A handy guide on cashing in, and exploiting moral panic for profit

This is a tale about opinions, the internet, and Patreon. It’s about a select few enterprising individuals, who have figured out way to actually channel anger into money. It’s really quite an impressive business model — I’ll try to lay out the prerequisites.

What You’ll Need.

You need an angle. Something controversial, something that can really get under the skin of both sides of the argument. This is Key. If you can’t generate a heated two sided debate, the angle is less effective; the only thing better than baiting 1 demographic is baiting two opposing demographics! You need a victim. This is usually not too hard, there are plenty of situations in the world that need attention. Suffering tends to be unfair and it tugs at everyone’s empathy. The Key here is to highlight the peril or oppression the victim faces, whether real or imagined; emotionally invective language encourages bystanders to leapfrog logic & apathy both, in favor of action. You need a network of megaphones. Everyone has voice on the internet, but not everyone has the reach & volume to make their opinions known, or the authority to lend legitimacy to a professed narrative. Once you print your story, you need it to branch out and infect the e-consciousness; twitter, tumblr & reddit are key for this.

How to Begin

Start publishing articles, and be patient! Every good fisherman (or woman) knows to wait for the fish to come to them. The usual lures; Sex, the underdog & discrimination are always in style. Play on these tendencies to enhance the outrage. The more scandalous the better!

In the interest of earning more money, things like fairness and ethics may have to take a backseat. Don’t worry too much about this, if anyone catches wind of your plan, you can simply use your megaphone to shout them down, they’ll go away eventually.

In a similar vein, never be afraid to publish gossip and rumors, the important thing is to get eyes on your page and become known for delivering the Drama. Even if you’re completely wrong, you can just print a retraction later. When in doubt, follow this simple mantra:

‘The Ad-Revenue Must Flow.’

Each story you write helps to add stuffing to your narrative, making them more durable to future assault.

REELING IN THE $$

So lets say you finally get a bite, you check your metrics and one story is getting a lot of hits. Great! - but don’t stop there! Those eyes were going to see it anyway! — you need to maximize this opportunity. Try to Go Viral. Use the real megaphone networks that you associate with; if you’ve thrown a little PR their way before, they’ll be more than happy to retweet & reblog it; quid pro quo.

Now everyone wins! There may be increased tensions between whichever demographics you’ve exploited to gain your increased readership, but don’t worry, public discord isn’t your concern, they’d be at each other’s throats eventually. You don’t want to fight the war, but you DO want to supply the forum they argue on, the patreons they can donate to, and establish your site as the Go-To site for ALL their e-outrage needs. Best of all, the sores you open up with your narrative can be re-aggravated later when needed.

The money is in chronic prolonged treatments, so avoid any real solutions, as this will narrow the angles with which you can exploit the socio-political climate. These tensions will always exist, so don’t let ample e-outrage go to waste! This brings us to our last point.

Don’t Let Anyone Catch On

Beyond the con-artists in on the scheme, the reliability of this business model actually depends on the rank & file readers feeling genuine empathy for the victims you point out. If the public realizes you‘ve exploited them to enrich yourself and your associates - that you prioritize your own paypal acounts over the issues… you can lose a lot of your Influence. So do everything in your power to prevent this.

The good news is most people have terrible memories, so even if you do get outed, you can always crop back up later under a new name and start all over again, hopefully a bit wiser and craftier than before, and remember

‘There’s angry lurker born every CPM.’

Keep in mind this is just a primer, as with every new and blossoming industry, there are always new angles, new victims and new networks to utilize. Don’t be afraid to think outside the box!