Mind viruses and an age of myth

[Callan S.]

I was thinking of this game world, where there's this sort of mental virus in effect. There might be a government style body, or mega corportation (or just an old fashioned corporation), but its just the virus's main manifestation. This will embody it more and gives it a more grounded feeling than just being in peoples heads.

Anyway, the virus has the curious ability to hack souls. There are actually many, many variants of it. I'll be...making up...a bunch latter on. But one primary one for talking about here is one that uses authority as its contagion vector. The important thing to remember here is that this is an intellectual virus - it isn't carried by some small biology, it's carried through information. Symbology and just plain old written world (like the ones I'm writing now...creepy, eh?). Primarily this authority virus is like a worm - it authorises the target to do something that isn't physically possible. In terms of this, it evades immediate logic immunology by leeching the idea of intellectual property and intellectual ownership to propose that it is in chage of the process, therefore it is the authority of what happens in that process. And so it 'grants' the ability to do something - which is not physically possible. This leads to not self correcting behaviour.

A stronger form of the virus is where it grants them the ability to add to the process, yet stipulate the process is not changed (using the intellectual authority to assert something changed is not changed). This is a kind of breeding stage of the virus, as that adding is a 'blooming' process that helps it spread out.

Another variant of that is where it would be horrible to perform the process without doing X, therefore X is part of the process. When indeed it is not - this meta virus may have more trouble latching on initially, as the process may initially suck enough that it is physically rejected. However, once it does latch on it has an incredibly strong bio feedback signal to reinforce it - if you took away X, the target suffers a large dose of unpleasantness - so the use of X is reinforced by sheer use of the stick. Again, this is a blooming stage, as X is saturated with the initial ideas in what does exist in the process.

So that gives you an idea of the conflict involved.

Now I was thinking, for various reasons, of ripping the matrix for the protagonists angle and situation. Mostly cause I feel like a good old kick 'em in the teeth visceral feel to what is otherwise alot of thought and talk. Initially I was thinking that the protagonists work through virtual chat rooms, and the action involves kicking the shit out of peoples video avatars whilst making penetrating arguements to cut past viral defenses. Hey, these things don't just propegate, they imbed. The actual fight is more like fighting a manifestation of the virus - or you could think of it as crossing the matrix with the exorcist, lol! Why a chat room involves kicking and stuff, I hadn't made up yet, but it would and I'd make up the reasons latter.

BUT virtual chat rooms? There's no blood on the floor! No teeth in the gutter! It's just pixels! And imagined ones at that!

So what I was thinking was that yes, the protagonists engage the infected through various media, but at the same time they enter a psychic trance, where they also engage in a dream world with the actual psych of the infected. And in the dream world, the virus manifests far more clearly. You are kicking them in the head - right inside the head! Cue matrix action! (also, I liked to think the series 'Life on mars' was about going into some cultural dream conciousness and dealing with past issues/sins)

But that's perhaps getting a bit freaky psychics in your head stuff - but I dunno. Seems to work. Can anyone think of a conflict arena that involves communications and very, very violent kicks to the head? I'll consider any ideas given.

One thing is the sort of 'Agent smith' factor. Essentially, to portray what I'm getting at, you can't beat the fuckers. You can make a good point - land a roundhouse kick to the head and drop them and...they just make another post/come right back in another body, which ignores the previous fallen body, no matter how well put down it was. Because there are no ramifications on the communication channels.

But I was thinking maybe that fits well the matrix style desperation - the idea could be to get in, insert a counter virus (typically 'doubt' about what was previous taken for granted), then get the hell out of there before too many smiths show up and waste you. I think with getting out, a certain elegance would be involved in getting out - otherwise your just dumping your counter virus the same way the original virus did. You don't care about the person, you care about the propergation.

That's probably where it gets a bit narrish. Are you right? To engage this question, its easier to fight if you just assume your right. But that makes you more like the virus you combat. It's harder to fight if you merely provide evidence for your position and leave some part of them to decide for itself, but then if you are wrong, you didn't become what you had set out to fight. Sometimes the toughness of a fight might make you switch one way or the other. Also there would be 'innocents' in the combat arena - these are reflections of the infecteds own genuine desires of self expression and what they enjoy, were they to issolate the infection in their head and instead enjoy the infection like one might enjoy the toxin that is alchohol (ie, in moderation). You can try and look after these while fighting, but it makes things alot harder - it'd be easier to just ram in the point. Also there's personal cost you can spend as a player - how much of his finite lifespan is the protagonist prepared to spend suffering the kicks and bludgeons of the zelously self assured? How much time, before he just says they can rot?

I'm thinking the virus's also exist in the legal and political domains (perhaps define them). So hell, maybe deciding they can rot and moving onto the broader domain is actually shedding something? Pretty cutting stuff!

Anyway, I was thinking when I designed it I'd start with a single mechanic that's in some way a small bit of fun to use by itself. Just nothing this incase its useful to others. I did this for a computer program I'm writing at the moment - I started with a stake and a single random dice roll. It amused me and I added a bit here or there that amused me too and it got bigger and bigger. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have made what I had now if I had tried to just make it all at once, without any enjoyment from it until it was finally complete.

Yeah, but I'm still thinking in what sense/medium do I want to implement that matrix style combat? Cause I definately want the teeth kicking combat >

[Niedfaru]

Sorry, I didn't read this properly, I will come back to do so later, as I'm a tad rushed now.. But, on first glance: Mind Viruses and your description of them put me very much in mind of Memes. http://vius.lucifer.com.

[Callan S.]

From what I've heard of the specifications of memes, yes. But the idea of memes seems to be itself mutating rather than a metrically measured phenomina. I like to refer to what I've heard described as memes, and I'd use the word, but since the term is unstable it would more likely be engaging in meme, rather than actually discussing it.

Just for funs sake, I've considered that larger memes can be semi sentient (borrowing from the host to achieve such ends). So you get something like tiny gods who exist in amongst certain demographics. I'm thinking of the particular attitudes police officers take up, for example. Or teachers. Or healers. And indeed some might be the shadows of men long since physically dead, so much did they lead. So you have semi-immortals walking between the heads of living men like men walk corridors.

That's all fun hypothesis time - sounds semi plausible, might be worth investigating in future because if it or something like it is the case, it's important (or atleast I would say).

[JoyWriter]

This got me thinking Snow Crash with a hint of Psychonauts.

Any influence? Divergences?

[Callan S.]

I'm not familiar with either.

[JoyWriter]

Snow crash is this pretty immense cyberpunk novel dealing in mind viruses and mythology amongst other things. It's pretty breathless, but because of all the stuff it doesn't fully develop it's a good source of inspiration for a lot of stuff. Psychonauts is this game where you jump inside people's heads and platform in thematically appropriate ways to deal with their issues etc. Basically, both are awesome, I'm more familiar with Snow Crash, but I thought it might be cool to mix setting design and character design, so that character traits shape the environment you fight in when you go head-diving.

Now more broadly the idea of a mind virus is sometimes used pejoratively in internet type debates as the new version of "cult! cult!". Basically as soon as you start exploring the spread of culture and the cultural embedding of thinking, or open up the definition of mind, then organisational structures can be given some shade of a personality, etc etc. That gets into the cybernetic ends of sociology and stuff, and there is an example of the thinking about that kind of stuff here.

Now my idea is that the concept of mind viruses gets chucked around as a negative, and while "pure evil" is not likely to be found in real battles, it is awesome to fight, so by getting both a balanced view of cultural progression (or even positive), and the way people slander each other, you can strip out the pure evil of mind viruses from an ideological conflict and get down to kicking things in the head!

I love the combining of mystical intellectual property into things, very surreal!