Fireside Chat Transcript 27 Feb 2k21

Yes, we are going to be launching the third great cultural revolution today.
The last two cultural revolutions were in 2012 and 2014, so this is going to be a big
shift.
We're going to be talking all about it and it's going to be a lot of fun.
The previous two cultural revolutions more had to do with social things.
This is an organizational thing that you will enjoy.
As usual, we do these in Elysium at conference.goonfleet.com.
And when the numbers stabilize, we will get started.
All right, boys and girls, let's go ahead and get started.
I'm going to drop a list of things here in Elysium and in a moment it will make sense
to you what we're talking about.
In the early days of Goon Swarm, it was difficult to get people to go into Mainfleet, to require
people to do anything.
And nothing I'm going to be talking about today involves any kind of requirements or
PAP system or any kind of top-down bossing people the fuck around thing.
But we are going to radically change our culture.
And the way that we are going to do that is we are going to discover that there is more
to this game than pressing F1.
And I'm going to tell you a little story about this and you are going to be hearing
about this week after week after week after week forever.
So it's time to get on board.
We were spinning up this Irregulars project and it's been very successful.
And I was having a conversation with Jay and with PeanutSmash about what it is that some
of these smaller groups do that makes them punch above their weight.
And one of the things that happens in Israd has nothing to do with being an elite PvPer.
It doesn't necessarily mean that you are a high-speed, low-drag kind of guy who is able
to whatever, Rambo his way through space.
It's a very simple thing.
Do one more thing than just pressing F1.
Just do one more thing than the bare minimum of turning up in Fleets.
And that is a transformational thing.
For many years, we and many other large NullSec organizations have simply accepted lazily
the idea that you can operate normally as long as people just turn up in main fleet
and press F1.
The problem is this.
This results in a huge burden on your fleet commanders.
It results in a burden on your corp directors, on your corps, on the alliance directors,
all the way up.
Because most of the people who are in leadership one way or another are kind of like me.
I'm the alliance leader, but when I'm not doing alliance leader stuff, I also help out
with co-ord a little bit as best as I can to her force.
And I also help out a little bit with a black hand and do some spy stuff.
I am doing most of the time about three things.
I don't expect everybody to do the same kind of things that I do.
I don't expect everybody to be as committed as I am.
But we are in a scenario now I've realized where there is no reason why we could not
ask for more.
Because here's the thing, guys.
There's a lot more that we can do to help each other out, to help the tribe out, to
help the cause out, to help win this fucking war than just turning up and pressing F1.
Many of you already do many more than one things.
But what we want to do here is create a culture where we are reinforcing the idea of not just
doing main fleet F1 stuff with one client.
And it's going to be different for everybody.
If you look back at the list of things that I posted in Elysium, those are just some examples
off the top of Mr. V's head.
We just had a meeting with Kremlin and with the Illuminati, and we are compiling a whole
list of roles of things that we really need help with in terms of support.
Support roles can be simple.
Instead of just being a scout who is reporting T5ZIIs, one of the things that I've repeatedly
heard requests from from fleet commanders is how do we get people to stalk enemy fleets
and just say, "Hey, you have a guy who has their ship in main fleet, and also his thing,
his F2 is to follow around hostile fleets and report their movements and get that shit
done."
If you have somebody who is on the fence, they have never joined a SIG or the SCOT,
they're like, "Hey, I don't know how to do multi-box combat, but I've kind of been interested
in espionage."
Maybe their version of F2 can be joining the Black Hand and getting started with spying,
doing that.
We need to adapt.
We need to evolve culturally past just turning up and accepting, which is something that
all across NULSEC, most NULSEC empires are based around the idea that all you can get
from your line members is just to turn up in fleets if you're lucky and have them press
F1.
But we know that people do more, that people want to do more.
We just need to make it easier for you guys to get there.
So what we are going to be doing is we are going to be highlighting every fireside examples
of people who have done more, who have discovered F2, and we're going to be working on resources
to make it easier for you because your F2 is going to look completely different from
somebody else's.
Everybody can contribute in their own way, but from the bottom up and from the top down,
the new expectation is going to be we want people to do more.
It's not about just turning up and hitting F1.
It's about discovering F2.
We can do this, and I've seen many of us do this.
We have just never said, "This is what we want."
It is something we want to develop.
I want you to imagine a future.
Imagine a future where in a main fleet of 250 people, what happens if even 20% more
of those people on that fleet have learned how to press F2?
20% of that main fleet has brought, maybe they have a Boucher alt.
Maybe they're like Fargek and they have a probing Hecate that is able to, in addition
to their main fleet ship, zoom in and fucking assassinate various, well, basically everything
you can get his hands on because the Hecate is pretty fucking awesome.
That is a great example of an F2 hero, a guy who is not just doing the main fleet stuff,
but going the extra mile.
The Black Hand Handlers, they're in main fleet and they're doing handlers.
It is not enough for us to just F1 our way through this thing.
We must discover each of our own personal F2s and do more.
We're going to make this easier because it's not enough for me to just tell you, "Hey guys,
do more."
This is going to take a lot of work.
It is going to be a process.
This is what happens in a cultural revolution.
We have asked the Kremlin, we have asked the Illuminati to compile lists of all of the
different support functions that Recon needs, that GSAL needs, that the Black Hand would
like to have, that the fleet commanders would like to have more scout stalkers, people following
around the bad guys.
We are going to figure out what is necessary.
I've already shown you the list that Mr. V compiled off the top of his head just a couple
hours ago.
So you can get started with error if you're motivated, which I hope you are.
And then we are going to create guides for each of these roles.
This will take time.
This will take weeks.
We're going to identify the roles.
We're going to tell you the roles.
Then we're going to do our damnedest to meet you halfway, to make it easier for you to
discover how to press F2.
We are done with the whole space empire of F1 monkeys thing.
The Imperium will discover F2.
We can do more.
We will do more.
All right.
Yes.
And one of the other things, if you are a stone cold newbie, if you are still learning
and you can only handle one thing right now because you are just getting stuck in figuring
your shit out, that's great.
Figure your shit out.
We are not going to be shaming people into finding F2.
We are going to be highlighting examples of goon heroes every week of people who are bad
asses that, hey, here's this guy who brings a fucking probing hecate and he's assassinating
Sinos.
He's assassinating fleet commanders.
He's assassinating anything that gets left available for him to nuke.
And then later, we're going to try to find these people, interview them so they don't
have to write up the guides themselves and basically compile everything that we can into
a guide and then communicate that to you guys such that you essentially have a menu of career
paths of what your F2 might look like.
Maybe it's joining the Black Hand.
Maybe it's helping out with irregular stuff.
Maybe it is doing the probing hecate thing.
Maybe it's being a scout stalker.
Maybe it's being the guy that is comparing the numbers between hostile fleets and exactly
determining whether there is a weakness.
There's a lot of different things that we can do and we will do them.
The expectation is now F1 is not enough.
We can all find F2 together and we can help each other find F2.
Your corp directors all know about this because we just had a meeting about it in Kremlin.
And yeah, so don't feel like there's a gun to the back of your head.
We are doing this in a, "Hey, we're going to help you help everyone else."
And that is the third great cultural revolution.
A massive null sec block discovers fucking F2 in an organized way and we get good.
We don't have to be elite PVP to get good.
We just need to help each other out more in these support roles because that in many cases
has been a thing that has been missing.
If you are setting an expectation organizationally where the line is only told, "Hey, turn up,
get your paps and please join the six and squads, but all you really have to do is turn
up and get your paps and just be in main fleet and press F1."
Well that fucking sucks and I'm sick of it.
I'm done with it.
I don't like us just accepting doing F1.
So we are going to learn how to do more.
We are going to push everyone into that in a helpful way, not in a, "Fuck you, do this."
Because again, everyone will be able to contribute in their own way.
Some of you might join existing organizations.
Some of you might find a special snowflake way of doing things.
We are not going to mandate how you do it.
We are simply going to talk about, we're going to encourage it, and we're going to try to
help you get to F2.
All right.
So that's the big news and that's a big fucking change.
And it's going to take time and you're going to be hearing about this a lot.
So and yeah, as Zaneria says, psychological warfare is his F2.
That is a good example of someone who does that.
Zaneria or Roy of CA or any of those guys that are going out there and doing PsyOps
on the bad guys, in addition to everything else they're doing, that's a good example
of an F2.
When you are producing propaganda, you are doing F2.
Many of you are already doing F2.
And one of the challenges that we have, and this is why we're doing this.
One of the challenges that we have is that some of us are pressing F2 and F3 and F4.
There are many buttons that we have discovered.
And these people typically end up in positions of authority because they're pressing all
these buttons, they know what they're doing.
We try to run this as a meritocracy.
And so we promote those people.
Where we have failed organizationally is trying to encourage all of you to help those guys
out.
You don't have to discover F4 or F5, but if you discover F2, it makes it a lot easier
for the Kuhn-Mees of the world, the guys who are running 20 accounts, the guys who are
really fucking hardcore.
It makes their lives a lot easier if you just give a little bit more instead of doing one
thing, do two.
That is the new normal.
That is where we are going.
Alright.
If you bring a boosher, will it be welcome on any fleet?
Yeah, like we always love having booshing alts dude.
We need to make sure that you're good at it.
Obviously having a bad boosher can fuck things up.
But yeah, having a regular group of alts.
And there will be posts and there will be guides about this.
Before I move on to something else, because this is such a big organizational thing, I
want to answer questions about this before I move on to any like war related stuff.
Even if it's a simple, so for example, as Ginger Burger is pointing out, training booster
characters should be a lot of people's F2s to work towards.
It can be simple.
Maybe your F2 is just you're a guy that brings a ship of the line and also always is bringing
a booster alt.
That's enough if you were just doing a main fleet ship before and you do a main fleet
ship and you're always the guy like you're the guy who you bring like a CERB and a fucking
booster fucking great.
We love it.
That's fantastic.
Good luck.
God bless.
Have a fucking gold star.
That's exactly the kind of thing we're looking for.
Maybe it's simple.
Maybe you were interested in dabbling in multiboxing instead of bringing one main fleet ship.
You bring two, right?
You find a way to do a little bit more.
And I do two things instead of one.
And yes, the black hand is recruiting.
I'm going to just invite everybody who is a member of a SIG or a squad that has a recruitment
page post to link it here.
A lot of these SIGs and squads are recruiting.
They can teach you things.
But in addition, this goes beyond SIGs and squads, right?
There's a lot of main fleet shit you can do.
I mean, it's pretty stereotypical here, but this is essentially a situation where we are
saying, "Ask not what the Imperium can do for you.
Ask what you can do for the Imperium."
This is the path forward.
We must do more.
We will do more.
And it'll be a lot more fun for everyone and a lot less frustrating because we are all
going to be getting behind the same fucking boulder and pushing together.
And again, right now we do not have these guides ready.
This is something that we came up with last night.
We have come up with the initial list of ideas.
We are going to be doing a fuckload of work to make it easier for you.
So some of you are going to listen to the speech and immediately just get to work on
it.
Maybe you've been thinking about pressing F2 and you've got something in mind and this
was all the encouragement you needed to get out there and press F2.
That's great.
Some of you are still going to be on the fence and we are going to try to do our level best
to find ways to make this easy for you.
It will be a work over the coming weeks.
I will hopefully have an initial list and thread ready for people inside of the next
48 hours.
We need to sift through the good ideas and the bad ideas, but the initial stuff that
I posted earlier from Mr. V is a great start to show you the kind of things that we are
looking for.
Your fleet commanders need help and support.
You are the only people that can provide that help.
We need that support org.
You're going to do it and you're going to enjoy it.
Your skills will advance and you will find pride and dignity in getting away from the
F1 monkey thing.
If anybody tells you you're a fucking F1 monkey, you say, "Yeah, motherfucker.
I bring a Dictor out on every single fleet."
Like, "I don't do that.
We don't do that shit anymore.
Fuck you.
Eat my ass."
It's good.
You'll enjoy it.
Now, what I'm going to be doing here, because you guys are giving us a lot of feedback,
is after the fireside, I'm basically going to take a rip of all of the comments in Elysium
and save them in a text file and go over them later.
So if you have ideas or just random things to throw out about the third great cultural
revolution as we discover F2 together, just lay them in Elysium.
It doesn't have to be a question for me.
It is all going to go into the brainstorming thing.
This is a great opportunity for us in leadership positions to find out the kind of things that
you guys are wanting to do but haven't quite done because either you needed a little help,
you needed a guide, you needed a little push, something to help get you to F2.
Let us know so we can write it down and get you what you need.
Does flying logi already count as F2 because multi-hit boxing that feels like it'd go wrong?
No, just flying logi is pressing F1.
It's just pressing F1 for reps.
It's great.
We love logi, but there is no scenario.
Basically it should be intuitive, guys.
I'm asking you to do more than one thing.
Do two things.
That's all.
Find another thing to do.
Maybe you're flying.
So actually, let me go back to that question about logi because I don't think I was fair.
If you are in a scenario where your F1 is you're a logi guy and you're not comfortable
with multi-boxing, right?
Like I'm not really comfortable with multi-boxing.
You can find something that isn't necessarily a main fleet combat thing to be your F2.
You can spy.
You can join one of these SIGSR squads.
You can join one of the irregulars groups.
You can get involved in something that doesn't necessarily require you to multi-box logi.
I think that's a more fair answer to that question.
So that's what we're looking for when we're talking about finding ways to contribute more
instead of doing one thing.
And again, we're not asking you to do five things.
We're not telling you to do F5.
We just want to help everybody discover F2.
If you fly two F1 ships, does that mean you're still F1?
I would say no.
If you are already multi-boxing in main fleet, that's fantastic.
We love it.
Please keep doing it because you're providing more than doing one thing.
You're bringing two combat ships instead of one.
But not everybody can do that.
So again, I don't want people to feel pressured to suddenly turn into a 40-account combat
group or something like that.
This is going to be a personal choice.
I have always told people on Firesides when they ask me what they can do to contribute
to the Alliance, "If you've been to Firesides a bunch, you've seen me get this question
a lot over the years.
Somebody is new and they're saying, 'Hey, I really want to help out the Alliance.
What do I do?'"
And my response has always been the same.
My response is, "Look at the available options and find something that personally appeals
to you."
Because your F2, whatever that is, you're going to be way more effective at that if
you're doing it because you're genuinely interested in the challenge, you genuinely
enjoy it.
Not everybody can be Fargek, and I don't expect everybody to be a probing Hecate combat
solo PvP monster.
I don't expect everybody to do that.
What I do expect is for you to actively look for a way to find your F2.
Make sure it's something you're interested in.
Make sure that you're doing it not out of guilt or obligation, but because you're like,
"You know what?
This is something I want to do that can really help my brothers and sisters in the trenches
out, and I'm going to do it.
That's what I want."
Yeah, so for example, being a fuel truck, that's a great example of an F2.
That is helping the cause.
There's a lot of this support work in terms of, "My God, if we can just get like five
more people out of this fucking fireside that would be interested in being scout stalkers,
I would really appreciate if we had, instead of just passive scouts, scouts that actively
followed hostile fleets around and kept reporting on the scouts channel.
You know why I'd really like to have that?
Because our fleet commanders have been asking for that constantly."
So if any of you are looking for an immediate thing that you can help out with, scout stalker
is fantastic.
Don't just join scouts and report what the fucking de-skin is from local.
Follow those motherfuckers around and tell us where they're going and what they're doing.
There's going to be more things like this.
So, Dinan has a question where he's saying, "So in other words, I'm not really asking
people to multibox, I'm asking people to do more than just join main fleet."
So for some people, they'll be doing things to help out main fleet.
Like they'll be in main fleet and they'll bring a Ditterhald and they'll bring a Boucher
and they will bring Licks.
For some people, they will run one main fleet thing and then they will join support organizations.
They'll get involved in SIGs and squads because they weren't before.
Joining GSFOE, if we can get a link to fucking GSFOE, that would be fantastic.
Oh boy, do we always need people with hacker alts, any of that shit.
There are so many ways in this organization that you can contribute to move the dial forward.
And that means that instead of having to do it, you can find something that you're genuinely
interested in doing to help your brothers and sisters out and also find out through
that process, you're going to make a lot more friends.
Because if you join a group that you're interested in as being your F2, hey, you've suddenly
found a whole bunch of other people that like the same kind of F2 that you do.
Jordan is asking the question about, is there a list of things that fleet commanders want?
The list that we posted in Elysium earlier came from Mr. V as an initial group of F2
things.
Like I've said, we are going to be working to clarify this list and add more information
and guides to it in the coming days.
But there is no reason why we could not announce this today and get shit moving.
Because a lot of you already know that you got an F2 in mind just from talking about
that.
There we go.
We will get better information and more guides in the coming days.
Don't worry.
And that's a really good point from Docs.
If you have to ask, does this count?
Ask yourself, can I do more?
Is it really a second thing?
If you have a capital fleet alt, that's not really an F2.
Like I have, like we all have cap alts and maybe we don't all have cap alts, but you
know, that's a thing.
Maybe it is for you.
Maybe that's a step for you.
Maybe you don't have a cap or whatever, but you know, just find a way that you think is
a legitimate way to move the dial besides just pressing F1.
If you ask yourself and you look at what you're looking at, if you look at your F2 and you
think, is this really being an F1 monkey?
And the answer is no, it's not just doing F1.
Then you've made a step.
Maybe you're pressing F1 and your F2 is spy.
Maybe you're pressing F1 and your F2 is being a fuel truck.
Maybe you're pressing F1 and your F2 is following the enemy around and constantly reporting
to our fleet commanders exactly where the enemy is and what they're doing, like stink
on shit, so they can't get away from our scout stalker.
That's where we're going.
Alright, so I think I've beat this dead horse enough.
It's not really a dead horse because this shit is only just getting started.
You're going to be hearing a lot about this.
We are done with just hitting F1.
So I'm going to give people a strategic overview where we are, war stuff wise.
The enemy is running around and blowing up citadels.
We are holding in 1DQ1.
We are holding in M2.
Initiative, Bastion, Stainruss, Deepwater Hooligans, a variety of other forces are actively
burning down Legacy's backfield.
It is a lot easier for me to look at Satio losses and go, "Yeah, okay."
When we have expected our allies to make the same sacrifices in Fountain, it is our turn
to make those sacrifices.
We do it willingly because we know that while we are holding here in Delve, Legacy is burning
the fuck down because everybody that started the war with their time in the trenches where
we are in Gunstorm now taking incoming fire all day, those motherfuckers are on a rampage
in Catch.
They are on a rampage in Esoteria.
Their MNC is basically torched.
They are on a rampage now in Faith Abylis.
Deepwater is over there.
Legacy is headed into the fucking Woodchipper and that gives me great confidence about our
position.
Our job is to hold the fucking line while we learn how to press F2, to hold the fucking
pigeon while we learn how to press F2, and to keep on keeping on.
We are staying alive, boys and girls.
There is no universe, no universe in which the Imperium retreats from Delve ever, ever.
It ain't happening.
We are digging the fuck in.
Fuck all these puppies.
So if you were wondering in your pretty little head whether there was ever going to be a
time where we'd say, "Oh, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna, this gets
too hard.
Wee, wee, wee."
Fuck that noise.
In times of stress, in times of crisis, as a leader, you have a couple of options.
You can ask your people to take it easy.
You can try to wipe their tears away.
You can say, "Oh, it's been nine months of war.
Oh, that's tough.
Maybe we should take it easy."
Or you can dig the fuck in and ask for more.
You can dig the fuck in and ask everyone to fight harder, to find that F2, to get it done.
And that is what we're going to do.
And if that means at the end of the day that everything is fucking torched, everything
we have is glassed, at least we fucking did everything.
There is no universe in which I am going to say, "Oh, it was too hard, so we're going
to give up.
I'm gonna hold us in this fucking fire.
We are going to kill these fucking puppies and we are going to win this fucking war."
Be a part of that.
Learn how to press F2.
Thank you for coming.
Let's get back out there.