Envoy Theory 101
this essay is not mine. this is a mirror of this reddit post , kept here for archival on my own website, taken without permission. . all rites reversed.
It's been about three years since I landed here. My life has been turned absolutely upside down as a result. Not saying I have all the definitive answers, but there's a few things that I can say with confidence which may be helpful or applicable to some of you.
When things get weird, the weirds go pro, right?
Anyway. Let's call it Envoy theory - lifted from the show / book Altered Carbon. If by any chance you missed it, envoys are a group of rebels who are trained to start an armed rebellion anywhere, set in a world where people are able to live forever as long as they can afford new bodies to download their consciousness into. So envoy theory is the soul of the matter: how do you download parts of this hivemind into meatspace on something actionable? Running your wheels at home being frustrated by hellworld can only get you so far. (and more deeper down, as unfortunately evidenced by many around here)
1. How the fuck do you find things?
I trust most of you have above the average research skills. But you should Always Be Practicing and improving. Learn proper google fu : most information that's interesting on the internet is not search engine friendly or obscured. Some information is date or url specific. If you're linguistically landlocked like I am, it's geography specific. Often first you're better off finding the institutions of interest, found through material of interest, rather than going for the specific combination of buzzwords.
Buzzwords, especially those related to theory, are a treasure. Make a note of them. In fact, if you find a combination that seems interesting, IMMEDIATELY google it. Note down the authors and the websites you find.
The SOTS envoy at any given moment has 50+ tabs open and thrice the amount of notes. I will not go into detail about notekeeping, those of you with academic rigor can chip in. I just use notepad++ because I'm a fucking animal.
This gives you a bolt start - but you're viewing stuff from above, and the structure hides things from you. Which takes me to my next point.
2. /noclipping/ on the internet
People our lousy with their hyperlinks, and book style references are mostly linear. They only reveal and construct the official genealogy. But that's not how people work, and a good sorcerer is always aware of the invisible. So grab a handful of SEO tools , notably backlink checkers and get acquainted with similarweb.com, as well as the subreddit neighborhood graph tool . This gives you the power, once you found a sight of interest to map out like-minded or similar territories. Obviously this doesn't work for facebook , but most of that is whack anyway, and you'll be navigating that walled garden using a different step.
But the above two should give you the power to trespass most intellectual enclosures. Book piracy sites are also your friend, as are the weird telegrams and discord channels.
3. Crossing the chasm
Now you're fairly acquainted with the online cosmos surrounding this sort of thought, and you can get suicidal cocooning going, right? Nah brah, the real fun begins now.
See, we're not the first dicking around this territory. In fact, at any given moment someone not too far away from you might be pondering similar things as you do. It's just that we don't have Tinder for these types of relationships, so you will never know of each other.
But! You can infer, using the mapping method layed out above, that there are in fact people who congregate in certain mediums who read similar stuff to you. Thing is, even if you find their contacts, they will think you're a fucking weirdo if you just message them out of the blue. Most people haven't adopted to the internet yet this way: nobody knows your a dog, let's just keep it that way.
So you have to start producing your own stuff. Write. Podcast. Shitpost. Target the the likely locals. This will get the attention of the people you want, and more and more will come out of the woodwork. You'd be surprised! Just always be ready to meet and chat. Turn those serendipitous contacts into real ones.
Now you can start moving offline. Start hosting events. Talks. Screenings. Hell, make a zine - in meatspace, analogue still rules with flyers and stickers. Just get a fundraiser going through that online presence you built up so you're not fronting it out all of pocket.
4. ???
Congrats. Now you're still in hellworld, but at least you're not completely alone. You can take your new friends and organize irl glass bead games, reading clubs, ARGs, whatever. You can slowly start mentioning SOTS without people thinking you should be put in an insane asylum. You'll slowly start to get involved in more and more stuff that's REALLY ACTUALLY HAPPENING and it's going to be WEIRD AS FUCK and you're gonna get burned like hell and try and fail and sometimes win but it'll be FUN.
5. Profit
Enjoy your life as being the resident sorcerer. You are free to start a cult or a business to sell us off to SOTSCORP. Or whatever, as long as it qualifies as the local Working Shaman's Association.
Have fun!