It's too early to celebrate!

The Mordus report will come tomorrow (it's a very nice one), because the matter of today is more pressing. There is a huge celebration on Reddit over the cancellation of the propaganda book kickstarter, funnily, mentioning me in the top comment. The joy is increased by the hilarious statements of The Mittani, who "apologized" for everyone else around him being failures. It is true that TMC and The Mittani Media suffered a serious, maybe fatal defeat:

• Most importantly, they failed to get the money they wanted and the lack of funding will likely hit many of their future projects. Knowing how arrogant and narcissistic they are, they probably already spent it and now they have short-term loans with nothing to repay from or started projects they have to cancel.
• They burned themselves with CCP. Several devs gave their faces to market that awful propaganda crap. They did it in the blind hope that this book will get new players. Instead CCP took awful lot of heat for openly standing with The Mittani in this disgusting plan. Never I've seen so many "CCP = CFC" sentiments. I'm completely sure that they'll be much more cautious dealing with TMC/TMM or even stop doing it completely.
• They burned themselves with Jeff Edwards and with his writer buddies. Those people came in good faith, expecting a supportive and welcoming community and got hate instead. Now they look at The Mittani and ask "are these your friends?!". Please remember, while the difference between a TESTie and a Goon or The Mittani and me are obvious for an EVE player, for an outsider we are all "EVE nerds", and whatever a TESTie or even I do reflects on The Mittani in the real media space. Funnily, it works both ways, I had to explain myself a few times when I mentioned playing EVE as non-players assumed that I'm a friend of that horrible suicide-bully guy. This is most visible from the desperate tears of Sion that can be summarized as "without miners TMC you'll have no ships CCP ability to ever secure another author to write player stories".
• They burned lots of Quislings for the project. While I always told that we must not hope PL or NC will do something about Goons, it was mostly dismissed as "tinfoil conspiracy". Now I only have to link this or this or the fact that the lead Goon propagandist is in NC. and people say "sad but true" or at least go silent.

I am not sure if they stand up from this defeat. I would be extremely surprised if they'd actually try to pull the propaganda book kickstarter in March. But "they" means "TMC" or "The Mittani Media" and not the Imperium. Let me ask a simple question: does a line Goon or SMA feels anything from all this? He still has his ships, his FCs, his paplinks, his ratting space, his ADM, everything.

Unless this media failure forces The Mittani to quit playing and get a job, or at least to be unable to pay FCs and directors, nothing will change for the in-game Imperium. While it's easy to think in terms of leaders, it's wrong. Scooter McGabe isn't out there to scam because he is directly ordered by The Mittani, but because he is a scammer. The tear-harvesting gankers also act on their own. The ratters who just want to get fat from their medium shield booster carriers also want to continue. The Mittani gave them a flag, gave them IT services and organization, but they aren't paid or forced to do what they do. They are the Imperium and while they are, the Imperium will stand!

I also have to address the "Gobbins Ruse" which got lot of spotlight for little effect. While I don't question that he made the Mittani mad, nor that we laughed hard, he didn't hurt the Imperium at all. If he didn't make up his imaginary coalition, PH would still evacuate Cloud Ring (PH fighting Imperium wasn't a reasonable option). The only difference he made is that The Mittani looked a clown by sending his minions to "fight that coalition" and they only found empty structures, instead of just sending them burn empty structures. Either way, the line Goons shot empty structures for paplinks.

The enemy is the Imperium. What they do is in them, not in the Mittani. He merely rides their wave and makes some money from it. To stop the Imperium, we must defeat the Imperium members, not TMC, not The Mittani, not Sion, not disband their alliance by a rouge director (just so they reform in a day) or whatever "great move". There is no great move. There is only the hard way: hunting down every single one of them, assimilate those who are just there for convenience and crush those who believe in the Goon way. Those who hope for a victory by some trick are like that idiot Bush standing behind the "Mission Accomplished" sign after Saddam and his formal army was defeated, ignoring that all the bad he did kept living in his followers who reformed under many names and kept doing worse and worse things.

We have not won yet! We'll win when the last structure exploded, when convenience-Imperium players found a new home and the hard core is banished to irrelevance.

Grr Goons! (Good example)