The All Publicity is Good Publicity Theory of MAP movement building

[Kierkegaard]

The recent news about the wheel of fortune guy being fired for going on Lifeline chat has got me thinking about MAP activism and media attention. The biggest current problem for MAP activism, in my opinion, is simply a lack of visibility. Our messaging is not reaching the public. As Bookshelf recently pointed out in his thread in the social media section, a significant portion of the population literally does not even believe that we exist. They think the "MAP activist movement" is a fake 4chan psyop meant to discredit the LGBT community by association.

In order for any activist movement to succeed, it's necessary for messaging from that movement to achieve critical mass and permeate through the public consciousness. Right now, the only thing most members of the public ever hear about pedophiles or MAPs comes from our detractors. We're nothing but semi-mythological boogeymen as far as the public is concerned. We can't humanize ourselves and escape boogeyman status if we have no platform to actually express our views and lived experiences to others. We also can't grow and recruit new members without visibility. There are countless millions of MAPs out there in the world, but only a tiny fraction ever stumble across niche internet communities like this. Most people are not going to join some obscure fediverse instance or whatever, you have to really search out these kind of communities to find them. Places like this and lifeline are few and far between.

Unfortunately, we can't carve out activist communities and do outreach on more accessible mainstream social media websites because of censorship. We just get banned immediately. We also can't rely on the traditional media to platform our message positively for obvious reasons. The only MAPs who occasionally get platformed by mainstream media are pathetic, self-flagellating pedos who spew out the usual cliches about child attraction being a horrible disease with their faces blurred out and their voices distorted like in those stupid documentaries. Not exactly good branding. IRL activism is also out of the question for the majority of us who don't want to be fired, lynched, and ostracized. Unless anyone here has a spare few billion dollars lying around to fund an independent pro-MAP media org, it seems like we're shit out of luck. Our views and experiences are being very successfully suppressed by the powers that be.

However, I think there is one viable strategy which could work to get us the attention we need. If it's not possible for us to post our messaging to social media ourselves or to get positive mainstream press coverage, we just need to bait influencers, youtubers, and media orgs into inadvertently platforming us and giving us free advertising under the guise of "exposing" and condemning us.

This will serve two main goals. The first is humanizing ourselves to members of the public by getting them to listen to our perspective and showing that we're real people just like them. Dehumanizing propaganda is much less effective when the population being propagandized to have close personal contact with the group being dehumanized. People who know and interact with Jewish people on a regular basis are less likely to believe all Jews are inhuman monsters. One of the reasons the dehumanizing propaganda works so well against us is because of our obscure status as impersonal boogeymen. Hardly anybody knows any (uncloseted, open) MAPs irl. Hardly anyone is ever exposed to personal testimony from MAP perspectives. The first step to humanizing ourselves is to speak up and have our voices, stories, perspectives, etc be heard. As well as the voices of AAM who have had positive experiences with MAPs, another group who are always censored and afraid to speak out.

Of course, most people will still think we're evil even if they read one or two pro-map stories. It's not like it would be some kind of instant, overnight thing. But humanizing ourselves by having our stories and perspectives be given a platform is an absolute prerequisite for any further progress. It might not be sufficient for MAP acceptance, but it is critically necessary. The more that members of the public are exposed to MAP perspectives firsthand, the more we'll chip away at the demonizing mythologization.

The second goal is recruiting new members. There are plenty of MAPs out there who think they are alone, that they're monsters who nobody else will ever understand, that there are zero safe spaces or communities for them to go and talk to like-minded people. The more attention we draw to ourselves, the greater the chance new MAPs seek out communities like this. This has already happened with lifeline chat. It went from being practically dead to having a significant influx of new members because of the wheel of fortune story. TMZ even posted the response put out by the admins of Lifeline, which is huge. A pro-pedo press statement actually got mainstream media coverage. Some of those new members are angry antis, but most seem to be genuine MAPs curious about the community.

Once we achieve a critical mass of negative coverage "exposing" us and our horrible communities, it's only a matter of time before some of the more open minded media figures start to reach out to try to engage with us in slightly less hostile way. That's how we get the ball rolling.

Of course, this strategy does come with risks. In some countries without any free speech protections communities like this may be illegal and subject to government persecution. Even in countries like the US where this website is technically protected by the 1st amendment, it's likely a significant amount of public attention will result in increased monitoring, stings, attempts at entrapment, infiltration, etc. The US government has a history of doing this to other activist movements, so it's something we'd need to be prepared for. Hackers are also likely to try to exploit the website to dox admins and users. And mods of places like this would need to be prepared to handle bad faith users registering and spamming the board. Negative attention comes with lots of challenges. We'd all need to be very careful about practicing good security to stay anonymous.

However, if we overcome those challenges, I think we can use the media hysteria and conspiratorial moral panic to our advantage. The public loves stories about spooky international pedophile cabals operating in the shadows. Lots of influencers and clickbait journalists would love to write a juicy exposé about the devious pedophiles on MAP Forum plotting to normalize sex with children. Some YouTubers like Slyboy have already done this, but he's a small fish. We need to hook a big fish.

So, basically, the plan is:

1: Build secure, resilient websites like this forum, chatrooms like lifeline, and wikis/info sites like MAP wiki where MAP perspectives are hosted and communities can form.

2: Pose as concerned citizens and tip off major influencers, YouTubers, journalists, etc to the existence of these awful, shadowy, disgusting websites just brazenly existing on the internet and serving as gathering spots for pedophiles. DM them. Post in their comments section with fake accounts. "Have you seen this?! These websites are full of pedophiles talking about their plans to normalize sex with children and abolish the age of consent! Somebody has to do something, get the word out! Why hasn't this forum been banned yet!?"

3. Clickbait journalists and people on social media post about us and how concerning we are, spreading the word and giving us free advertising. Some brave and curious individuals click the links just to check out the spooky clearnet pedophile forum, and in doing so read our messaging and take in our views. Most will click away and leave in disgust, but some will come away with a slightly more humanized view of MAPs upon seeing that we're real people with real concerns and genuine compassion for children. The dehumanization will be chipped away at bit by bit. Those who have their own feelings of attraction towards children will realize they're not alone and there are MAPs out there who have overcome the shame and socially imposed guilt and self-hatred.

4: Keep growing, keep attracting attention, recruit more members, reach critical mass, do what activist movements do.

What does everyone think?