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How to raise a zombie troll army in 12 steps. Step 1: Create something of real value, or if you can’t, leverage an inheritance into crap value with a large surface area. We’re NOT making stone soup here.
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Step 2: Create and publicize a special connection to an esoteric higher source of authority (big ideas, important people, or historic events), to which you claim special access. Write yourself into a historical narrative. Promote yourself to Assistant to Regional God.
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Step 3: Start promoting a way of life to which you lend esoteric, deep-sounding justifications, but is a pattern lots of people *already* follow but haven’t reflected upon. Tell them they are Entry-Level Gods simply for doing whatever they’re already doing. Great job!
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Step 4: Act surprised when they tell you they’re already doing it though, like wow, they must be under appreciated lay geniuses for having figured it out. Validate their sense of specialness and express puzzlement at why they aren’t already Senior Journeyman Gods.
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Step 5: Now tell them, with just a little bit of polishing/tweaks, like 5% life changes, they too can vault to Assistant Regional Gods. Connect them to each other with gracious patronage and reinforcement of the Formula. They are an ordained community of self-improvers now.
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Step 6: Wait a while for the ideas to spread, and most importantly *fail* to deliver returns, despite impeccable execution. You can’t work with actual success. If your “Already Doing It++” formula works, they’ll leave your orbit.
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Step 7: Now you have a connected, failed mob, believing in their own lifestyle rightness, but faced with cognitive dissonance of Failure to Greatly Improve Despite Modest Effort. At this point a mere huckster would sell a $2000 weekend “advanced” course, but you want zombie army.
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Step 8: Once you’ve waited and detected the mob stage when as starving grasshoppers they are ready to morph into locusts, start probing gently for seeds of ressentiment. Whom do they *already* want to blame? A/B testing time. Liberals? Bureaucrats? Gays? Saudis? Billionaires?
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Step 9: Digital Al Qaeda Bootcamp Time! Start disseminating information on tactics and modeling the ones you want emulated (or calling out exemplars). Reward training wins with praise or small signs of favor like Likes, or even condoning through silence.
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Step 10: Now start deploying them in escalating battles with highlighting of “known enemy” behaviors. Important: do NOT issue specific calls to action. They must learn to recognize hints and attack without explicit orders. This is stochastic lone wolf zombie mobs, alone together
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Step 11: Almost done. All you need now is *one* historic battle. It’s a numbers game. You’ll eventually make headlines and is analyzed as “news” by all us patsy middle-class chatterati types. Your mob now has come of age. It is Recognized as a Force not to be messed with.
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