《Idealism》The Spectrum (1)
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> [piece of paper]
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The sheet of paper was covered in scribbles. Black marker. Frienzied writing.
There was a knock on the door. Joseph stood, feeling his back ache. Man, he was getting old. As he stretched, Lawson came into the office.
It was still the first week that Joseph had been sworn in as President. Lawson had to give it to him, for all the talent that Joseph lacked, he made up for it in frienzied effort. Zoom zoom went his marker, went his mouth, asking questions, probing problems of the states.
Joseph cut him off before he could speak. "Ah! Coffee! Just what I needed." He went over and drank the entire thing in less than 5 gulps. Lawson stared at him. "That was an entire pitcher of cold coffee. Not iced."
"Whatever", dismissed Joseph. Lawson stared at the president. Eye bags, armpit sweat, pretty sure that was the same shirt he was wearing yesterday...
"Did you sleep?" Lawson pushed out.
"Nope!"
"okay." Lawson turned and looked at the sheet of paper covered in markings. "What's that?"
"That," Joseph asserted with an amazing deal of zeal, "is the Spectrum."
"The Spectrum."
'Yes."
Lawson felt something dying inside him. "Well, what does it do?"
Joseph shrugged. "It was to help me better understand the populace."
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The Spectrum was a huge bar that Joseph had drawn on a sheet of paper clipped to a whiteboard. He had specifically asked for a huge whiteboard to 'outline his details clearly'.
Anyway, the Spectrum was divided into different sectors by black lines, Then even more lines were drawn from a sector to a place on the paper that wasn't filled with ink already and then that place was filled with text explaining what was the sector was about.
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Joseph muttered, "It would be neater if I could have found color markers."
Lawson understood that Joseph needed attention right now, so he went ahead and said, "Well, why don't you tell me what this is about?"
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The First Sector was labelled, "the Trolls", and underneath that, small text reading, "and not the Homestuck kind."
Joseph cleared his throat. He licked his lips. He then coughed a little.
Lawson said, "Take your time."
Joseph nearly yelled, "I don't have the time!" But instead he whisper-yelled it so it didn't go outside his office and it also managed to make it across to Lawson, albeit sounding a little whisper-y. But that's whisper-yelling for ya.
Instead of asking why Joseph ddin't have time, Lawson waited for Joseph to clear out his nervous tics.
Joseph shook himself.
He then said, "The first sector is the easiest one. Of every community, there will always be those that heckle and do nothing constructive. Even their criticism is non-constructuve and are generally complaints and death threats. I don't have time to deal with the Trolls. They are simply a very loud minority that loudness makes everything worse. They are almost utterly useless."
He then added, "But I need to know that they exist."
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The Second to Fifth Sector was grouped together by an irregular curly bracket, which right side was fatter than the other, into "the Needy".
Joseph said, "These sectors are not mutually exclusive. People can be in more than 1 sector. This rule only applies to special brackets. Wait, I need to write down the different groups so that you can understand." He went over to the side and started writing.
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The Groups were the largest part of the community. Those that take up perhaps 20, 30% of the populace? Basically, the Groups were those where the amount of people that stood for one thing was enough to make it on a piechart. They were denoted by shading. Dots or diagonal lines worked just fine.
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The Brackets were parts of the community inside a Group. Or they could simply exist outside of a Group. They were denoted by curly brackets.
The Sectors were the smallest part of the Spectrum, broken down like matter into atoms.
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Joseph went back to the Needy Bracket. The Second Sector was labelled, "NIMBY"
"These are the people who want change but hate getting changed. They suck."
It is worth noting that both NIMBY and Trolls were shaded by a huge cross.
The Third Sector was labelled, "Mislabelled".
"These are those that have been mislabelled as being in one category but really belong in another, causing them to be ineligible for benefits."
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The other parts of the Spectrum was blank. The Author hadn't written them down yet. They will be continued in The Spectrum (2) and The Spectrum (3) and so on.
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