High-Stakes Investigative Immersion Journalism Tips for Self-Reflexive Bloggers

To infiltrate the ranks of the iniquitous while also imbuing your blog with verisimilitude, RSVP to that week’s Thornhill Satanist Meetup Group.

One: If the homeless aren’t often trusted with institutional cash donations, reach the swanky streets of Thornhill using a TTC token gifted in lieu thereof.

Two: Shake hands with assembled Satanists whose collective sartorial ardour resembles that of low-brow auteur Kevin Smith. Note jaw-lines you’d expect from a competing Meetup Group: Involuntary Celibates Anonymous. If anti- Catholic/anti-pedophiliac humour, e.g. ‘Lol, imagine taking advice on moral forbearance from a bunch of pedo creeps, ’ carries the day, understand these Satanists are communallybound around the fallacy that an anti-pedophilia stance is transgressive.

Three: If you the unplacatable won’t be placated, don’t mention that there is no culturally-dominant Christianity left to rebel against, thus they are essentially kicking down some old lady’s Nativity Scene much as children might hurl dog excrement at a bus driver hated for his lisp. Definitely do not quote Heidegger, To be a poet in a destitute time means: to attend, singing, to the trace of the fugitive gods. This is why the poet in the time of the world’s night utters the holy. Rather, moderate their tempers by yielding.

Four: If Satanists genuflect before the altar of scientism, don’t ask them just how unaware they might be regarding science’s reliance upon the mystical, or how the scientific method alone could never generate the jump from Newton to Einstein. Do not quote Heidegger’s Nietzsche: Volume 2—The Thought of Eternal Return, as the group has already made clear they don’t care to know who Heidegger might be, The fact that every science as such, being the specific science it is, gains no access to its fundamental concepts and to what those concepts grasp, goes hand in hand with the fact that no science can assert something about itself with the help of its own scientific resources. What mathematics is can never be determined mathematically; […] what biology is can never be uttered biologically. To ask what a science is, is to ask a question that is no longer a scientific question. Five: Wonder if you might be going a little hard on these teenagers, and if you merely have a bee in your bonnet regarding the Faustian bargain you consented to in cowardice.

Six: Resemble a lovestruck Bugs Bunny when the group’s lone gal arrives. If her idyllic Courtney Love roots recall roots you so loved in the late 90s, wail your own hauntological song of sadness. Hold her green-eyed gaze as she introduces herself as “Britannica. ” Speak exclusively to Britannica from then on. If her size 2 Vans sneaker brushes against your own sodden DC Shoes sneaker, place your sneaker atop hers.

Seven: Interrupt the group’s un-germane discussion of the Marvel Cinematic Universe by asking, “Being new to the dark arts, perchance a more adept practitioner might redpill me on this whole ‘religion of the flesh’ concept?”

Eight: Should a bloated bag of Deadpoolian ironies answer windily, issue sideways glances at Britannica indicating you’ll be tuning Roy out until you hear Britannica’s take on the whole ‘religion of the flesh’ idea.

Eight: Realize the Infernal Serpent himself is tempting you with this heavy-stacked and yet Gwen Stefanian and probably RH negative girl to your immediate left, making you forget all about the cudgels.

Nine: If the hellzapoppin’’ quorum don their various cloaks and fedoras and bid their adieus, wish Roy “a life well lived, ”29 square Britannica in the eyes, and speak in your small 29 (Roiland & Harmon, 2015) press authorial baritone, “It was very nice meeting you today. ” Feel Britannica’s hands on your hips. Look at her lip gloss. Fasten and clutch to her.

Ten: Ask of Britannica, moodily, “What’s to become of us?”