Interlude: Having Fun with Pseudonyms, or... LARPing for Fun and Profit! - Part 2

[Continued from Here.]

I've done this exercise, more than once. Each time I've discovered things about myself and the world that I'm not sure I could have otherwise.

Being an "alter" [short for alter-ego and what I call the characters I create for my benefit] is relatively easy online. The real challenge comes from doing it live, immersed in one's discomfort zone. Can I be the character so much that no one else knows I'm "play acting"... including myself? And what do I learn from that?

Over the years I've used several characters. Here are some that are still in existence.

• Devilhead
• Founder
• This Guy
• Hostility Jones
• Jonah Nietsche
• Samael Liberalis
• Don Hartley
• And many, many more who have explored the deep web.

Devilhead, who's the writer of the bunch, is who you have been reading. The name was given to me during my first ministry by another minister. [He also left the ministry, as I did, and practices magick, as do I.]

Hostility Jones is Devilhead's alter. Yup... my alters have alters. Imagine a demonic cowboy clown. He came out in UU Nightmares. One of the reasons I've shut that blog down. (That's a whole story I'm going to tell.)

Jonah Nietzsche began as a you tube video series called Bible Study w/ Pastor Jonah. It has been taken off youtube and the concept sold as a TV series to a production company in Singapore... can't make this shit up. As part of the marketing for that, prior to sales, Jonah needed be a real person. To that end he went on a couple of the smaller social media sites. I was aiming for a Christian conservative crowd, precisely because "Bible Study" once released would be both intriguing and upsetting to this crowd. 

"Jonah" joined Faithful Earth and the Tea Party Community. Literally all he posted was a single Bible verse every day. Not offensive ones like "Bible Study" but the ones everyone seems to love. "God is Love." stuff like that. Jonah posted the same quotes in both groups daily for about a year. He'd occasionally get a question from a social media follower, which he would answer promptly and politely. For the most part it was just a single random Bible quote a day. And from that, Jonah got large followings on both Faithful Earth and Tea Party Community. 

As Jonah was going to be part of a marketing "scam". I left as many clues as possible as to who was in the driver's seat when it came to Jonah. I wanted them to find me.

As to the crowd I got on Faithful Earth and Tea Party Community... they were not the crowd to market this to. It became obvious that despite the lame characterizations of the right by "enlightened" Unitarian Universalists, they had no fucking idea who or what they were talking about. One would think, given the characterizations of the Right by Unitarian Universalists, that the Tea Party Community would be filled with knuckle-dragging Klansmen. That characterization says far more about the Unitarian Universalists who promote this image of even the middle-of-the-road right leaning people, than it ever did about the people that Unitarians enjoy denigrating.

What I found in both of those online communities were some very lonely people who sought to ameliorate their loneliness in an ideological echo chamber. The Faithful Earth crowd seemed just sad, very lonely, and a little afraid of the outside world. Doing any sort of surprise marketing on them would be cruel. There is no other word. These are good people, good people who are wounded. They didn't need Jonah.

Likewise the Tea Part Community was the same. Their sadness and loneliness took the form of anger at a world they could not control. I would be less cruel, but still cruel to market to these people this way. They also didn't need Jonah. 

Jonah was resurrected when I chose to market Unitarian Universalist Nightmares to the UUA Board, it's regions, and congregations. Again, Jonah had a direct path back to his creator. No one followed it, but all demanded to know who I was. To me that's funny.

Samael Liberalis is my latest interface with the Unitarian Universalists.

And that brings us to Don Hartley, who himself uses a "stage name" for "protection." (Don Hartly, Devilhead... connection?)

Don Hartley has become quite the speaker on the fundamentalist/evangelical conspiracy circuit. 

After the events of August, 2017, Don Hartley decided to go on a revival tour speaking about the "dangerous cult of Unitarian Universalists." I spent a good part of the fall on an evangelical speaking tour in several states: Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee.  It's part of a whole series on "dangerous cults." Don's not the only speaker, just the "expert" on Unitarian Universalism.

Here's the best part: evangelicals already believe that Unitarian Universalism is Satanic pure and simple. This means one can literally say anything about Unitarian Universalism, bring it back to Satan, and the love offerings flow. If you have a powerpoint of old AYS pornography, and some of the OWL stuff of old and/or disabled people fucking... just sayin'.

And let me tell you if you're used to a Unitarian Universalist speaker's fee... a tent revival "love offering," particularly when you're telling people exactly what they want to hear and believe in their hearts to be true, kick$ the living $hit out of a "speakers fee." I've been fortunate enough that I've never had to worry about money, but this is just literally thrown at you as you speak. 

It will be interesting to see if there is any fallout on the UU churches of Miss, Al or Tenn.  In all honesty, the evangelical communities and Unitarian Universalist communities are both insular bubbles, and really don't brush up against each other. But they do live in the same communities. I'm gearing up for tours of Texas and Oklahoma with the same promoters.

Like I said, fun and profitable.

So,  now you know some of what I've been doing with retirement. As with most of Devilhead's stories reality is both funny and unsettling.

Your Old Pal,

Devilhead

Interlude: Having Fun with Pseudonyms, or... LARPing for Fun and Profit! - Part 1

This interlude is being written because I'm not all that inspired to finish up the Chalice Lighters series. I will finish it, just not today.

For those who want to know how it came out, and don't want to wait, here it is in a nutshell: the NY Metro District's Chalice Lighter's program was a huge success, the District loved it, the congregations loved it, it helped to bring the denomination together, yada, yada... and outside the District, the bureaucrats at the UUA hated it, and did everything they could to dismantle it. The End.

It's not depressing, it's just sad, and pathetic. Details to eventually follow.

I've mentioned in a previous (ancient) post about the use of pseudonyms. I'm a huge fan. And there is a long, long, historical precedent for the use of literary and artistic pseudonyms. Stage names are as old as theater itself from whence the tradition of stage names was ported over to all the performance arts. There's nothing dishonorable about it: Cary Grant was the stage name of Archibald Leach.

The world remembers Cary Grant while Archibald Leach is just... what exactly?

Aleister Crowley taught several methods for breaking cultural conditioning. (It's one of the things magick is good for.) One method, mentioned in Liber Jugorum [Chapter III, b], is to change one's personality along with an article of clothing. This is more than a superficial acting exercise. It is a sort of deep, deep method acting where you strive as much as possible to become the character. And this means, that you feel what your character feels, you believe what your character believes, you immerse yourself in that character's world. Crowley did it himself regularly.

It's easy when it's a character like the actor.

Very easy, if the actor gets out of his/her own way.

It's much more difficult if it's a character completely unlike the actor. The temptation is to treat it all like shtick -- play act all the time winking and nodding to oneself. But where's the benefit in that?

In becoming a character as much as possible, with the realization one is playing a character as opposed to being psychotic and losing sight of that fact -- but by bringing oneself as close as possible to psychosis, much like the method actor who stays in character for the three months of the film shoot, one may realize some deep benefits.

First off, one's perspective on life changes. Can't say much more about it. Depends on the character. It will be different for everyone. And one's perspective changes with each character. And not so oddly, each character adds to the actor's overall perspective on life.

Imagine being able to understand something from several completely different perspectives. I don't mean half-assed attempts to "understand" another whose position one finds distasteful but rather an understanding that only comes from walking a mile in someone else's shoes, blisters and all.

Secondly, one realizes that the person we think of when we think of "ourselves" is just as much a work of fiction as the "characters" we create. When I say "I," who's there? Short answer: something bigger than "I." "I" becomes just another character.

I can't even begin to describe how freeing this is.

It's also fun... and profitable...

[Continued...Here]