter Truck & affiliated projects believes it has a line on something important to humanity - the Pirate Mail system and the Pirate Movie projects.
Not In Our Name Seattle has protests
Food Not Bombs has guerrilla feeding of the poor.
Now take those that we wouldn't necessarily associate with -
Nike Starbucks Ad Executives Militaries McDonald's
They also believe that they have something important to the world. Collectively all of the above have many lines of interconnections, structures, The WTO, etc. They bind it all into a cohesive whole.
If that is one pole, then disenfranchised people are the other. Everyone everywhere seems to be talking about what we would like to do. With ourselves, our lives, our cities, our planet, our everything.
This is Vision. Every human being has one. When we talk in any of the meta languages - Richard Brodie's, or Freudian, or positive I-messages, or the language of intent, or any of a whole lot of very similar articulations, we do it because it helps communication, because it speaks to Vision.
So let's suppose we get a person talking about their Vision. In this day and age, the students, the adults, everyone, everywhere, seems to have difficulty articulating their vision.
I interpret the reason to be because we are entering a phase of great decision making. We Can't See the future right now. So if a person can be gotten to talk about the future, and the memeticist says, "Oh! I get that! That is as...." The person is so hungry for validation that they will naturally knit them together.
I am sad to write it out as manipulation, and yet I do because I know that on a root level, the conversation about memetics is wrapped up in the ethics of manipulation.
Words are starting to flow, in the local language, ideas of the CoV.
Who am I?
My name is Benjamin Grad. I have a little boy named Ari. I said to Ari on Thursday,
"Ari! We're taking over the world so fast that by the time you are ready to use it, I'll be done!"
"Ari said, 'Papa? How about, you take over your half, and I will take over my half. We could meet up some times!"
Ari is getting good at inserting things into my brain. Of thinking through action and reaction on how I will react so that, by the time that I notice, I have already been hit with the information from several different directions.
Re:The memetic fitness of CoV
« Reply #13 on: 2005-04-17 23:55:24 »
I think the memetic fitness of CoV is high. Perhaps it will prove more robust than other organizations that provide no tangible service (save the tshirts for sale). My recomendation for improving the CoV is this:
Land! If there is no center, there is no religion. We need a mecca, we need a temple. Then we need a second and then a third. First let's concentrate on that key ingredient, cause i can't see this thing surviving forever as an internet chat group.
I am quite new to memetic engineering, so bear with me if my theory of memetics is off or needs correction.
If I understand Viral philosophy correctly, the memetic fitness of CoV should not be treated as an end in an of itself. CoV is intended to be a benefit to mankind, and hence good effort should be made to ensure that it does not evolve into something which spreads for its own reasons, uses its hosts as some other large memeplexes do.
That being said, in most cases (I'll give it a rhetorical 90%), increasing the memetic fitness of CoV will be in our interests as human beings and is good work to be taken on, just so long as the memetic engineers working on the project keep that ultimate goal in mind. This, I believe, is an important issue to put attention to because (1) CoV should constantly evolve to more effectively spread its beneficial effects throughout the world, and (2) by evolving quickly enough CoV can develop beyond our ability to use it, instead of it using us.
With all of this being said, we should recognize the prudence of a limited rate of growth and hence of evolution at a more controllable rate. Spreading CoV too far too fast will tend to produce alternate strains, which will introduce additional evolutionary pressure for high infection rates.
Therefore various of the proposals listed above for making it easier to access various elements of the CoV might be counterproductive, spreading the Virus to unsuitably apathetic hosts. Think of the movie "Fight Club" where they made new recruits stand on the porch for a few days without food or encouragement. That sort of policy is not just arbitrary meanness; it's a filter.
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