#and applying movement studies to youtube poops lmao
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Here’s my headcanon thoughts, loosely based on how new social movements (post-1960s activist organisations) work. I’m biased because I’m an anthropology student studying new social movements, but I’d also expect the Alliance to act more like a NSM than a state’s army because money and political power aren’t relevant any more, and there’s no external government. Imho, worldbuilding is never a waste of time because a) it’s fun because people-watching is fun for everyone, and b) fictional worlds are exaggerations of real worlds, and that’s fun for nerds!
The camera faction retains a lot of its pre-war structure, and is the most visibly hierarchical, but a lot of that is just people doing things how the first generation were taught/programmed to. In practice, decisions are a bit more bottom-up, with base commanders and commanders of specific teams consulting with their groups to make decisions which are usually accepted by a central command. The camera matriarch is the head of central command, and usually represents the faction in meetings, along with commanders from relevant teams. (In the real world, older, bigger movements tend to have more structure, but structure softens over time as new people get to know each other and localised groups get tighter.)
The speaker faction didn’t have an independent pre-war structure of their own, but decided it would be a good idea to become more independent as they grew their numbers in the early months. What they’re doing is more or less an intentional, planned version of the decentralisation stating to happen in the camera faction. They’ve got a horizontal system of teams with responsibility for particular areas, and bigger decisions are made in meetings of representatives from each circle. Representatives are chosen by election, or just whoever’s best positioned to communicate for their circle when a meeting is needed. The speaker matriarch is the only permanent representative, responsible for regular reps’ meetings, communication between circles, and communication between her faction and others. (In the real world, groups that split off of older movements tend to be more intentional about avoiding the inequality and slowness that can come with structure and hierarchy, but still need to retain some structure to function alongside structured groups.)
The TV faction is very small, maybe only a few hundred. There’s not much visible hierarchy as everyone seems to be talking to each other, but the invisible hierarchy is absolute and everyone knows who’s got the last word. Commanders make decisions for their teams/areas (eg. Polycephaly for comms and info flows), and if there’s a decision that affects everyone, the TV matriarch is making it. She or Polycephaly are usually the only people communicating with other factions in formal meetings (although who deals with who outside of meetings is more difficult to control). (In the real world, small, close-knit groups can basically become little consensual autocracies because people become “The Person Who Does The Thing”, and one of “The Things” to do is decisionmaking. In my experience, this can be absolutely fine if everyone’s united enough that decisions are obvious, and it can be a lot faster than democratic or consensus-based decisionmaking, but catastrophic when something does go wrong.)
Exactly where titans fit into group structure varies depending on the faction. I’d expect all factions would have a maintenance team for looking after their titans, but they’d also need to be involved in planning somehow. Titan Camera is a commander on the cameramen’s Wargear: Vehicles team, which also covers striders, tanks, transport vehicles, etc. and has some decisionmaking responsibilities related to what they and the team are doing, but where and when is generally decided by the Global Strategy team. Titan Speaker is on the speakermen’s specialised combat units circle (which includes striders and large units), as well as the strategy circle and wellbeing circle. They’ve repped for strategy in a cross-faction comms meeting, which was a bit of a culture shock for other factions (“Yeah, no, strategy, like, in general. Not just about me.”). Titan TV is another “Person Who Does The Thing”, in this case “The Thing” is destroying stuff. They don’t really have to do much else, so can get away with being a bimbo, but have also ended up as an accidental spokesperson for the TV faction because other factions tend to contact them when they’re deployed. It’s a bit of a toss up whether they reply with something useful or with “piss off, I’m busy”/“how the fuck should I know”. (In the real world, balancing publicly-visible action roles and behind-the-scenes strategising roles is difficult. People involved in action on the ground aren’t always the best communicators, which is fine if there’s a lot of support across teams, but harder in smaller groups where people tend to specialise in one role.)
I’d pin the secret agent as a charismatic culty type, and it can be really difficult when a network of movements have these types around. As well as the obvious problems with recruiting vulnerable followers and/or poaching people from other groups, they tend to do their own thing in their own way, without checking in on whether or not it fits with other groups’ strategies. So I’d guess that what we’ve seen in the series is pretty much it, and the secret agent hasn’t tried to work with the Alliance in general, although he might have tried to work with more individuals than we’ve seen so far.
Who do yall think tells each faction on where to go or what to do?
Cuz u know like with the scientist toilet or gman or someone higher up probably ordered them but what about each faction?
Do each faction have a higher up or are they intertwined with each other and they just know what to do?
Titans maybe?
Or possibly someone else for each faction or just one person?
Ik for the secret agent he has his own little thing tho?
I’m probably thinking too deep into this tho lol
#skibidi toilet#skibidi speculation#i guess i’m back#and applying movement studies to youtube poops lmao#feraliminal speculation
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