Wesdom

The Wesdom phenomenon

Wesdom, also known as the cult of wes or the wes collective, was a fad that ran through SciForums in <insert date>, during which many users used wesmorris's avatar as their own, with the subtext 'We are wes, wes are we, wes we are.' For most followers this was a just a running joke; however, there were instances of posters altering their writing style to that of wes, in some cases for several days. The wes collective was followed up by a brief period of avatarism.

Aims of the cult of Wes

To see what percentage of sciforums we can convert, for as long as we can manage the conversion (before everyone loses interest).

To make people keep asking what the hell we're doing and then point them to this thread so they can laugh their asses off.

To have ammunition to say weird things and talk about stuff like the hive.

Personal testimonies on the cult of Wes

Invert_nexus on the cult of Wes

It, the Wes thing, was all about the avatar. It seemed funny if the twitching wes head would begin to invade the various forums as more were added to "the collective." It started out as a lark by Rappacini, then CounslerCoffee adopted it and "assimilated" me, then it just grew. It really was weird seeing pages of wes heads conversing with each other. And I am sure that many who never bothered to look for the reason behind it, were confused as the avatar begin appearing here and there throughout the forums at large. It was also an experiment to see how many would join and how long it would last. The highest total at any one time (the end) was 13 (3 others had joined and left), and it went for about 2 1/2 days. At one point we even noticed a google spider indexing the page. Would have been funny if it spread off-site. I tried a google search for it and came up with zilch though. I really like the poster FadingCaptain came up with. 05-25-04

Water on the cult of Wes

As a former (female!) member of the Wes Collective I think I still have some rights though. I wasn't all that creative in there, as I was overwhelmed by the actual sociologial and communication experiment going on there. (Well, each collective has its doubters and analyzers ...) But when you think: What was experienced there is probably the exact same principle as when new religions or idelologies are made IRL. First something that was actually a trifling misunderstanding by Rap. And then it just grew. Note that this happened in the "Ban Proud Muslim" thread, a thread with an intense emotional aspect. People participating there were in the proper emotionally excited state. There were only a few posters there who have made longer and intense participations to that thread at that time, and one of them was Wes. Wes is well-known in this forums, also for his attitudes that many seem to agree with, at least to some extent, or in one way or another. Rap started the avatar thing, Wes noticed it, went along, invited some other people -- voila: we got ourselves a collective. The really spooky part in this is how SIMPLE it actually is to do something like that. It is much harder to pull it off IRL, as practical boundaries of time, effort, finances and such are a big consideration -- but the principle is much the same, I think. The clue to this effectivity may be that the collective wasn't started by the one whose name was used as the central identifying idea of the collective. If you want to become a leader, somebody *else* has to say that you have such and such qualities. Direct self-advertising where someone would say "I am ... Follow me!" doesn't work, at least not in the initial stage. Jesus was announced. He didn't start the whole thing. The Wes Collective: What a great experiment! kowtows to the Wes Collective05-28-04