Good Morning, Evening, Afternoon. 
Earlier this year, an exciting article by ArsTechnica came out detailing the EHEXP “heist” in which a founding corp ceo took back their company from a newer and unresponsive CEO. Hooray! Good Job! You earn the cookie. We cheer about it, then we promptly forget about it. 
Sadly for the rest of the community, I had a question that asked myself about this situation:
What was the circumstances in which the Newer CEO upon assuming power decided to just enter the corp into a NullSec group and suddenly become disinterested in the corp? 
I had alot of time to think about it, analyze it from the unique perspective I have from my time in said NullSec group. I think I got a pretty good painting I like to show you that may come as a shock to ordinary players. I expect outrage from the people I talk about. That’s normal. Bring it. 
Even if I am wrong, it is worth the effort to see how one could apply my theory and insulate themselves from these shenanigans from suggestions I will add later. Read on.
Preface:
There are a few weaknesses in humans that other more big brained and in my opinion, shitty and narcissistic humans have come to recognize, and use to attempt to control others to create an outcome favorable to them. The more common ones I have seen in my professional career before I retired was:
- Money
- Sex
- Drugs
- Power
The same weaknesses, surprisingly, also apply to video gamers (that’s you), and the most vulnerable are those anywhere from when they are able to start being able to be trusted as a adolescence to at least age 25 when most human brains reach maturity [Casey BJ, Jones RM, Hare TA. The adolescent brain. Ann NY Acad Sci. 2008;1124:111–126]. Some take longer, some shorter. Even after maturity, humans have to have a point of reference in which they detect they are being manipulated.
Now enough essay ■■■■■■■■-- the reason why I am even preface this is because there was a question I posed: What was the circumstances in which the Newer CEO upon assuming power decided to just enter the corp into a NullSec group and suddenly become disinterested in the corp?
People usually don’t do something out of the ordinary, or act out of line that violates social norms unless there was something to be gained. In this case, there was a reward at the end of this person’s acquisition of EHEXP. Which then ended all interest in the company’s day to day operations. I ran through this list of what this person may have gotten out of it by handing this corporation to Pandemic LEGION/Horde Vanguard/Armada:
1. Money-- “The root of all evil”.
Pandemic Legion/Vangaurd/Armada and its Federated group of friends has plenty of goddamn money between them. Even as the nerfs come they will be well funded into EvE’s 30th anniversary unless they dissolve from inner conflict. Even if ISK runs low, the more senior members within PL’s innercircle are wealthy trust fund babies that will plex through while getting whatever patsy(s) CSM to beg CCP for mercy. I like to point out they got their Pochoven playground back this way. So we can easily rule out that money wasn’t the goal.
2. Sex-- “My Aura mistress is totally not a guy”
There is no information available to suggest this particular weakness/reward was in play. We can rule out sex.
3. Drugs-- “You’ll never catch the dragon”
There has… in the past… a concern (by me, although a bit too late now to intervene) about a former member in this group micro-dosing on LSD obtained and provided by another member in order to get an edge at their particularly cut-throat industry job. This is a common phenomena that is occurring in Silicon Valley., but there is no data to suggest this was the reward, we can rule out drugs. Which then leads us to this:
4. Power–“I must impress my leader with my cleverness to get ahead”
Gobbins likes to portray that he is a strange and unreachable ethereal being-- and humorously he is the only one that can allow it to be wednesday, my dudes. He is a smart man, and in IRL has a very smart medical job, in a very upscale area, possibly serving upscale clients and the occasional charity case… or ripping open rat craniums for science which i guess pretty ok too. 
Now remember when I said he was smart? Well, he is also smart with games… he also may like to invent his own game within games within games. Its mind-minipulation games he likes to play most, and he likes to pit his own little circle of people against each other for his favor… see where I am going with this?
So knowing all this, and considering the information I have pooled, here is what I theorized happened:
1. The Newest CEO of EHEXP was an alt of a member of Pandemic Legion / Vangaurd / Armada or part of the PanFam mafia.
2. This person was in it for the long game. They played EvE Online for quite sometime and either have done it before or was coached by thier “Capo” on how to do it.
3. Once they obtained the corp, they reported thier sucess to the GobFather and they all went on holiday to Galante space to smoke questionable substances and watch entertainers wrap themselves around poles. They also watched some ancient earth fake wrestling matches aptly named “WWE”.
At this point, the boys club is celebrating and Gobbins/Leadership is pleased and bestows respect and whatever else comes with that. Respect isn’t really a tangible thing, but in my opinion its a method of controlling otherwise easily terrified children and c-level suite execs. It also creates Dopamine in some people’s brains in which they “believe” they have earned “Respect” from people. Gobbins/leadership then goes to reprimand his other staff to do better. And the cycle continues.
Gobbins knows what his underlings like. Its Respect and Dopamine. The same you get when you win a pixelship battle, a warhammer 9000k board game, D&D, maybe a video game like Call Of Duty.
The reward in this case, was the feeling of POWER the the little mafioso felt when they completed the objective in order to get the RESPECT and DOPAMINE.
Gobbins is a smart man. He spent nothing and got something.
Now to close the chapter on this horrible little thought experiment intertwined with my twisted brain and now move to the less scary part of this post. The question now moves to this:
How can I defend my corporation against this kind of manipulation?
I don’t want to pretend I know everything, and give you a false sense of security that following any advice I give will be foolproof against whatever DarkArts some shitheads want to pull on you. I didn’t know very much about the shares mechanic in EvE before this incident.
I do however, provide the following advice:
- Vote to increase your shares to the maximum and;
- Don’t give shares of your corp to anyone.
- Unless you’ve met them in real life and have known them for years, don’t put anyone in any position of authority to yank control away of your corporation. Consider separating with your favorite party in forming an Alliance instead with two corps, Yours and Theirs. If a disagreement occurs with no reasonable solution can be made, or power is suddenly imbalanced, you can separate from the alliance intact with your assets in your control.
- If you need to end your relationship with the game, its is much easier to ask your corp members to join another alliance corp. or form their own, maintaining/perserving the culture you made and enjoyed. You MAY decide further in time to return and either spin back up your corp with assets waiting for you in storage, or join up with what is a legacy of what your corp is, with known… “friends”.
I hope this has been enjoyable to read as it was to write and you came away a bit smarter or at least entertained. I started this post at 11am and it is now 5am.
