Sean Kennedy and Kult
Created | Updated Jul 12, 2005
Sean Kennedy (also known as "The F*ckin' Man" or "SKTFM", and the voice and face at the forefront of many of the projects on RantMedia) and Kult - two subjects near and dear to my heart. But who (and what), you may well ask, are they?
It was some time in 2000 that Sean Kennedy - who, at the time, was DJing for a club - began promoting a friend's Internet radio station (Rant Radio - which later became the aforementioned RantMedia).
His promos got longer, and in them, Sean would express - quite energetically, and with more than a few expletives thrown in - his views on anything and everything (but especially social issues such as individuality, corporate culture, and racism, to name a few). This earned him a spot on a weekly Rant Radio show called "What The Hell?!!" Around March of 2000, Sean took a bunch of his friends, fans, and fellow Rat Radio personalities, and formed a tongue-in-cheek social club which he called 'Kennedy's Uber Leet Terrorists', or K.U.L.T.
As the popularity of Rant Radio and "What The Hell?" grew, so did Sean Kennedy's popularity and his recorded "rants" proliferated across the Net. Hand in hand with Sean and Rant Radio's increased popularity, KULT grew with new interest from fans of Kennedy's angry, energetic, and rapid-fire commentary. Sean Kennedy "The Fuckin Man" released a CD of his rants on MP3.com in early 2001.
Sean packed his belief system about personal realization, growth, and social responsibility, which he called the Virus, into a KULT tome which he called the Virus Manifesto. He took on the title of Patient Zero, a medical term referring to the first known case of a viral infection.
Soon, with direction from Sean's somewhat-monthly radio addresses (called Brainwashings - mainly because they were supposed to help you wash the garbage out of your brain), KULT evolved from a private joke to an active and dynamic direct action organization which quickly grew to over 100 members. At its peak, KULT consisted of over 300 members. KULT members eagerly developed a number of resources which encouraged communication within the org, including websites, chat rooms, instant messaging systems, and support systems, and members began to start Projects which carried out Internet and real-world activities ranging from personal improvement for Kult members, to information distribution, to thought-provoking public spectacles and Internet policing (for example, the Gargoyle Watch - which assists local and international law-enforcement agencies in tracking down paedophiles and distributors of child pornography. Ironic, considering what happened next . . . ).
KULT's first test was in April of 2001 when one member, SkipRadio, was arrested on charges of impersonating a police officer and possession of child pornography. While in jail, Skip was phoned on the air at RantRadio where he pled a case of innocence and good intentions. Kennedy and RantRadio drummed up support for Skip's cause. After being released on probation pending a hearing date, Skip slipped and admitted guilt in the child porn charge and Kennedy kicked him out of Kult. Many members who gave SkipRadio both moral and economic support were disappointed and disillusioned.
This created the first significant split in Kult membership, and Kennedy was criticized by members who believed Kennedy had misused Kult comraderie and trust to benefit a liar.
In 2001 Sean Kennedy appointed an honor guard of KULT's most involved members which he called Guardians. Meant as role models and examples for others, Kennedy often dispensed details of his plans for the org to the Guardians first, often meeting privately with them as a group. The Guardians were meant as only an honorary group, but naturally came to gain a small amount of privilege from Kennedy. Despite friction from some non-Guardian members, almost all Guardians were respected members within KULT. The Guardians, it was said, would be the ones to form new organization(s) if KULT were to ever die.
After KULT began to attract a number of outspoken and critical members, a number of people began to seek to change KULT's structure, which was at that time a loosely operated community with a mildly militaristic operational structure where Kennedy maintained control over membership, structure, and direction. Many members vocally resisted Kennedy's structure and stirred up many long discussions about the problems with his system and ideas to reshape them. After much insistence that he would make no such changes, Kennedy quickly began to throw out any member who vocally opposed his system. In the next week almost a dozen people would be expelled and many others would leave in protest.
The loss of many active members slowed KULT down considerably. After this period, Kennedy decided to restrict new membership to only friends of existing members, and gave new powers to the Guardians to remove members and control activity.
Many of the members expelled from KULT during this incident formed a loose online group which became known as Exiles. As a result the incident became known as the Exiling. Many sympathetic KULT members also contributed to Exiles, and many of those members, especially many that were Guardians, came to be distrusted by the inner circle of KULT.
Shortly after the Exiling and changing the membership policy, Kennedy went on an extended vacation, leaving his favorite KULT member, Smokehouse, in charge of the organization. Without Kennedy's outspoken charisma, KULT lost the largest factor in its motivation. Smokehouse's more aggressive and confrontational demeanor did not have a positive effect on morale or motivation, and the change in atmosphere with many members' friends kicked out of the org kept moods dark and arguments high.
After a few months of stagnation and low morale, Zerstorer, a Guardian, wrote a document which addressed the confusion and low morale in Kult, and outlined the need for a new structure in Kult to increase involvement, give membership control over the group's direction, eliminate the concentration of power in one person, and encourage creation of projects and action teams. The document became known as the Revival Document. It eliminated the existence of the commanding position of Patient Zero as well as the privy council of the Guardians. It laid forth an organization system of groups and teams called Cells, divided into departments, called Ministries, and where the bare essential of group-wide decisions would be made by a Lead Cell of equal representatives from each Ministry. Under the Revival plan, anyone kicked out during the Exiling or who had fallen out of favor with Kennedy would be allowed back in the org without having to reapply.
Initially the Revival idea gained support even from most of the Guardians, and soon the Guardians held a vote to determine whether they would adopt the Revival plan, in turn eliminating themselves as a controlling group and removing power from Sean Kennedy and his replacement Smokehouse. Quickly after the vote, many Guardians and others close to Kennedy and his Vancouver power circle dropped their support, angrily criticizing Revival supporters for mistreating Kennedy and Smokehouse and distorting what Kennedy had created. After hearing about the Revival plan and the division in Kult, Sean Kennedy reappeared from vacation, and immediately shut down KULT, freezing all KULT resources under his control before moving on to work on various RantMedia projects.
(Note: This was probably due to the fact that the "Revival KULT" was willing to let any exiled member back in - including the notorious SkipRadio, who had been convicted of the crimes of impersonating a police officer and possessing child porn. - Zeek)
After SKTFM froze all of KULT's web sites, a former member of KULT - along with the leaders of another counter-culture organization called Black Milk - used the Virus Manifesto to change Black Milk into "by the book" recreation of KULT, and Anthony Björne (known then as Frail) took the title of Patient Zero.
(At this point KBM had no knowledge of its sister organization TheKult.Net - but that was to change early in 2002.)
Having lost its original website, many KULT members re-grouped at TheKult.Net, a website created and controlled by Roto, a former Guardian who had resigned as Guardian over an argument with other Guardians over operation of KULT's website - and who was later kicked out of KULT during the Exiling when he resisted an order given to him from Sean Kennedy.
Roto, who had also operated the Exiles message board, took freeware weblog code and adapted it to serve as a membership and discussion portal for displaced KULT members. Still wanting to go ahead with the Revival plan, these displaced members - who still considered themselves to be part of the same organization - re-created their organization without Sean Kennedy.
Renamed simply as "Kult", the group began to implement a new organizational structure laid out by Zerstorer's Revival Document and his Five Ministry Plan. Cells began to form within the Ministries, and in January 2002, the first Lead Cell of representatives from each Kult Ministry was elected. Since then there have been many polls - too many, in some people's opinion - and a problem moving toward accomplishing their goals.
In February 2002, Roto - a member of TheKult.Net - stumbled upon Kult Black Milk, and each organization learned about its counterpart. Shortly after this, many former KULT members who had stayed on with thekult.net (but preferred the traditional KULT structure) joined KBM and began contributing their efforts there.
Soon, TheKult.Net - which had been vibrant during and after the Revival - suffered a loss of activity, because many members now had dual citizenship (so to speak): they hadn't abandoned TheKult.Net, but had joined Kult Black Milk as well, preferring its streamlined structure to the bureaucratic Ministries of TheKult.Net - and as a result, the two organizations had to compete for the attention and support of those members.
Political issues in TheKult.Net - such as the acceptance of SkipRadio into TheKult.net's ranks (a move which KBM had shot down - I mean, who wants a known paedophile as an associate?!) - have sparked exodi as well, as have philosophical issues related to interpersonal relationships.
It was also around this time that some members of Kult Black Milk - ones who weren't too happy about the way things were going - split off to reform the original Black Milk, using the ideas (and ideals) of the original Black Milk organization. The result was that Kult Black Milk became two separate entities once more - Kult and Black Milk - and ties between the two organizations have been strained for some time, especially since the separation was not very smooth.
It was some time in late 2004 that so many members of TheKult.Net had joined with Kult that members of both organizations asked themselves, "What should we do?"
For
Kult, the answer was simple: Get to work - get old Sean-era programs (such as the Kult Media eXchange, the Gargoyle Watch, and Radio Kult) back up and running, and start looking for ways in which Kult can work to change the way the world works (such as Project: Amicus, an ongoing project dedicated to researching legal cases involving freedom of speech and information and filing briefs in amicus curiae in order to ensure those freedoms are preserved)
For TheKult.Net, however, the answer is harder to to see: their member base isn't as large as it used to be, and that - combined with their bureaucratic system of organization - makes it harder for them to get much (if anything) done.
While the future for both organizations is hard to see, for TheKult.Net it doesn't seem very bright.
Recently, there was a conflict between two well-known members of Kult: Anthony (the last Patent Zero [the term for the leader of Kult]) and Katana (the member who was appointed as Anthony's replacement - an appointment which many members considered a bad move). Now, I'm not precisely clear on what started the conflict between Katana and Anthony, but I do know what the aftermath was:
[1] Katana was removed from the position of Patient Zero.
[2] Anthony received flak from many Kult members, many of whom believed that even though Anthony had chosen the correct course of action in removing Katana, he didn't have the right to do it.
[3] A flame war (that is, an e-mail/message board conflict in which heated and often insulting messages are exchanged between participants) resulted due to the schism between those who supported Anthony's decision and those who believe Katana should have been left as Patient Zero.
[4] Anthony, who has gotten sick of the flame war, says "Enough is enough", wipes the member database, tells all former members that they're welcome back as long as they don't start up with the petty internal conflict becase there are more important issues to deal with, such as government corruption, treasonous acts by members of the American goverment, and infringement upon civil liberties.
[5]Anthony then turns over most of the administrative duties to the Grey Council (the Kult equivalent of a parlziament, with each of the nine Klans of Kult - Cenobyte, Decker, Fleshtripper, Gargoyle, Houngan, Nomad, Prophet, Ronin, and Vampyre - represtented by that Klan's Guardian).
[6] June 6, 2005 (approximately six weeks after the Reboot): Guardian Dinc of Klan Ronin volunteers to take on the role of Patient Zero. So far, there is a good amount of support for Dinc to become Patient Zero.
After Sean shut down the original KULT's resources, he went on to play a greater part in Rant Radio's evolution into RantMedia, and has been working on projects such as NewsReal with Sean Kennedy, Tales From The Afternow, SKTFM.TV, and Patrolling with Sean Kennedy.
Oh, and I hear he's also gotten married, the lucky bloke.
Sean Kennedy And The Roots Of Kult
It was some time in 2000 that Sean Kennedy - who, at the time, was DJing for a club - began promoting a friend's Internet radio station (Rant Radio - which later became the aforementioned RantMedia).
His promos got longer, and in them, Sean would express - quite energetically, and with more than a few expletives thrown in - his views on anything and everything (but especially social issues such as individuality, corporate culture, and racism, to name a few). This earned him a spot on a weekly Rant Radio show called "What The Hell?!!" Around March of 2000, Sean took a bunch of his friends, fans, and fellow Rat Radio personalities, and formed a tongue-in-cheek social club which he called 'Kennedy's Uber Leet Terrorists', or K.U.L.T.
The Virus Is Released
As the popularity of Rant Radio and "What The Hell?" grew, so did Sean Kennedy's popularity and his recorded "rants" proliferated across the Net. Hand in hand with Sean and Rant Radio's increased popularity, KULT grew with new interest from fans of Kennedy's angry, energetic, and rapid-fire commentary. Sean Kennedy "The Fuckin Man" released a CD of his rants on MP3.com in early 2001.
Sean packed his belief system about personal realization, growth, and social responsibility, which he called the Virus, into a KULT tome which he called the Virus Manifesto. He took on the title of Patient Zero, a medical term referring to the first known case of a viral infection.
Soon, with direction from Sean's somewhat-monthly radio addresses (called Brainwashings - mainly because they were supposed to help you wash the garbage out of your brain), KULT evolved from a private joke to an active and dynamic direct action organization which quickly grew to over 100 members. At its peak, KULT consisted of over 300 members. KULT members eagerly developed a number of resources which encouraged communication within the org, including websites, chat rooms, instant messaging systems, and support systems, and members began to start Projects which carried out Internet and real-world activities ranging from personal improvement for Kult members, to information distribution, to thought-provoking public spectacles and Internet policing (for example, the Gargoyle Watch - which assists local and international law-enforcement agencies in tracking down paedophiles and distributors of child pornography. Ironic, considering what happened next . . . ).
Major Problem And General Outcry: The First Blows Fall
KULT's first test was in April of 2001 when one member, SkipRadio, was arrested on charges of impersonating a police officer and possession of child pornography. While in jail, Skip was phoned on the air at RantRadio where he pled a case of innocence and good intentions. Kennedy and RantRadio drummed up support for Skip's cause. After being released on probation pending a hearing date, Skip slipped and admitted guilt in the child porn charge and Kennedy kicked him out of Kult. Many members who gave SkipRadio both moral and economic support were disappointed and disillusioned.
This created the first significant split in Kult membership, and Kennedy was criticized by members who believed Kennedy had misused Kult comraderie and trust to benefit a liar.
Watching Over You: The Guardians Are Created
In 2001 Sean Kennedy appointed an honor guard of KULT's most involved members which he called Guardians. Meant as role models and examples for others, Kennedy often dispensed details of his plans for the org to the Guardians first, often meeting privately with them as a group. The Guardians were meant as only an honorary group, but naturally came to gain a small amount of privilege from Kennedy. Despite friction from some non-Guardian members, almost all Guardians were respected members within KULT. The Guardians, it was said, would be the ones to form new organization(s) if KULT were to ever die.
Bureaucracy And Fallout: The Exiling
After KULT began to attract a number of outspoken and critical members, a number of people began to seek to change KULT's structure, which was at that time a loosely operated community with a mildly militaristic operational structure where Kennedy maintained control over membership, structure, and direction. Many members vocally resisted Kennedy's structure and stirred up many long discussions about the problems with his system and ideas to reshape them. After much insistence that he would make no such changes, Kennedy quickly began to throw out any member who vocally opposed his system. In the next week almost a dozen people would be expelled and many others would leave in protest.
The loss of many active members slowed KULT down considerably. After this period, Kennedy decided to restrict new membership to only friends of existing members, and gave new powers to the Guardians to remove members and control activity.
Many of the members expelled from KULT during this incident formed a loose online group which became known as Exiles. As a result the incident became known as the Exiling. Many sympathetic KULT members also contributed to Exiles, and many of those members, especially many that were Guardians, came to be distrusted by the inner circle of KULT.
"What's The Use?": KULT Demoralized
Shortly after the Exiling and changing the membership policy, Kennedy went on an extended vacation, leaving his favorite KULT member, Smokehouse, in charge of the organization. Without Kennedy's outspoken charisma, KULT lost the largest factor in its motivation. Smokehouse's more aggressive and confrontational demeanor did not have a positive effect on morale or motivation, and the change in atmosphere with many members' friends kicked out of the org kept moods dark and arguments high.
"Get A Crash Cart In Here, STAT!": Clinical Death And Revival
After a few months of stagnation and low morale, Zerstorer, a Guardian, wrote a document which addressed the confusion and low morale in Kult, and outlined the need for a new structure in Kult to increase involvement, give membership control over the group's direction, eliminate the concentration of power in one person, and encourage creation of projects and action teams. The document became known as the Revival Document. It eliminated the existence of the commanding position of Patient Zero as well as the privy council of the Guardians. It laid forth an organization system of groups and teams called Cells, divided into departments, called Ministries, and where the bare essential of group-wide decisions would be made by a Lead Cell of equal representatives from each Ministry. Under the Revival plan, anyone kicked out during the Exiling or who had fallen out of favor with Kennedy would be allowed back in the org without having to reapply.
Initially the Revival idea gained support even from most of the Guardians, and soon the Guardians held a vote to determine whether they would adopt the Revival plan, in turn eliminating themselves as a controlling group and removing power from Sean Kennedy and his replacement Smokehouse. Quickly after the vote, many Guardians and others close to Kennedy and his Vancouver power circle dropped their support, angrily criticizing Revival supporters for mistreating Kennedy and Smokehouse and distorting what Kennedy had created. After hearing about the Revival plan and the division in Kult, Sean Kennedy reappeared from vacation, and immediately shut down KULT, freezing all KULT resources under his control before moving on to work on various RantMedia projects.
(Note: This was probably due to the fact that the "Revival KULT" was willing to let any exiled member back in - including the notorious SkipRadio, who had been convicted of the crimes of impersonating a police officer and possessing child porn. - Zeek)
KULT, Version 2.0: Kult Black Milk
After SKTFM froze all of KULT's web sites, a former member of KULT - along with the leaders of another counter-culture organization called Black Milk - used the Virus Manifesto to change Black Milk into "by the book" recreation of KULT, and Anthony Björne (known then as Frail) took the title of Patient Zero.
(At this point KBM had no knowledge of its sister organization TheKult.Net - but that was to change early in 2002.)
KULT, Version 2.5: TheKult.Net
Having lost its original website, many KULT members re-grouped at TheKult.Net, a website created and controlled by Roto, a former Guardian who had resigned as Guardian over an argument with other Guardians over operation of KULT's website - and who was later kicked out of KULT during the Exiling when he resisted an order given to him from Sean Kennedy.
Roto, who had also operated the Exiles message board, took freeware weblog code and adapted it to serve as a membership and discussion portal for displaced KULT members. Still wanting to go ahead with the Revival plan, these displaced members - who still considered themselves to be part of the same organization - re-created their organization without Sean Kennedy.
Renamed simply as "Kult", the group began to implement a new organizational structure laid out by Zerstorer's Revival Document and his Five Ministry Plan. Cells began to form within the Ministries, and in January 2002, the first Lead Cell of representatives from each Kult Ministry was elected. Since then there have been many polls - too many, in some people's opinion - and a problem moving toward accomplishing their goals.
Part And Counterpart: Kult Black Milk Meets TheKult.Net
In February 2002, Roto - a member of TheKult.Net - stumbled upon Kult Black Milk, and each organization learned about its counterpart. Shortly after this, many former KULT members who had stayed on with thekult.net (but preferred the traditional KULT structure) joined KBM and began contributing their efforts there.
Soon, TheKult.Net - which had been vibrant during and after the Revival - suffered a loss of activity, because many members now had dual citizenship (so to speak): they hadn't abandoned TheKult.Net, but had joined Kult Black Milk as well, preferring its streamlined structure to the bureaucratic Ministries of TheKult.Net - and as a result, the two organizations had to compete for the attention and support of those members.
Political issues in TheKult.Net - such as the acceptance of SkipRadio into TheKult.net's ranks (a move which KBM had shot down - I mean, who wants a known paedophile as an associate?!) - have sparked exodi as well, as have philosophical issues related to interpersonal relationships.
It was also around this time that some members of Kult Black Milk - ones who weren't too happy about the way things were going - split off to reform the original Black Milk, using the ideas (and ideals) of the original Black Milk organization. The result was that Kult Black Milk became two separate entities once more - Kult and Black Milk - and ties between the two organizations have been strained for some time, especially since the separation was not very smooth.
Present Tense, Future Unknown: The Future of Kult
It was some time in late 2004 that so many members of TheKult.Net had joined with Kult that members of both organizations asked themselves, "What should we do?"
For
Kult, the answer was simple: Get to work - get old Sean-era programs (such as the Kult Media eXchange, the Gargoyle Watch, and Radio Kult) back up and running, and start looking for ways in which Kult can work to change the way the world works (such as Project: Amicus, an ongoing project dedicated to researching legal cases involving freedom of speech and information and filing briefs in amicus curiae in order to ensure those freedoms are preserved)
For TheKult.Net, however, the answer is harder to to see: their member base isn't as large as it used to be, and that - combined with their bureaucratic system of organization - makes it harder for them to get much (if anything) done.
While the future for both organizations is hard to see, for TheKult.Net it doesn't seem very bright.
Catastrophic System Failure: The Kult Reboot
Recently, there was a conflict between two well-known members of Kult: Anthony (the last Patent Zero [the term for the leader of Kult]) and Katana (the member who was appointed as Anthony's replacement - an appointment which many members considered a bad move). Now, I'm not precisely clear on what started the conflict between Katana and Anthony, but I do know what the aftermath was:
[1] Katana was removed from the position of Patient Zero.
[2] Anthony received flak from many Kult members, many of whom believed that even though Anthony had chosen the correct course of action in removing Katana, he didn't have the right to do it.
[3] A flame war (that is, an e-mail/message board conflict in which heated and often insulting messages are exchanged between participants) resulted due to the schism between those who supported Anthony's decision and those who believe Katana should have been left as Patient Zero.
[4] Anthony, who has gotten sick of the flame war, says "Enough is enough", wipes the member database, tells all former members that they're welcome back as long as they don't start up with the petty internal conflict becase there are more important issues to deal with, such as government corruption, treasonous acts by members of the American goverment, and infringement upon civil liberties.
[5]Anthony then turns over most of the administrative duties to the Grey Council (the Kult equivalent of a parlziament, with each of the nine Klans of Kult - Cenobyte, Decker, Fleshtripper, Gargoyle, Houngan, Nomad, Prophet, Ronin, and Vampyre - represtented by that Klan's Guardian).
[6] June 6, 2005 (approximately six weeks after the Reboot): Guardian Dinc of Klan Ronin volunteers to take on the role of Patient Zero. So far, there is a good amount of support for Dinc to become Patient Zero.
And What Of Sean Kennedy?
After Sean shut down the original KULT's resources, he went on to play a greater part in Rant Radio's evolution into RantMedia, and has been working on projects such as NewsReal with Sean Kennedy, Tales From The Afternow, SKTFM.TV, and Patrolling with Sean Kennedy.
Oh, and I hear he's also gotten married, the lucky bloke.
