Frankly they prey on those that need to be part of a alt-normal collective.
You have to understand SA from back almost 20 years ago to maybe get it.
Rroff
Do you think the “Something Awful” forums indirectly “select” for people who would stay in EVE even if they started alone? That possibility is one of the reasons for the “examples vs norms” comment I made earlier.
FWIW I wouldn’t have joined GoonSwarm myself: I didn’t like their their pro-scamming policy. OTOH the possibility would never have come up 
PS: There’s an editing error in your post (a copy of the last line found its way into the quote).
Edit: Thanks for the update!
I wondered what happened to that line - it actually wasn’t me - some kind of forum bug - I edited it in at the bottom and when it finished submitting it wasn’t there at all so I re-added it.
To be honest I don’t fully understand it I just get the gist of it - useless trivia but I used to play Quake with Lowtax (founder of SA) back in the day along with some others from PQ like Pappy-R.
Absolutely not. SA attracts the anti-status quo crowd, who want to be part of a crowd, but want to be ‘against’ what ‘other people’ represent. It’s basically your ‘rebel without a cause’ group who just want to identify with other people for being ‘not part of the regular crowd’, or as they see it ‘not the brainwashed sheep that all you other people are’.
“Us vs. Them” sounds much more workable to that mindset than “Me vs. Everyone”, or even “Me looking for a group to join”. Way better to join a group you know will accept you (because you paid the membership fee) and then pretend you’re all rugged anarchic individualists together.
Weird this this has been moved. I’m out anyway.
To any readers:
I’ll respond to the new information from Rroff and Kezrai Charzai “Real Soon Now”. I probably won’t be back after that.
In case this is ever reviewed again by a moderator:
The thread is about ways to improve new player retention. It was created in General Discussion because that’s where it belongs.
Goons inner circle make RL full time job from beeing in goons, the rest of goons pay to be part of it, but “managment” give them VALUE FOR THEIR MONEY
unlike the ccp 
I’ve been in Goonswarm just shy of ten years now and I played Eve for a few years before I joined. Before I joined, I avidly followed the Swarm’s antics; so I understand your interest.
The fact that we spent so much of our early history recruiting from an outside community instead of drawing from the people who are already playing has been mentioned elsewhere, but let me restate: the majority of us are Goons first and Eve players second. The way I see it, the primary advantage of a Goon-first mindset is in how we deal with in game adversity.
With most alliances, a series of setbacks will eventually cause corps and players to seek out greener pastures. People like to be on the winning team and if they’re the losing side of a major war, they’re much more likely to leave and join a more successful alliance. That exodus is what ends up killing a lot of alliances. Your average Goon, however, wouldn’t even consider leaving the alliance to play with pubbies. They are alien and ungoony. Some of us might quit the game for a while, but we are much less likely to switch sides than other players.
Another advantage of our culture is that we expect to lose (or “welp”) from time to time and we don’t let losses turn us against each other.
Even now, with most of our corporations in the alliance recruiting from the current player base, our internal culture is strong because it had so much time to establish itself. Still, I’m sure that the next time we inevitably eat it, we’ll probably lose a few corps and players. They probably won’t be missed, though, because they will have always been fair weather allies and a distinct minority.
One disadvantage of our culture is that we are (and always have been) a cult of personality. Strong leaders are lionized (Sesfan is #1 QTIYD) and sorely missed when they quit the game or - worse yet - betray us. When Remedial and later kartoon betrayed the Swarm, it hurt more than any defeat at the hands of our enemies. Of course, we know that about ourselves and have taken some precautions to safeguard against an executor (or a director) going f*** goons, but it’s still a factor.
I hope that helps to clarify why Goonswarm will always rule over Eve until the next time we screw up and lose it all.
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Devilish
Thanks a 1000000 for your post! I’ll be back (soon, not RSN 
when I get some time.
It is still how GoonWaffe recruits…
I think you’re making many assumptions abut how GoonSwarm started.
It was a collection of NOT BOB. At the time the developers were the oldest players and had the most SPs and were well coordinated with game mechanics.
Everyone else just fell into GoonSwarm.
If you look at the old influence maps you’ll see there really wasn’t a lot of other activity at the time, and GoonSwarm just ate up all the other non-BoB corps.
Doesn’t really build your case when you have outstanding counter-examples.
The myth vs reality.
Napoleon the myth was defeated by the real military science of Jomini. You speak rightly about espirit de corps but overlook the reality that it’s not that which has kept GoonSwarm where it is.
It’s momentum.
GoonSwarm has assets and income. A dumb ape could manage it. Just look at Trump.
This poster is fine propaganda but where it really starts, like America in WW2, it’s the fact that GoonSwarm can give its players 1,000 scouts-over.
GS produces a ton, and so can provide its bees a ton and therefore can retain more bees. No one quits when losses are lower risk.
So the lesson to OTHER corps is produce more. Produce like crazy. That’s your foundation.
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Perhaps but that poster was made before goons were the premier economic power house.
Good point. It’s good words to live by dont get me wrong. But it’s a force multiplier for going for production too.
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SA was not subscription based unless you wanted to remove adds and such. Also people recruited from penny Arcade and a few other like it.
And SA was not inclusive to only goons, and EvE was only one very small section of the games they have played. Hell Molle from BoB was an SA member. And the Groons that were apart and splintered off and died somewhere.
It is amazing the pubbies still don’t get Goons.
“get” and “care much about” are different things 
Just wanted to throw one of the more famous videos from the swarm. It also gives an idea for the newcomers what Goonswarm was.
And regarding the raise of new members, I would like to mention that the goons did recruit random people. But this was mostly done through their vetting program, where an SA member could vet for a new guy. This was how I originally entered Goonfleet and later Ultrapolite Socialities.
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