Alliance & Corporation Recruitment Center

Spy stuff. For the "Smyler with a knyfe under his cloake" within all of us. Agents, scientists, actors, alchemists, knights in secret armor, assassins, class clowns only need apply.

Welcome to our laboratory our labyrinth our Smiling Tar Baby. It has been lovingly prepared for you to play in and play with.
Join us or infiltrate us it will be a lot of fun either way. How can we make that happen? Come and see!

You do not put a character in Smiling Friends Social Club. The Club is just an advertising device. You are applying to join a hidden network of agents coordinated by Praxis and the Inner Circle.

Five Steps To Join

1. Read the questions below. Cut and paste them into an evemail with answers. Email this to me, Praxis Astra.

WHAT IS THE NAME (NOT A CHAR NAME) YOU WILL USE ON THE WEBSITE AND TS3 SERVER?
WHAT IS/ARE THE NAME(S) OF THE CHARACTER(S) WORKING FOR SFSC?
CHARACTER IS PVP, INDUSTRIAL, BOTH?
CHARACTER SKILL POINTS (APPROX)?
MISSIONS IN NULLSEC OR HISEC OR BOTH?
YOU WANT TO LEARN SECURITY OR PREDATORY OR BOTH?
WHICH SHIPS CALDARI GALLANTE MIMNITAR AMARR DO YOU FLY?
IF A NEW PLAYER DO YOU WANT TO BE PLACED IN AN AFFILIATED TRAINING CORP TO LEARN HOW TO PLAY FIRST?
IF NOT A NEW PLAYER APPROX HOW EXPERIENCED ARE YOU?

EVEmail your Qs and As to Praxis Astra.

2. Put me on your watch list and convo or email me when you see me next. I'll look for you too.

3. After I look at your questions we'll talk in the Teamspeak 3 Server.

4. We find you a suitable Prove Yourself Mission.

5. You register for the web site and read the Neurotechnicon.

Our Hearts And Minds[/b]™ Mental Martial Arts for the agent and the player who wants to Inoculate themselves against psych war games agents play.

Neurotechnicon A Manual. How to destroy them from within. How to play EVE "against" yourself. The Metagame of EVE.

http://www.heartsandmindsalliance.org/index.php?option=com_kunena&func=view&catid=4&id=39&Itemid=200

The Technocrat A Manual. Algorithms of Leadership and Power.

http://www.heartsandmindsalliance.org/index.php?option=com_kunena&func=view&catid=4&id=71&Itemid=200

Please feel free to convo, evemail or join me in our public channel

Smiling Friends



All classes are on a one-on-one basis unless participants already know each other. Payment for classes is ISK, or services rendered BEFORE class. Praxis is nothing if not willing to negotiate.

Frenemys

Why your opponents are frequently more entertaining and useful than your friends. Step by step Praxis shows you the often overlooked rewards of doing benevolent things for your enemies and horrible things to your friends.

Keeping Your Brospective

The affectionate side of working towards the complete destruction of the hard work of players you know you'd enjoy hanging out with in the Real World.

Lay Back And Enjoy It

Inflicting Agony on players for your own amusement can be even more enjoyable if you harness your natural empathy for your victims for a masochistic thrill hard to find anywhere else. Praxis Astra tells you how to achieve such win-win scenarios. (Some assembly required....)

Their Own Medicine

Any megalomaniac worth his salt knows to work smarter not harder. Checklists to help you determine which fears and flaws apply to your target organization and its members. You will receive a copy of the same matrix Praxis uses (almost) at the conclusion of the class.

Idiocracy

Unspoken agreements. Fears of conflict within the group. Knowing which bad habits a group forces all its members to adopt. Identifying the one element of a Board of Director's groupthink that best turns the screw on the entire group. It doesn't matter what they call their government. We know there's only one form of government.

Getting Into Character

This is grueling stuff. Its psychodrama. Effective if you approach it with a certain intent. You want to drag through the jungles of your personality for red eyed beasts licking their razors clean as they reach for you, this is a good way. There are a number of outlooks on life to adopt that I have found useful. Played correctly, they can be used to give your EVE character that extra spice to keep you alert during even the most tedious CTA.

Giggling Psychopath: Hihihihihiiiii! He wuzza funny. Eyes all wide. Ahhahahahahahahahaaa!

Chilly Avenger: All they had to do was leave me/us/him/her/them alone.

Twitching Paranoid: My hand trembles only slightly as I fly in formation with my "friend." He thinks.... he thinks that I don't know.

Freelance Sociopath: I've only got to sell out four more of these guys for my new Tengu. That guy Praxis really came through. Bet he'd be worth a bundle to somebody.

Reflexive Hater: Scums. All these little scums. Hating lying cheating filthy scums. Turn on me. The moment they can. Scums.

The Doctor: Note how my electrodes result in a cascading effect between sympathetic and parasysympathetic nervous systems. I have succeeded. I call it: Their Own Medicine.

Nobody likes this one. Too real maybe?

Whining Rationalizer: Um. I never did want to have to hurt anybody, but y'know, it was him or me. And I really do think its all for the best. In the end I mean.

Unblinking Fanatic: But only the filth who oppose the universal brotherhood of man will have to die in order for that brotherhood to become a reality. Its so simple.

And my personal favorite

Intraspecies Predator: And I got to do that to him for his own good? I love being me.


Anyone who makes it to the Roster of Agents will receive their very own Secret Decoder Ring!

http://heartsandmindsalliance.org

We will be publishing the next edition of the Neurotechnicon by the beginning of next month. There's no plan to make it available except on the web site.

Frenemys

Why your opponents are frequently more entertaining and useful than your friends. Step by step Praxis shows you the often overlooked rewards of doing benevolent things for your enemies and horrible things to your friends.

Keeping Your Brospective

The affectionate side of working towards the complete destruction of the hard work of players you know you'd enjoy hanging out with in the Real World.

Lay Back And Enjoy It

Inflicting Agony on players for your own amusement can be even more enjoyable if you harness your natural empathy for your victims for a masochistic thrill hard to find anywhere else. Praxis Astra tells you how to achieve such win-win scenarios. (Some assembly required....)

Hey fellas!

with a wink and wave

Spies! spies and more spies!

I don't know what to say except that nobody likes the colors for the fonts on our web site so I'm changing them.

I confess that I do love burning bright florescent colors!

I like the new colors but I'm gonna stick to some of the brigher ones too......

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

Sun Tzu The Art of War

"Grab 'em by the balls and their hearts and minds will follow."

Anonymous Alliance Executor

"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."

Praxis Astra

Welcome to the Smiling Friends Social Club/Hearts And Minds Alliance Forums.

Extremes, are allowed, permitted, and grist for the mill. The idea here is to use your character as a tool to trick yourself to learn stuff as well as have fun. We want better game players and meta game players. Smiling Friends is a laboratory, classroom, theater, advertising vehicle. SFSC is also not exactly a trap, but certainly a labrynth. And never lose sight of the fact that SFSC is a toy. We know it will delight some of you because it delights us. And any number can play.

Join us or infiltrate us, its all the same in the end. How can we make that happen? Come and see. Many people who are spying on us are also our most trusted agents.

The one thins SFSC is not is a weapon. Our members are that. Our motto is the dead honest truth. While other corps only care what ship you fly, at SFSC we care about you.

SFSC is also a way to connect that 1 in 1,000 players who actually want to play this stuff with each other. So we're an advertising device.

The Neurotechnicon A guide meant to serve the interests of everyone who reads it. If you're too stupid to understand that knowing exactly how to destroy groups also means you know exactly how to help them then, well, you're just too stupid.

The Technocrat A guide that shows how to build. Community. Teamwork. Exprit de Corp. The mirror image of the Neutotechnicon. Dos and Dont's depending on whether you want to destroy or build a group.

There are a lot of layers to this toy. The public face. The joke hidden under the public face. The jokes hidden within the joke. Its my Tar Baby. Fight it and you get stuck. Embrace it and you're held fast. There are exits, more than I know about. But all the ones I know about are trapped and tricked in the hope that we have to learn something to use them. It had to be a labrynth. And the answer is, yes, I am a prisoner of my own device. The joke's on me if its on anyone. Any other way just wouldn't be as fair or fun.

And, finally, for all you fans of irony, Smiling Friends Social Club in the inner circle is just exactly that: a group of friends who enjoy playing this game for these purposes. A club. An alliance of mind and heart. Just like any other corp.

You Choose Your Level Of Involvement

Freelancer

"I only gotta sell out four more of these guys for my new Tengu. That guy Praxis really came through. I wonder how much he'd be worth"

"I've got to prove myself to be worthy of their trust!"

The first tier Freelancer. You are paid for services rendered, with a smile thrown in. And the occasional bonus you hadn't looked for. We have pay scales and missions aplenty to keep the part time spy and mercinary fat and happy.

Handpicked Predator AND/OR Protector

"Hihihihihiiiiii. He was funny. Eyes all wide. Hahahahahahahahahaaaaaa."

"I had to stop it. It was wrong."

The second tier are the Handpicked Protectors AND/OR Predators. Only artists, the still functional but insane, the mad scientist, the alchemist, the traveller in the untracked wastes of human perception need apply.

It is to you I say: Yes. I'm here. Let's do it. What we always do whenever we assemble in groups of more than one. Come on in. I'll jump through your hoops and once I've proven myself to you we'll talk. And you know I don't have to promise you. Anything. I'll do what I always do for you because I won't be able to help myself.

Protector of the Weak AND/OR Intraspecies Predator

"You mean I got to do that to him for his own good? I love being me!"

At this point we are doing it for the art. For the love of it. You don't need us any more. Except as smiling friends. Evildoer or Lawman, you will be expected to play your role with consummate skill, passion and ruthlessness. SFSC Director or not, you will be part of the Inner Circle.

To the Merchant Princes of EVE:

The wheels of industry can't ever stop turning.

From ore to sell order, you are the ones who keep the economy moving and thriving. You also play with it and bleed it ruthlessly. At the high end, you spend billions like the rest of us spend millions.

You're one of the players for whom 1/20th of a percentage point really means something. And you're happy to keep your mouth shut about what that decimal came to for you last month. You've heard it all about the fleets and the CTAs and the my ship is bigger than your ship boys and its all good. You'd give the lads twice as much gold piping on their uniforms as long as it was you selling it to them.

You understand that what you do is pvp, even if most of the military guys never notice. The ones that do, you can exchange the small nods with that none of the rest of them never even need see. When some big mouthed boot boy tries to lord it over you with a gun you sold him not six weeks ago, you keep a straight face and have your bodyguard put him to sleep only. He can buy your brand of painkillers in the local pharmacy when he wakes.

With any luck, you're the tip of the triangle they never notice. Your vast, vulnerable, bulky mining ships. Your freighters and haulers. Your research POS in lowsec. Your buy and sell orders posted by different alts so no other trader knows what you're up to, cargo moved by other players through courier contracts, new trade hub on the edge of Empire space...

Its a military-industrial complex. But some things are as simple as a razor thin margin. Yin or Yang, its a struggle to the death.

6/30/11

I sat on that smelly couch in my soon to be ex alliance's station and contemplated the words on the screen in front of me.

Over the past week I'd used emails to incite a certain state of mind in my soon to be ex corp mates as well as the alliance at large. The message in front of me was a very effective work of innuendo. My finger tapped the desk by the keyboard. Something nagged.

Suddenly I realized that I had only to send this email and then forward it to the leader of my soon to be ex alliance and my soon to be ex corp would almost certainly be run from the alliance at gunpoint. My blood ran cold. My friends had committed themselves to people who were this feckless. They'd not thanked me for telling them any part of this so far. They'd not welcome this bit of news either.

Everything we'd built--I'd built--for the last 15 months wasn't orbiting anything. It was all floating in dead space. On the sufferance of self important fools. Somehow, in the company of friends, and with all the best intentions, instead of an army we'd joined an idiocracy.

Well I know, I've always known what the price for membership in such clubs always is and I'll never pay it. I'd rather die alone.

I had to leave.