More ME, a monument to one/two, the collective + 1's perserverence.

Our women left early. It's a shame really. We would have got to it eventually.

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Perhaps. After all we were a collective.
We were wes.

We should tell our former comrades to vote "yes"

 

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I don't habve time to read useless 30-page threads. Can someone explain the Wesdom thing that has appeared on sciforums. Can you also explain why everyone has Avatar's avatar now?

 

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Look here (the second page) for a short summary about wes.

Forget the avatar thing.

 

Umm, I am starting to get it now.

and the avatar thing...

 

Some people just wanted to irritate some people (mostly Avatar) because it was quite funny when we were addressed as wes.
Sadly it was not very successful. As you see we all have individual avatars again. Avatarism was just a short period.

Alas, Xerxes started a new cult (with fireguy as the only member i know of)

 

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.

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And there were a couple of Where's Wes? pictures made by Quigly: http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=36650 which I found somewhat amusing.

Some of our members were a bit zealous in posting off-topic and extraneous threads. But what can you do? We weren't a real cult, we had no way of disciplining them. I feel bad for the mess that was made of free thoughts. Might I recommend that the links remaining in free thoughts be deleted? Is that possible?

 

Nah, not really a cult as much as a display of support for the Calgary Flames in their quest for the Stanley Cup.

This whole wes/avatar thing was kinda fun and as far as i'm concerned (a member who has been dropping in for over a year, almost 2) it was a positive thing - albeit created havoc in Free Thoughts and probably pissed off some mod's but ahhh, what's life without a little anarchy now and then, a little sideshow, all harmless really.

In a few days the smoke will settle, most of this will be forgotten and, i suspect, every now and then someone will throw a pun in their rebuttal of a debate that makes reference to this little 'diversion' and some chuckles will be had.

Unlike the days of notorious flamewars, which have been irradicated for the good, that split and divided people this little avatar 'diversion' will only bring people together and foster healthier debates in the future.

It was fun and just what SF needed - another step in its evolution.

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The poster is absolutely great I must admit. It is nice to see that their was a fruitful experiment going on on sciforums. (Although I couldn't be bothered to participate because of my inbuilt disgust of belonging to a group)

 

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 Collective*

 

I was torn until I read your post Rosa. I vote to keep it, too. Still it's a pity that the avatar effect can't be shown. It loses a lot without it. I doubt too many people will plug all the way through it either, but you never know.

I'm sure other religions have started on equally silly ideas. Hell, who knows, Jesus might have started his career as a lark and it just snowballed.

Of course, Wes wasn't really a leader. The collective generally made it's decisions individually. Sometimes we put them up for an agreement by the collective as a whole. I imagine it's similar in many cults. It isn't until after the leader dies that he becomes truly free from persecution and can be raised to the extreme level. He's also safely out of the way and can't interfere with his apostles work, which makes it nice for them.

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At it's heart, Wesism was idol worship, I suppose. The avatar of Wes was our holy cow. We'll probably go to hell for this.

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St. Peter at the gates: "Well, you led a pretty decent life. You weren't a christian, but we generally let people in as long as they've been good. But, you briefly entered into idolatry and never had your sins cleansed. So... See ya' in hell."

Us: "No... wait... it was a joke..."

 

As the other female ex-member... I vote to keep it, even thought I much rather it was in the cesspool so I could reach 1000 posts AGAIN! Only because otherwise it'll end up being deleted, and well... it was kinda fun.

It's a shame Avatar didn't have a decent reaction!

 

Yes, that´s too bad. Poor Avatar.

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