So the worry is that if this community gains many adepts, most of them will use the Art in Dark ways, making the world a less pleasant place to live overall? Then perhaps the founder of such a community should take care to make the community as obscure and low-status as possible, to prevent it from gaining a wide following.
The problem with a small community is that it might not acquire sufficiently many clever ideas to become a useful tool for achieving any goals, Dark or otherwise. So it might make sense to become part of a larger community, whose goals are similar enough to be worth learning from, yet different enough that its adepts are not dangerous.
In short, it might make sense to disguise this community as PUA. Perhaps even become part of the existing PUA community, whose members, after all, seem to have improved success in other social arts as well.
You don’t start an organization of supervillains! People who are up to no good will have too many conflicting goals and will not be sufficiently willing to trade and share and compromise. (Hell, even people who are up to good are usually not good enough at agreeing on how to do it.) You start an organization with yourself as the supervillain plus as many minions as you need. And you read the Evil Overlord List until you can recite it from memory.
Edit: Or, if you don’t want to take on that much responsibility, you’re welcome to be my minion.
The most important thing I learned from Buzzlightyears cartoon is that if you’re a villain, never waste time boasting, explaining what you are going to do, or still crave acceptance from the society that has in some way rejected you (or so you percieve).
People who are up to no good will have too many conflicting goals and will not be sufficiently willing to trade and share and compromise.
This might be true of supervillains, but certainly isn’t true of lesser villains. There are lots of organizations around of people willing to help others inflict harm in return for help in inflicting their own harm. We call many of these organizations “parliament” or “congress”. ;)
But the clown-suit-wearing community isn’t particularly likely to be a good setting for developing social arts.
The relationship may not be causal but I suspect clown-suit-wearing communities currently in existence are extremely good settings for developing social arts. And I’m not even including ‘Mystery’ in that category!
So the worry is that if this community gains many adepts, most of them will use the Art in Dark ways, making the world a less pleasant place to live overall? Then perhaps the founder of such a community should take care to make the community as obscure and low-status as possible, to prevent it from gaining a wide following.
The problem with a small community is that it might not acquire sufficiently many clever ideas to become a useful tool for achieving any goals, Dark or otherwise. So it might make sense to become part of a larger community, whose goals are similar enough to be worth learning from, yet different enough that its adepts are not dangerous.
In short, it might make sense to disguise this community as PUA. Perhaps even become part of the existing PUA community, whose members, after all, seem to have improved success in other social arts as well.
Hmm. That doesn’t optimize for “keeping the community obscure” to the degree that, I don’t know, wearing clown suits might.
Or if you’re really worried about that problem, fursuits.
If I ever start a real organization of supervillains we’re going to dress up as LARPers and meet in the woods. No one will ever suspect....
You don’t start an organization of supervillains! People who are up to no good will have too many conflicting goals and will not be sufficiently willing to trade and share and compromise. (Hell, even people who are up to good are usually not good enough at agreeing on how to do it.) You start an organization with yourself as the supervillain plus as many minions as you need. And you read the Evil Overlord List until you can recite it from memory.
Edit: Or, if you don’t want to take on that much responsibility, you’re welcome to be my minion.
See also pjeby’s Everything I Needed To Know About Life, I Learned From Supervillains.
The most important thing I learned from Buzzlightyears cartoon is that if you’re a villain, never waste time boasting, explaining what you are going to do, or still crave acceptance from the society that has in some way rejected you (or so you percieve).
This might be true of supervillains, but certainly isn’t true of lesser villains. There are lots of organizations around of people willing to help others inflict harm in return for help in inflicting their own harm. We call many of these organizations “parliament” or “congress”. ;)
edit: spelling
Supervillains tend to be notoriously bad employers. Their employees also tend to be incompetent. I don’t know which causes the other.
But the clown-suit-wearing community isn’t particularly likely to be a good setting for developing social arts.
The relationship may not be causal but I suspect clown-suit-wearing communities currently in existence are extremely good settings for developing social arts. And I’m not even including ‘Mystery’ in that category!
Why don’t you ask your girlfriend how dark my arts where in the morning?