Watch [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PYBdRTvtvw]this video[/url]:
The main character in the video is shown in many different settings, some pedestrian, some dramatic. Especially note at 1:32 where the great man is shown...fishing from a local pond with some young boys, or at 1:53, where he's shown at a desk in a no-nonsense business shirt, his jacket off, or at 2:09, where he's laying on his side in a coal mine, gazing out.
In no scene is he ever shown saying or doing anything, though. It's always about how he's [i]portrayed[/i].
The lyrics, for those of you who don't speak Russian, are:
[i]Lenin is always alive,
Lenin is always with you.
In sorrow, hope and joy
Lenin is with you in your spring.
In every happy day
Lenin is within you and within me. [/i]
Now, read [url=http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1965619619?page=2#36]Zarhym's recent post[/url] on the forums:
[quote Zarhym]Most importantly, don't make things so personal. Ghostcrawler doesn't have disdain for you. He wants what is best for the game and this community, and we report to him what players are saying on the forums every single day. He's playing the game just like everyone else in the community constantly, using the Dungeon Finder, fighting for Tol Barad, raiding, etc. He's been in failed pick-up groups, he's been in partial guild runs where he was kicked just because another guildmate came online, and he's been in runs with three fellow guildmates where the fifth player left out of fear of being kicked further in.[/quote]
Now, read [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_personality]this[/url]:
[quote]A cult of personality arises when an individual uses mass media, propaganda, or other methods, to create an idealized and heroic public image, often through unquestioning flattery and praise...
While the cult of personality generally applies to the enhancement and promotion of a political or religious doctrine, it stands to reason that it is also asserted in everyday situations where popularity is used to advocate conformity to philosophies and lifestyles, even products and attitudes by way of peer pressure and herd mentality....
Personality cults were first described in relation to totalitarian regimes that sought to radically alter or transform society according to radical ideas. Often, a single leader became associated with this revolutionary transformation, and came to be treated as a benevolent "guide" for the nation without whom the transformation to a better future couldn't occur...[/quote]
[quote][small][i]...The cult of the individual acquired such monstrous size chiefly because [he] himself, using all conceivable methods, supported the glorification of his own person... One of the most characteristic examples of [his] self-glorification and of his lack of even elementary modesty is the edition of his Short Biography, which was published in 19XX.
This book is an expression of the most dissolute flattery, an example of making a man into a godhead, of transforming him into an infallible sage, "the greatest leader," "sublime strategist of all times and nations." Finally no other words could be found with which to lift [him] up to the heavens. We need not give here examples of the loathsome adulation filling this book. All we need to add is that they all were approved and edited by [him] personally and some of them were added in his own handwriting to the draft text of the book.[/i][/small][/quote]
There are several means and styles typical of the cult of personality:
[ul][li]The object of the cult is always at distance, removed from the bulk of society, while also omnipresent in daily activities. For example, although you never meet Ghostcrawler or Lenin, you are to understand that they are a part of everything you do. [/li]
[li]The object of the cult "cares" about the society at large, but is "unable" to change its inherent unfairness, despite "constantly laboring to" in superhuman efforts that are beyond the comprehension of the masses.[/li]
[li]The object of the cult has a certain transcendental wisdom that cannot be understood by anyone but the "priests" of the cult, whether it's Blue/Green/Grey posters or Scientology promoters.[/li]
[li]The general population must humbly accept life's inequities, as the object of the cult is "doing everything he can", therefore nothing more can be done. [/li]
[li]References and innuendo about the object of the cult, or his banal writings, are omnipresent. In most tyrannical societies, the object of the cult ghostwrites books that become required reading: for example, "The Little Red Book" was a bestseller in China because it was required reading for many decades. "Caesar's Gallic Wars" are another example - the author, Caesar himself, writes them in the third person, to give an illusion of distance. A decade after the book was published he was declared a god. [/li]
[/ul]
And so there is Ghostcrawler's blog - which took the place of forum dialogues that typically revealed Ghostcrawler to be a petty man of middling intelligence with a poor grasp of game mechanics (for example, his belief that Mind Control actually allows players to use other players' abilities or his claim that tank Vengeance scales directly with the gear of DPS).
Personality cults are ultimately grounded in the [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusion_of_control]illusion of control[/url]:
[quote]Illusion of control is the tendency for people to overestimate their ability to control events, for instance to feel that they control outcomes that they demonstrably have no influence over...
The illusion is more common in familiar situations, and in situations where the person knows the desired outcome. [b]Feedback that emphasizes success rather than failure can increase the effect, while feedback that emphasizes failure can decrease or reverse the effect.[/b] The illusion is weaker for depressed individuals and is stronger when individuals have an emotional need to control the outcome. The illusion is strengthened by stressful and competitive situations...
The illusion arises because people lack direct introspective insight into whether they are in control of events. Instead they judge their degree of control by a process that is often unreliable.[/quote]
The bolded part is why Blizzard is so obsessed with keeping negative forum feedback - that, existentially, changes nothing - to a minimum - to reinforce the illusion that they are fully able to control all outcomes in their product.
The classic example of an [i]illusion of control[/i] being broken can be seen [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWIbCtz_Xwk]here[/url]:
(For the impatient, the pivotal moment n the movie is at 2:50)
Even though the entire audience is playing along, no one really [i]believes[/i] in the personality anymore, because the weaknesses of the system are too apparent. Finally, the illusion (for the object of the cult) breaks when someone starts booing, and eventually the entire crowd joins in. Two weeks later the object of the cult is brutally murdered by his own people. The thing is, though...the "control" was never really there, it was an illusion all along - an illusion desperately sought by the ringleaders of the cult due to their all-too-human egotism and lack of wisdom, their inability to address the problems of the community.
Now, it's very hard for participants in a cult of personality to accept two things: that they have been hoodwinked, and that such a deception is even possible. Even more so in World of Warcraft, where many have great difficulty accepting that a corporation would actually try to create such a cult about something so prosaic as a video game.
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