virus: Destroying CoV
David Rosdeitcher (76473.3041@compuserve.com)
05 Feb 97 12:39:35 EST
The Church of Virus is an evil hoax that can be quickly destroyed as soon as
it's understood. Here is a general overview of Church of Virus.
What is Church of Virus and how does it operate? Church of Virus is an
internet mailing list, in which a certain behavior of confusing and ridiculing
others is replicated. Here is how it works:
People express certain ideas, making various assertions about various
subjects. Those ideas, like any ideas, are made up of a variety of 'memes',
which are units of information that get copied and transmitted to other people.
These memes can be true or false and can mean a variety of things depending on
their context. As people express ideas through e-mail posts, established
"memebers" of CoV reply to the posts by not addressing the ideas themselves, but
by addressing particular memes contained in those ideas. They either attack the
memes or distort them out of context. As a result, the person who expressed
certain ideas, gets completely confused and goes through what's known as a
"belief crisis" in which they have an uncertainty about what their beliefs are.
What happens next? The confused victim then turns to the experienced
"memeber" or "higher memetic being" for guidance and is led through a process in
which one realizes that the safest and most powerful position is to take is not
to express one's ideas, but to become like the other "memebers" and attack the
memes of the ideas of others. This is how the virus replicates itself.
Why is this replicating process so effective? We have all grown up in a
grotesque civilization where parents, teachers, and the media have infected us
with false and contradictory beliefs. As a result, almost anyone's ideas can be
attacked and distorted. And, it is easy to justify becoming a parasitical virus
instead of a drained host.
Is the Church of Virus a real "church"? Just as the churches in the
non-cyber world are for organized religions, the CoV is an organized virus. It
has a similar hierarchical structure to a church. For instance, people like
Richard Brodie and David MacFadzean are the "high priests", while people like
Dave Pape are their stooges or monks that do a lot of the "dirty work".
That's enough to digest for one day. There's more to come. -David Rosdeitcher