From last week’s post, Abbynormal (with 5 votes)  won the writing prompt:

“Taking his cue from L. Ron, Grahams sets about turning BN in to a powerful world controlling cult.”

Here’s your 500 words:

It was, Grahams mused, a surprisingly ingenious idea. If a penny-a-word sci-fi hack could do it, why couldn’t a skilled perl programmer do just the same thing? All it would take would be the right opportunity.

That’s when it happened–a website that he’d been a part of for a long time suddenly changed, to the shock and dismay of all its members. People were suddenly expatriated, banned from their home on the web for the most trivial of offences. Like a bolt out of the blue, Grahams, sipping his glass of single-malt Bannahubain, realized that his opportunity had come. In a feverish night of coding, he cooked up the basics of what would become the start of a new religion, guaranteed to bring him unimaginable profit and influence.

Cannily realizing that one’s own beliefs are unique to one’s own self, and that the best way to reinforce those beliefs is to argue them, Grahams built a framework where his parishioners would not only feel that the beliefs he was carefully inculcating into them were their own but would argue endlessly about them. These newly disenfranchised users, then, would form the core of his new religion–they had already been pre-screened, in a way, as being the most tenacious, argumentative, and cabalish people available.

At first, the new “Bannination” was innocent-looking enough: a place of refuge, a place to get away from the harsh moderation of that unspeakable place from whence they flocked. The rules were deliberately vague and permissive, to encourage an air of camaraderie and of belonging; a sort of nebulous feeling of ‘participation’ in the formation of what was seen as merely another news aggregation site.

Then, carefully orchestrated attacks came: posts were made, apparently from people still associated with the previous site, calculated to induce a feeling of paranoia and to tighten the bonds between the unwitting parishioners. Metrics were introduced in order to at once quash any dissenting views while further generating paranoia about who the real dissenters were. Grahams masterfully played off two pre-existing groups, cementing both into the milieu of Bannination as equal and opposing forces, grouped along already existing divisions–divisions that, ultimately, strengthened the Bannination group as a whole. Each division fed off the other’s attention: the “liberals” felt constantly under attack by the conservatives, and responded in kind; the “neocons” felt constantly threatened by the liberals, and kept the feedback cycle going.

Each eventually was encouraged to believe that the other side was engaged in a shadowy conspiracy against the other–for in this way, outside threats became unnecessary; the necessary tension required to inspire loyalty and paranoia was generated purely from within. This was a masterstroke for Grahams’ plots, as once a sufficiently large population was inducted into his cult, there would be no need to eternally seek out new threats to the status quo.

With the introduction of MasterBannination, a scheme to appropriate funds from the parishioners under the guise of offering improved features–features like reply detection, which were carefully crafted to further the paranoia and the emotional investment in the cult–Grahams’ plots proceed apace. Slowly but surely, the whole world will become Banninated.

From this bannination thread, the winning entry was by Kesshi, with 10 votes:

“Write a story about a Scino going undercover and attending one of the Anonymous protests on Scientology in 1st person from the Scino’s POV. The Scino wore a mask, took pictures, mingled, even chanted and handed out flyers to give the impression that she/he was part of the group.

One rule, though. At the end of the story, the Scino must NOT convert away from Scientology, regardless of all else.”

Here’s your 500 words, Kesshi.

They’re disgusting, really. Sure, they call themselves “Anonymous” and pretend to be some sort of crusading vigilantes, but in reality they’re all just punk kids out to try and cause trouble.

And while I’m going to have to go and take a lot of auditing units to get these thetans out of my body, it’s worth it. None of these Anonymous have any idea that I’m not really one of their number. Not one of them suspects that the man in the mask holding the sign about “The Con goes On!” is anything other than another one of their cowardly number.

I don’t see why they’re protesting, anyway. It’s not like the Church does anything particularly bad–nothing that everyone else doesn’t already do. Why don’t they go protest a mosque or something instead? Something worthwhile?

But still I shout and cheer and sing ridiculous old 80’s pop songs. Whose idea was it to bring “Never Gonna Give You Up” on CD anyway? Why not the theme to Top Gun or something else that’s actually, you know, good?

I see an opportunity in the back: one of the kids has taken off his mask to mop the sweat off his forehead. Out comes the camera–there, I’ve got him. He’ll be getting a visit from one of the private investigators now, and perhaps we can get some leverage on his parents or something. I take a few other pictures to disguise my intentions; they caught another one of our plants earlier when he forgot to do that. Maybe I’ll get a discount on my next rundown if I can catch enough of these “Anonymous” kids without their masks on–there’s another one. Out with the camera, three pictures of other things, shout “Longcat is long!” and go back to signwaving. I’m safe.

I keep having trouble remembering who exactly we’re supposed to be protesting about. Lisa MacDonald, was it? Who cares if some defective couldn’t make it through a rundown, anyway? It’s not like she can’t try again when her thetan regenerates–after all, only a few people can get it right the first time. Besides, we do a lot more good than harm, and we don’t go sending terrorist threats to churches.

A car goes by honking and waving, and I take another couple of pictures. I think I got the license plate on that one.

They’re handing out cake now. I try to stay as far away from it as I can. These are the kind of kids that go to raves and things, and I need to keep my body as pure as possible. I make a mental note to talk to my auditor about this cake as being really entheta–it’s really starting to worry me how excited these kids are getting over it.

I can see some of the people in the mission taping out the windows. I’m glad that that safety net is there in case these “Anonymous” figure out that I’m not really another one of them. I’ll be glad when this protest is over and I can get back on the Bridge.

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