[Toxic Memes] Memetics: rules, power, effectiveness etc.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by whswhs

It's a feature of the memetics rules that they don't clearly distinguish between those two effects.

From reading Toxic Memes, I'd hesitate to call that a 'feature'. That is, in my opinion, at least, a bug.

Were I re-writing the rules, I'd set some level of action as the baseline, say buying a moderately expensive thing or voting in an election. Smaller actions would grant a bonus to Memetics rolls and even those who did not truly internalise the meme might nevertheless be tempted to try carrying out the action once or twice.

On the other hand, a truly life-changing action, such as buying a house or committing a felony for an ordinary citizen, would not only carry a penalty to the Memetics roll, but a success would mean that the meme has taken, but the character might not act on it immediately or at all, depending on his mental Disadvantages and psychological make-up. He'd be a carrier, but would only act on the belief to the same extent that he could be expected to actualise any other sincerely held beliefs.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Icelander

From reading Toxic Memes, I'd hesitate to call that a 'feature'. That is, in my opinion, at least, a bug.

I didn't use the word "feature" in the computerese meaning of "desirable feature." I'm not arguing for either a positive or a negative evaluation. I'm just noting the fact.

Bill Stoddard

[Phil Masters]

Originally Posted by whswhs

What sort of shutdown are you envisioning? I was assuming that it was all being handled at the software level, via a rapidly propagated message that sites in Montréal were no longer on the list of trusted sources for communications.

"Sites in Montreal"? Remember, in TS, "sites" are even more mobile than they are in 2011. People can carry Web "sites" inside their heads. Good luck tracking what's "in Montreal" and what isn't.

Originally Posted by Jürgen Hubert

Here is my guess how it would look like: Whenever someone attempts to open communication with an "infected" population, hir would get a message on these lines:

Bing! Note the arbitrary assumption there; that you can identify members of a specific geographically-defined "population". That's kind of hard when people keep moving around. Never mind annoying problems like non-localised social groups.

A meme that turned out to be particularly infectious among, say, roleplaying gamers, would show virtually zero correlation to physical geography. Conversely, somebody from Montreal, with strong interests in that geographical area, would probably still expect to be closely tied in to Montreal-based networks even when on a business trip to Ulan Bator - and if he happened to operate, say, a discussion board out of his high-end wearable, it would still show as a "Montreal" site for most purposes even while he was carrying it around Mongolia.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

"Sites in Montreal"? Remember, in TS, "sites" are even more mobile than they are in 2011. People can carry Web "sites" inside their heads. Good luck tracking what's "in Montreal" and what isn't.

Well, that's true. On the other hand, I also assumed an old-fashioned physical border shutdown.

The memetics rules assume that you can define a target population; there is nothing in them to suggest that this can't be based on geographic location. Should there be? Of course, however you define your target population, there will be memetic leakage, but the memetics rules don't seem to allow for such leakage as a possible outcome, so I didn't worry about it. Perhaps the theory is that outside your particular target, memetic exposure will be sufficiently sporadic so that the meme doesn't really take on a statistically meaningful level, even if an individual here or there is affected?

Bill Stoddard

[Flyndaran]

What about hipsters that might go looking for "exotic" memes?
One might create a stealth meme that doesn't heavily infect the obvious "target" audience but is insidiously infectious to the hipster eavesdroppers?

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by whswhs

It's a feature of the memetics rules that they don't clearly distinguish between those two effects.

Bill Stoddard

That's probably a feature (see your own definition below) of any system where an (N)PC can be convinced of something.

Example:
A knows B is not insane, delusional etc.
B convinces A of some weird fact. After a series of Acting and Detect Lies rolls, either B successfully lies to A, or B is telling the truth and A knows it. So now A believes what he's been told.

If B said that, and A now believes that, some child person C is actually a SAI Xox in a bioshell (in the EU/India!), A might react to the new belief by reporting C to the authorities.
If B said that, and A now believes that, some child person C is dæmonically possessed and must be killed by a bone dagger to prevent the dæmon from eventually becoming so powerful as to be unstoppable, A will most likely not react by finding and using a bone dagger on C. Though A might try to go around telling stuff about C to people he trusts/people he thinks will believe and help him.

It's the same sort of issue as deciding how many points a Delusion is worth - the outrageousness of a meme does not necessarily correlate with absolute value of a Delusion (though sometimes it does).

[trooper6]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

That's probably a feature (see your own definition below) of any system where an (N)PC can be convinced of something.

Example:
A knows B is not insane, delusional etc.
B convinces A of some weird fact. After a series of Acting and Detect Lies rolls, either B successfully lies to A, or B is telling the truth and A knows it. So now A believes what he's been told.

If B said that, and A now believes that, some child person C is actually a SAI Xox in a bioshell (in the EU/India!), A might react to the new belief by reporting C to the authorities.
If B said that, and A now believes that, some child person C is dæmonically possessed and must be killed by a bone dagger to prevent the dæmon from eventually becoming so powerful as to be unstoppable, A will most likely not react by finding and using a bone dagger on C. Though A might try to go around telling stuff about C to people he trusts/people he thinks will believe and help him.

It's the same sort of issue as deciding how many points a Delusion is worth - the outrageousness of a meme does not necessarily correlate with absolute value of a Delusion (though sometimes it does).

In your second example, I disagree that A wouldn't go and kill C...at least if A were a PC. You would be surprised how many PCs go around killing people with bone daggers because an NPC said they were a demon.

[lachimba]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Actually, no. I presented it as a straightforward message, "Kill your children [to save the Earth]." I gave it a substantial negative modifier, of course! But, at the same time, there were several elements that supported it:

* As a Fifth Wave society, Montréal had long lifespans, comparatively low fertility, and lots of people who never had children; being a parent was inconvenient and made you a target for social pressure, and many parents had some "buyer's remorse."

* There had been a recurring campaign sponsored by Preservationist groups with the theme "Show that you care for the Earth by not having children!"

* The woman who designed the campaign "paid the price" by killing her own daughter, and then turning herself in, with a statement of why she did it.

The dice roll came up as a modest success. But even having 1-2% of the parents in Montréal decide that killing their children was a good idea struck me as not passing reality testing, besides being way too much for the city's police even to try to cope with, and more than enough to cause widespread terror. So I cut the response rate down to a fraction of 1%, by GM decree, because I simply didn't believe that the outcome of the roll was plausible, even granting an exaggerated effectiveness of memetic methods.

Bill Stoddard

These sessions are some of the best of your campaign to read (and arguably it would have worked great in your current THS Horror campaign too).

It madw me think about the THS setting a lot. My first thought was wow is that really what memetics can do? Surely if it was as easy as you outlinw though the THS setting should be much more dystopian? Surely there must be groups pulling off all sorts of crazy memetics! If 0.1% of people respond to them in an unpredictable way then that could still be catastrophic.


Now I am pretty sure I am less familiar with both the memetic rules and the uses for memetics than many people on this forum.

But I have always thought of big (and I don't think they get much more bigger than in your campaign) memetics requiring several things; time, opportunity, money etc

That means that there is also ways of using time, opportunity and money to stop them.

Your use of memertics means that this is another thing I need to reread and have a think about.

(or better still maybe SJ Games could just publish a summary and I could just pay for that and read it!)

[JAW]

This thread made me lose the game (again)!!
http://www.losethegame.com/

(Not a link dump - LoseTheGame is an example of an experimental mind virus.. It's mostly harmless too.)

[Lamech]

Originally Posted by JAW

This thread made me lose the game (again)!!
http://www.losethegame.com/

(Not a link dump - LoseTheGame is an example of an experimental mind virus.. It's mostly harmless too.)

Warning, toxic means detected. To prevent memetic contamination please do not click the link.
And for a second I thought you were completely off topic.