Sector: Alternative Media

Creative Spark:

Every aspiring writer goes on a journey of discovery to find their voice, a style and delivery unique to them, like a literary fingerprint. Abstract Definition emerged as a voice with its own distinctive pattern in Istanbul, where this extraordinary natural watercourse called the Bosporus divides East and West, and friction between what can and can’t be said produces propaganda, or Undercurrent Affairs.

Flagship Product: Abstract Definition

Current Status: Active / Forging Ahead

Outline template complete, with content samples loaded and now updating weekly, attributed to Guest Editor or stable of pseudo scribes with their own spoof identities depending on subject matter. Monetisation strategy through quick visit, membership plan, book sales, tips for writers and spoof charity free speech donations.

Undercurrent Affairs content menu, with innovative monitisation strategy under Shop

First Development Phase:

With some small customisation Woocommerce store with membership and subscription plugins meets the requirements of the innovative Undercurrent monetisation strategy, and from there the plan is to build income streams to a level that allows for the recruitment of a Founder Owner and a dedicated Guest Editor, who will organise the payment of outside contributors to post material by Undercurrent pseudo scribes. Cottage media can develop into media complex if the brand is recognised by investors and followers as having an important part to play in free speech, which it does.

Brand Backstory

Free speech is easy to say, but hard to protect. Even in America, where free speech is protected by the First Amendment, censorship of views that don’t fit certain narratives is widespread. One of the earliest signs of totalitarianism is a growing intolerance of well articulated ideas that question majority assumptions. And since nothing hits home quite like satire, satirists are often the first to take the strain. On the other hand, when a power hungry elite idolised by a compliant majority begin to determine who can say what, satire is often one of the last forms of freedom of expression left standing.

Undercurrent Affairs, like all the best creations, was inspired by Mother nature and necessity, which is the Mother of invention. The Bosporus is a famous waterway with a lesser known quirk: the surface current flows one way, like a river, but dive a little deeper, and the undercurrent flows in the opposite direction. ‘Things’, as the early Greek philosopher Phaedrus famously observed ‘are not always what they seem’. Luckily for those with an inquisitive mind, human nature serves up behaviour that is hardly ever what it seems. Look a little deeper into the gentle reported flow of some settled issue like climate change, and you might get swept away by evidence flowing fast in another direction.

Since modern journalists are reluctant to investigate any flow of facts which counter current narratives they worship for all the wrong reasons, Undercurrent Affairs created its own pseudo scribes to do their work for them for all the right reasons. If most main stream media journalists spend all their time telling stories that cover up agendas, the field is left clear for our curious contributors to investigate issues, uncover agendas and post them incognito behind pseudo scribes, and have a laugh while they’re doing it. Undercurrent Affairs seeks to enlighten, inform, entertain and offend. But mostly to entertain.