We would like to formally reject the idea that this began as a panel discussion at Evil Expo. Clearly, only Villains would know what goes on at that event, and surely The Dark Lord is basically some kind of Disney hero and wouldn’t know anything about all that stuff.
Trust us.
And so, we present some opening thoughts on…
Monetizing The End Of The World – with Jeff Mach.
Not everybody wants to rule the world. Some Villains want to remove it from the Cosmos altogether. It’s one of the most frequent objectives of Villains of every stripe. But many fail to ask the really important question: How do you make money doing that?
Sure, there could be assorted moral and ethical qualms—yes, even for Villains—about destroying everything.
But obviously, the bigger problem right now is copyright infringement on the part of all those other weirdos. I mean, where do they get off trying to crush a place which is rightfully ours to disintegrate?
Admittedly, vaporizing the planet is emotionally satisfying, especially if you have the wherewithal to be standing on a different planet when it happens. But this is more than about just your feelings. After all, in the end, you’re going to need to walk away with some cash in your pockets. Transdimensional escape portals don’t come cheap, and besides, why accomplish something like total annihilation of the Earth if you’re just going to have to show up at your day job in the morning? Besides, if your day job was ON Earth, you’re probably fired now anyway.
If you haven’t thought this through, you really should. Blowing up the world, and yourself with it, is much easier; but it’s vastly less cathartic than you’d imagine. Trust us on this. It might be wholly satisfying, and a fitting way to go, but do you really want to risk spending the last thirty seconds of this incarnation in self-doubt? As in: “Actually, I know quite a lot of fundamentally good, kind people who are going to be quite relieved by all this, and I hate that!”
No, you have some kind of out, right? Like, you’ll end “The world as we know it”, but not the entire world, eh? Decimate the Multiverse through Zombies or Weather Control, and live like a King/Queen/Imperial Being in your castle/fortress/undersea lair, right?
…Right?
So how do you make this work?
How do you fund all this? How do you make this a viable business enterprise?
Do you sell t-shirts saying “I Was At The End Of The World, And All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt And Also Radiation Poisoning”?
Do you ransom the world? If so, how? There’s not a world government; there’s the United Nations, but if you think they’re going to agree to give you a hundred zillion dollars before your Doomsday Clock goes off, you’re in the wrong line of work. Do you unite the world so that it can pay you? But then you’re facing a united world, which is a much worse enemy than a divided one.
And if you do make money, where do you live?
Like I said before – it’s all a bit silly if you’re doing YOURSELF in. If you aren’t, then what’s your plan for maintaining the standard of living befitting your Villainous status? Do you have to factor in the expenses of a rocket ship to get you to a different solar system? Do you possibly mean this metaphorically, as in “The end of the world as everyone else knows it, and the beginning of my villainous reign”? That’s cool and all, but have you considered how much of a hassle it is to try to tell seven billion people what to do?
If we’re going to end the world, then we need to have ourselves a talk about how we’re going to make a profit on it. After all, if you don’t have a good business model, you’re likely to go broke, and just think of how the heroes will laugh. “So after she conquered the globe, she defaulted on her student loans, and ended up hiding on a remote island somewhere!” It’s not a good look.
This is a conversation we’ll discuss in detail as the days and weeks go by, unless, obviously, someone else ends the World first, which will make this all moot. But for now, it’s not a bad idea to get some of these thoughts rattling around in your head, and letting the good ol’ subconscious get to work on this stuff. Some of the most effective death rays started as nothing more than just a couple of bucks, a dream, and the stolen life-essences of a few trillian sentient beings.
You got this, Monsters.
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Come to Evil Expo! We’ll teach you the IMPORTANT villainy stuff! And sometimes make you laugh and/or cry, depending.
“I told my therapist I was having nightmares about nuclear explosions. He said, ‘Don’t worry it’s not the end of the world.’”
-Jay London
