Instruments

As suggested by the name, media becomes a medium through which ideas and impressions spread from an artist to her audience. The bigger the medium, the larger its audience and the further the reach of that idea. Early on, media consisted of a storyteller and the members of her tribe; later, it expanded to sacred ritual theatres. Each new expansion of technology allowed ideas to go further and reach more people. With the advent of mass printing and distribution, followed by sound- and image-recording technology, radio waves, and rapid international travel, media become the dominant tool for shaping the Consensus. Memes (see the sidebar) can now spread across the world in seconds. And so, for the 21st-century mage, mass media becomes an essential tool when altering reality.

As a magickal instrument, mass media can take many forms: music concerts or recordings, TV and radio broadcasts, Internet posts, viral videos, roleplaying games, remixes, mashups, bestselling books, theatrical productions, movies of any scale… if they reach a large audience, then they’re all mass media. Such media provide excellent venues for coincidental Mind Effects – the audience wants to receive a message, and therefore they’re already receptive to it. Such messages can occasionally seed new Mythic Threads too – just Google Harry Potter, Twilight, or Obama.

Since the earliest large rituals, mages have used mass media to make things happen. The Syndicate, NWO, Cult of Ecstasy, and Celestial Chorus are the obvious masters of media, but any group or individual can employ it. (Rumors and evidence suggest that the Nephandi might be the greatest media masters of them all.) Given the vast reach provided by the Internet, data files, home-production technology, and the various things you can do with them all, anyone with a computer and Internet access can employ mass media. And though the Internet’s signal-to-noise ratio makes it hard to create large and lasting impressions, a savvy person can use a single cell-phone picture to start waves rolling across our world.