The first cult of the demoscene?

Harry Sonford

"Your first impression is your first truth. The second truth you achieve by questioning your first truth. The third you are often too lazy to deal with, which ultimately leads to prejudice."

The demoscene is a community like any other. People spend time with each other, work together on different projects and feel connected, needed and respected. Every year the differences becomes fewer in terms of occupations and rank, everyday something changes. But even though your demoscene resembles the outside world a lot, there still are some things you can't find in it. One of those things are something a lot of people in this world are frightened of, something everyone tries to stay away from and fight against. An organization with great powers and a lot of controlled whole-heartedly followers, without a true picture of the world they're living in and the organization they're a part of. Instead of wasting time and energy on trying to get the true pictures themselves, like cattle they trust their chosen leader in everything. As you all understand, I'm talking about a cult, a sect. To know if a group of people fairly can be judged as a cult or not is very difficult. This article will investigate whether a new demogroup called NEXTEMPIRE (hereon labeled "NE") should be considered a cult or not.

"NEXTEMPIRE is a pc demogroup founded by KOZMIK its current leader in 1999 with over 13 members each knowing at least one programming language. NEXTEMPIRE is considered by peers of the demoscene as one of the top 10 demogroups ever and its members usually obtain VIP tickets at demoparties".

The best way to attract followers is to act very respectable. Your disciples should be very proud of being a part of your group. It gives them motivation and it gives them a sense of meaningfulness. They feel needed, important. NE's leader, KOZMIK, thought of that, and because of his smart opening he managed to attract a lot of followers directly. Even though the statement is very untrue, KOZMIK's new "groupmembers" will not find it out in time. As soon as they're members they won't question anything KOZMIK says.

"We have been to these demoparties; theparty 99, dreamhack 99, dialogos 99, assembly 99, buenzli 99, takeover 99, overseas 99, arf! 99, birdie 99..."

Another important thing of a cult is to give the members a purpose to spend their time on it. They need something to strive for, a goal to succeed in accomplishing. NE's purpose seem to be visiting and contributing to demoparties. To attend a demoparty, compete with an intro, a tune or some graphics is something holy, very much like Muslims travel to Mekka. It also gives NE publicity and a better reputation. After a party it is smart to write a party-report, something NE's KOWBOY, among others, have responsibility to do. That gives the group a lot of positive things, which by the same time encourage the members to continue their work.

One of the most controversial aspects of a cult is the leader's handling of his followers. It is always the leader who makes all the decisions, always have the truthful opinion and always knows best. The leader is a God and the individual members doesn't have a lot of value. Every person is as worthless as the other, they're all just tools for their leader to get all the glory. All this is very obvious in NE. As you see above, they all had to write close to exactly the same for the online-magazine Orange Juice. They even have to use a nickname of six letters, starting with the letter K. By this KOZMIK show his power and superiority. Also note KOZMIK's picture compared to his members.

One asks himself what the point of KOZMIK's NEXTEMPIRE is. To make KOZMIK feel respected? To earn him money? Perhaps he was depressed and was about to commit suicide when he got the idea of forming a cult to then later drag with him? We can't know. All we can do is to stay away from the dangerous NEXTEMPIRE and try to think for ourselves. And please, watch our for brainwashing components in their demos and intros.

Sincerely,

Dr. Ken Lanceback

"Words are the most powerful weapon of this world. They twist the truth like nothing else and inflict people's minds more than they believe."