Necessity of Fluff

What? Fluff is a necessity? Blasphemy!

It seems that it may not be so. It is necessary stage in the development of a psion. Few accomplished psions skip the fluffy stage. I went through it, and every other psion I have asked has gone through their fluffy stage.

Why does everyone go through it? Many times, a psion will make their first psiball, then have something very advanced happen. For example, they are sitting in their room, trying to create another psiball and a piece of paper flies across their room. They ignore the fact that they had the fan on and nothing was pinning it down. They convince themselves that they are geisting and post it all over various forums. Many of these forums won’t think to ask if there were any other causes, assuming that it’s common sense to catch these things, so they reinforce the new psions belief that they were geisting. The psion then begins to convince himself that he has a whole slew of other skills. This type is generally ended by the psion being scanned by someone and them telling them that they don’t have these abilities, or someone bursting their bubble.

The second type of fluffer is a person who knows 100% that they can’t do any of these abilities. They are a type of internet troll, and it is generally because of self-esteem problems. Basically they go, and read as many articles and forum posts as they can, and project this feeling of intelligence around them. They gain status in the psionic community, and even write articles! These are the most troublesome type of fluffy, because they have the whole community wrapped around their little finger.

Then you have the last type of fluffy. They are a hybrid of the first two, basically they start of as the second type but morph into the first. They start by making up their psionic reputation, but these people are actually trying on the side. They make a psiball and go through the steps of the first type of fluff. They convince themselves that this is actually happening, and create articles and methods that they think work. They may work for other people, and this person can relate. This type of fluffer does a lot of front-loading (when you suggest things to force AOL in another psion). It becomes an art.

The first version of fluff is the one that many victims can easily recover from. The last is harder, but still possible. It’s the second one that causes so many problems. If you decide to admit that you have been lying, people will find it hard to forgive you. Most likely you will be totally shunned from the psionic community. This forces people to keep fluffing.

Dealing with fluff is hard as well. Every case is different. Generally the first type of fluffer will be persuaded through proof. The third and second forms of fluff are unfortunately very hard to shake. The only way I have seen someone shaked from this path is by public humiliation. Someone usually finds out in some way, and posts it all over the place. Basically they make the psion’s empire crash down around their ears. This will either shake them, or banish them out of the psionics community.

I know. This got way off of the original topic, but hey, it’s a blog. That’s what happens I guess. This is fun. I’ll definitely keep up with this.

Hey Mom, I Want My Own P.Site

P.site. Witty, eh? It’s short hand for psionics site. I have noticed that every newbie decides to make a psionics site. Then they try to advertise it by saying “hey! Come to my new forum. It B awesome!!!!1!1!!one!!eleven111!” They then procede to spam boards all over the place and it earns them a bad name. So, okay, I’m done ranting I suppose. This isn’t really a rant, more like a post trying to help those newbie who want to create their own psionics site.

To begin with, create a “main idea” of your site. It needs a focus. General p.sites never do well. Want to know why? Because it is totally IMPOSSIBLE to create that much content on one site. You’d need 2-3 articles per subject, and that’s just more subjects than one person can handle.

Next, you need content. It generally looks better if you (the owner) create most of the content. If other people contribute an article or two, that’s okay, just don’t totally rely on someone else to control your content. Everyone wants a forum where people can give feedback etc. but they skip ahead. You can’t do that! You have GOT to come up with content first. When writing your content, please be careful. Don’t use txt talk, or leet. You need to write as if you will be graded. The goal is to edit it to the point where you get an A, don’t settle for a B. Put spaces between your paragraphs, not indentions. Indentions are fine in a book, but when writing for the internet, it makes it look like a long block of text. No one wants to decipher that, believe me.

The next most important thing is colours/font. Make your p.site aesthetically pleasing. Don’t make me want to run screaming, in the other direction. If I can’t read your content I will leave. It’s as simple as that. If no one will read your articles, it doesn’t matter how many you have, your site will fail.

Put your forum in a good place. Don’t try to code your own forum. For the most part they turn out ugly, or complicated to use. Don’t create your own template. This will either take you hours (which is time taken away from writing valuable content) or turn out disgusting. Believe me. This is why I discourage beginners from using Proboards. It forces you to make your own layout. Chose something easier, like Takeforum or BoardZero. When making the boards, limit yourself to about 25. Over that, you will have an endless wall of boards that will never get posted in. Sub-boards are your friend. That way you can have your 25 boards but it will look like you only have 15. Each board needs a post telling what is to be posted in the board, and at least one post to start conversation.

Down to the hardest thing for most people; advertising. There are two basic ways to advertise: spam as many boards as possible, or become an active member of as many boards as possible then add the site’s link to your signature and make ONE post in the APPROPRIATE board. The first one seems easier, but it’s not. Spammers are discouraged (as I’m sure you know). Most people are members of more than one forum, so if they see your spam, they’ll warn all their other communities that you might be coming with spam. So it will get instantly deleted.

Oh wow. This post went really fast! I hope I helped a little. :p