Managing Large Forums

This has come up several times in August.

My first foray into volunteer management was with the Coffee Party clear back in 2009. Since then the most notable thing I’ve done was serve as architect and one of the ringleaders for Progressive Congress News. This all volunteer system reached 23% of all Congressional staff at its peak and I wrote the grant proposal that landed us in the top five among 700+ applicants for the Knight Foundation News Challenge in 2011.

Since then I have been involved in Occupy Wall Street, both online and IRL in D.C. and New York, various nodes of Anonymous, and a helpful phantom within Black Lives Matter. I was out for a while, then into Indivisible, and then my progressive from activist to professional … spook, I guess you could say, began in earnest.

Attention Conservation Notice:

I’m gonna ramble a bit, talk obliquely about people/events I dare not describe in detail, and probably complain at length about how human nature is a big fat hazard to humanity at large. If you’re not involved in group activities where entrée is fairly lax, you’ll likely be as annoyed at the end as I am here at the start. If you are involved, you’ll be furious.

Humans, In General:

I’ve written about the various failures in brain chemistry and character, which was summarized in Informantspotting back in May of this year. That one focuses specifically on the informant shuffle. There are also a baker’s dozen of links to other articles here, but lemme pick out the top three in terms of general applicability.

Psychiatrically Challenged Challenge - because social media is a de facto adult daycare for those with bipolar, OCD, schizophrenia, and other issues that wear out the people around them.

Paranoia: Pathological or Professional? - you’re gonna have paranoia, anyone acting while under surveillance does, and the more anonymity there is, the worse things get.

Multifaceted Overwatch - Fighter pilots either have a wingman, or they are one. It’s hard to do when you’re new, but lining up behind someone else and then being a steady presence can be extremely empowering for both of you.

History:

Not gonna name names here, but in the last four years I’ve seen several groups with good potential quickly flame out because they would not heed the lessons in my experience. It was doubly frustrating because I was right there and the hazards they encountered were glowing like protomolecule infected humans in The Expanse.

When things just form, like Occupy did, there are multiple stakeholders and leadership gets selected by attrition. Indivisible captured the energy of the moment in 2017, but it was created before hand and professionally managed. That puts a hard lid on the potential problems, but it caps creativity and leads to splinter groups. Like Coffee Party it had national leadership, but a local chapters model. The two things I have today as examples are both virtual.

I watched a national scale group that would not have had local chapters form in late 2020. They used Discord, which I find akin to trying to chat using a pinball machine. The first people through the door were made admins. One of them showed obvious signs of paranoid delusions. Since they had no chance to vet because the growth was literally a viral cascade, I suggested to the founders they create a second Discord and use that for planning. I was fairly astonished to find the mentally ill nobody, who believed she was being personally stalked by a national political figure, again in the driver’s seat. There’s no solution for such poor judgment; just walk away before you get any on you.

There was a much smaller group with a specific set of tasks. They had one person who showed up, kept things orderly … and knifed them in the back when they got close to success. I’m not sure how much damage that obvious infiltrator did as opposed to the cascade of other stuff that happened.

Group Grope:

This month’s problem is a community numbering in the hundreds on a Discord server. I’m advising someone who has a seat at the leadership table, but nowhere near being able to make unilateral changes. One of the others sounds very much like a Dark Triad psychopath - “Screw results, let’s keep the focus on me.”

The growth for this one was organic, rather than a viral cascade, so they were a long way down the road before they realized they were being effective. Lemme emphasize a thing here:

Attempted vetting after a virtual group has formed is akin to giving yourself an appendectomy with a pocket knife. Sure, everybody’s heard an extraordinary success story about that, but do you know anyone who’s ever managed it? Not likely.

The only cure for the infiltrator malaise is to form a new venue and be really particular about who gets an invite. Doing this is an existential threat to the narcissists in the existing leadership. They’ll attack anyone attempting to depart with the cream of the crop. And informants will at times do similar things, but that’s external direction rather than their character issues coming into play.

This particular environment has what I believe is a typical mix. There are people who’ve been at it a long time, the take action under their own name, and they’re hardened against trouble. There are a lot of very new people, many of whom have careers, spouses, kids, and no idea of the hazards they are encountering. They are anonymous and should remain so, but how to vet?

There are things I do along these lines where not everyone knows a person’s name, and in fact I don’t know it, but some other cat herder does and finds them to be acceptable. This is … I am always concerned about new people of any sort, and if they’re wanting to remain hidden I really don’t like that. If I can’t get a video call and see the person I’m expecting based on a long term LinkedIn account with a trail of activity … *many warning lights come on*.

I will tolerate someone in my circles who is exposed to stuff like that, so long as they’re trying to be diligent, but my participation days are done. That’s active, visible participation - “Hey, can you lurk this space and tell me what you think?” Depending on the situation, that might get a cheery “perhaps” from me.

This is all made so much more complex than it used to be thanks to AI powered chat bots. If you’re facing someone who is say “No way is that happening HERE, I refuse to believe it”, you should keep this link about Russia Today’s Meliorator social botnet handy. Their system is sophisticated and highly automated. You, on the other hand, are more likely to encounter a cyber system - automation does some things, but it requires someone pedaling furiously to keep it moving.

Conclusion:

I am recently become officially a cranky old man with no time for horseplay. I chose a course of doing less and writing more, for a variety of reasons. If you’ve scrolled this far you’ll see other stories below this one, among them We’re Gonna Fight. I stand by that, as well as the sentiments in November’s Civil War Referendum. I am fairly confident that Harris/Walz is going to steamroller Trump/Vance, but even with the rule of law intact the MAGA/militia/Qanon insurrection will persist. I imagine we’ll be seeing even more overt religious based para-state activity in places where Republicans dominate.

Humans are going to gather in small groups for the purpose of not just defending civil society, but objective reality itself. Our second civil war started January 6th of 2021. There aren’t any cavalry charges, but a quick look at any social media platform is all it takes to see the 21st century equivalent of house to house fighting.

So you’d better get your house in order, this stuff is coming for everyone, and it’ll be sooner rather than later.