Some years back I worked at a place where mind games and pranks were common place. A buddy and I were.... ah..... rather good at them. Real good.

One day we tried a new trick... We made a point of telling our victim, seperatly and convincingly, that WE hadn't done it. We told him: "Just remember, *I* had nothing to do with it".

That man spent the rest of the day trying to figure out what it was we HADN'T done. At the end of day he circled his truck twice and crawled underneath before he would even dare start it. By days end he was exhausted and frazzled. All because we HADN'T done anything and TOLD him so.

You REALLY want to convince your friends and family to do something about preparation? Get up tomorrow morning and announce to anyone who will listen that you were wrong. Make a big deal about it. Drive them nuts telling them everything will be fine. Go 100% polly, but without being a nasty jerk like they are. All the time you are telling everyone how fine and sunny life is go right ahead buying rice, water barrels, and all the other things that make you sleep well at night.

Do it in front of them. Don't explain why, brush it off.

Shortly they will come to believe YOU know something THEY don't and you are keeping it to yourself. They will either begin preparing just because you are (but only because you say they shouldn't) or they will hold you down and MAKE you confess what you know.

Why? Because they don't want YOU to get away with having a secret. They want in on it. They can't stand the idea they are being left out.

It's that simple. Just tell them with a smile that everything is going to be JUST FINE, but do it as you carry another 50 pounds of rice into the house. Better yet, get them to help carry it. Tell them it's to feed the fish. Tell them it's to feed the flying rats at the park. Get them to help you carry another sack tomorrow. More fish food.

You can tell them till you are blue in the face what they should do. You really want them to do it? Tell them NOT to even as they see you do it.

-- Art (artw@lancnews.infi.net), September 08, 1999

Answers

Ha! This is good. The Tom-Sawyer-fence-white-washing principle applied to Y2K prepping. Soon you'll have 'em begging to buy your preps FOR you.

-- Count Vronsky (vronsky@anna.com), September 08, 1999.

I like it, Art!

Reminds me about something John Holt (the teacher who pioneered "unschooling" at home) said.....(paraphrasing intensely): 'If you really want kids to learn to read, make it illegal for anyone under the age 12 twelve to read anything. They'll be reading well before they are 9'.

My old physics prof had a similar remedy to the high numbers of traffic fatalities -- he said, "Instead of telling people to wear seat belts and drive more slowly, we could do one thing -- and it would bring traffic accidents nearly to zero." What? we asked, eagerly (as students who don't want to study are wont). He said, "Put a sharpened spike in the center of the steering wheel, aimed right at the driver's heart."

Ya gotta love people who think this rationally.

Thanks for the thoughts!

-- Anita Evangelista (ale@townsqr.com), September 08, 1999.

"Why pepare for anything when life is sooooo good now?" Live for TODAY!

-- dw (y2k@outhere.com), September 08, 1999.

I've got a better idea, why don't you take off your tinfoil hats, brush your teeth and get some sun on your skin. People might take you a little more seriously...

-- Y2K Pro (y2kpro1@hotmail.com), September 08, 1999.

Y2K Pro, you don't have any better ideas.

You're wasting bandwidth like a silly DGI Weibschen.

-- Randolph (dinosaur@williams-net.com), September 08, 1999.

Y2K Pro, a little more seriously than what ?

You ?

-- no talking please (breadlines@soupkitchen.gov), September 08, 1999.

Oh, like the government does.

No more than a three day glitch at most. Here, in the States, well be just fine. Prepare as if you were going to be in a bad winter storm. One week. Just remain calm. Really, its going to be just fine here. Its almost fixed now. Everythings going to be just fine.

Do you HEAR me? Everything is going to be just FINE!

(How's that bunk..er..Command Center along, General?)

So, if this theory works, how come folks aren't getting nervous?

-- Faith Weaver (suzsolutions@ccia.com), September 09, 1999.

same reason I wouldn't make it as a politician, I don't LIE to people.

1a. Y2K is Real.

1b. Y2K is a sub-set of the millenium problem.

-- Dan G (earth_changes@hotmail.com), September 09, 1999.

"After we returned to college to start another school year, we moved into a new dormitory. It was located on the major loop road around campus. By this time I had overcome the chronic shyness of my youth and could even become feisty and adventuresome. For example, one day when new snow covered the ground, I returned from the dining hall when an idea flashed. What if I roll a big snowball on the sidewalk? Will others build more of them out on the road?

I rolled one as large as I could next to the curb and went to my room to watch. Amazingly, within minutes a group of boys arrived and made it bigger. They created new ones and placed them across street, totally blocking it. Ever more students joined the party and a festive mood spread over the crowd. They broke off traffic signs and buried them in the snow. A police cruiser arrived and was unable to push through the blockade to clear a path through it.

My roommate dropped a big snowball from an overpass onto the hood of a police car while yelling, Cops hurt. The police officer became enraged and drove away while the students kept adding to the wall. They crowned it with a porta-potty stolen from a construction site. The seed of my idea blossomed into a barricade across a major road. The police returned with a pickup loaded with snow for extra weight and attempted to push through again. It became embedded instead. The mob cheered, jeered and booed. Several more cops arrived and dispersed the revelers, chasing them into dormitories and into hiding. Had I sponsored a TV crew, I could have spread this riot to the rival campus and beyond. I'd be interviewed on television, become famous and could wear a button: As Seen On TV.

But I worried about undermining the authority of the police because every act of insolence leads to further such acts. And if unpunished, leads to popular criminality. What happened to us? We're racing toward anarchy. We have no more freedom. We can't talk about it. Everybody hates everybody. We might get sued.

Over the years I thought repeatedly about this event. It offered a simple, yet perfect lesson in mass manipulation. I could relate it to many situations that I had learned about. I started a riot and only I knew who, why and how it began. Yet my small effort had great consequences. My little snowball grew into an avalanche. I gave no orders, informed no one, but achieved far-reaching results without any great efforts on my part. I did not take any credit, nor blame, for the campus blockade.

Could I have carried this foolishness to its extreme by selling riot tickets for this event?

What could be achieved if one deliberately planned for mass manipulation? Wasn't this so in politics and advertising? People could be swayed to follow fads initiated by only a few individuals. They could be enticed to fork over their earnings to unknown entities and even enjoy doing it. A whole society could be brainwashed and exploited that way.

One broad example of this is the pervasive idea, fostered by heavy advertising, that the initial cost of a product is the cheapest cost. New. Improved. "Twenty percent off. Save ten thousand dollars." The uninitiated consumer gives little consideration to the intended lifespan of a product, nor to the maintenance and repair to keep it operable. He buys and builds as if he were going to die tomorrow and is not concerned about providing a solid foundation for the future.

Once a European visitor asked me what the trailer huts were used for that we passed by. Some had beautiful black tires on their roofs to keep them from blowing away. I was embarrassed to explain to him that the unlimited opportunities could go both ways, that this compound was a Blue Sky Mobile Homes Park Estates Empire. Had it been winter, there would have been straw bales around the bases of some of these huts and plastic wrapped around others to keep out the cold wind.

In Europe it is difficult to find home improvement centers or hardware stores. They are unnecessary. One does not find cartridges of sealant or rolls of plastic because homes are built to last for centuries with little maintenance. Many of ours are built as cheaply as possible and consequently have to be maintained incessantly, creating a huge culture of do-it-yourself repair hobbyists, draining their savings. This takes away time and money from family togetherness leading to further undesirable consequences...."

-- Not Again! (seenit@ww2.com), September 09, 1999.