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Badguys was originally created as a refuge for me, during the days when the politics related to Convergence and the NYCgoth-L elist had become so inflammatory that I could no longer discuss anything in public forums without a small group of bitter adversaries immediately attacking me. I decided to both satirize and pull a social aikido maneuver by turning the demonization to my advantage. I bought Wickedness.com and changed my email to Mastermind@Wickedness.com. I created the mailing list Badguys@Wickedness.com so my friends would correspond, and cultivated a mystique of secrecy and sinister intrigue about the forum. If I was evil and my friends too, then we should flaunt it. Even a few subscribers to the mailing list seeded rumors at my request, the detractors never realizing that it was a set up. The critics did exactly what I expected them to. They went wild with speculation about all the nefarious plots and such which went on Badguys. My detractors claimed that much like Satan, I was incapable of telling the truth, and that my friends were either mindless sycophants or ambitious opportunists. The demonization of me and my friends became cartoonish and blatantly absurd. By feeding their insatiable hunger for conspiracies and drama, they began to make utter fools of themselves in public and never even realized it. Meanwhile, all of their gossip and speculation magnified Badguys into something legendary. Yet behind the veil of secrecy, Badguys was quite deserving of legendary status for reasons unrelated to the epidemic of rumors. The creation of Badguys allowed me to gather together friends of mine from extremely diverse backgrounds and regions to pool their intellects, debate, and develop creative projects. Since the subscribership was hand-picked by me, it included the most intelligent people, the best writers, the most innovative and iconoclastic artists, the most thoughtful essayists, the most thorough researchers, and the most talented technicians and craftsmen I knew. This kept the level of discourse far higher than even the Necronomi.com mailing lists, and strongly discouraged flaming and politics. It was almost impossible for schisms to develop on Badguys because the subscribers were so nonconformist that they couldn't fall into discrete categories that might conflict. Contrary to the rumors of mindless servants obeying an evil mastermind, the people on Badguys disagreed with me more frequently than not, but enjoyed lively debates without sacrificing any warmth. The only thing all Badguys have in common is that they are high-quality friends of mine, and I am very choosy about who qualifies as such. If you are a new subscriber to Badguys rather than someone chancing across this page, let me repeat some things for emphasis and clarity. The topic of Badguys is freeform. There aren't any topical boundaries. Some people use it for gossip, others for debate, others to dispense humor, others to vent steam. The guidelines are simple... try to post stuff which might interest other spooky brilliant people like yourselves. Badguys is an "elite" mailing list — not really to act like snobs around other people, but a safe zone where you can be assured that only the best of the best have been given entry (by my standards, which may overlap yours incompletely.) Strive to be tolerant of diversity as well, because we are all freaks in unique ways. I do hope all of you will remain open minded and non-hypersensitive. My tastes in humanity are often really bizarro, so you are going to run into some surprising critters on Badguys. If you encounter someone you disagree with or don't relate to, see what you can learn from them. You will most likely benefit from the effort. Badguys is probably the best mailing list I have at the moment. It has attained a degree of renown even though it is a sortakinda secret mailing list, that people I barely know seem ready to sell kidneys to get on it even though the single but absolute qualification for admittance is for the candidate to be a high quality friend of mine. Not as easy as forfeiting organs, quite possibly. :-) Because I have learned to trust people gradually and with exacting standards, this is a very small cross section of my friends, even though Badguys tends to hover in the range of about fifty subscribers. So be proud, you've made it to the inner circle, the secret society of non-zombies, the fraternal order of badguys in black desperado hats beautiful & deadly incorporated. All Badguys get free webspace on Wickedness.com and email accounts as they prefer.
The Principles
—Clifford Low |