🧬 Out of Control Fellas
How NAFO Fellas and Memes Replicate Like Life Itself (courtesy Kevin Kelly)
“As we make our machines and institutions more complex, we have to make them more biological.”
— Kevin Kelly, Out of Control
In the NAFOverse, nothing is sacred except the dog, the bonk, and the meme. But dig a little deeper into the memes and you’ll find something astonishing: they’re alive. Not in a metaphorical sense — in a Kevin Kelly sense.
One of my favourite books is by Kevin Kelly (exec editor of Wired), written in 1994, Out of Control predicted that the most powerful systems of the future wouldn’t be rigid machines or hierarchical institutions, but organic, adaptive swarms — things that grow, reproduce, and evolve. Sounds weird? Now look at NAFO’s two biological propaganda diagrams.
🧬 Meme 1: Fella Fission
Concept: A parody of binary cell division (mitosis), but applied to NAFO account replication.
Damaged brain? No problem. Just divide the spite, share the limited cognition, and double the firepower.
The “spite membrane” is both a joke and an accurate descriptor of what drives much of online resistance: righteous pettiness weaponised for good.
This is pure stigmergic reproduction. No need for hierarchy. Just enough cognitive material to tweet, dunk, and ratio. Life finds a way.
“Out of nothing but parts, a great river of self-organising vitality flows.”
— Kevin Kelly,
This is literally it. The NAFO network survives bans and suspensions by going full biology: split, replicate, repeat. Twitter(X) moderation systems are built to stop trolls, not organisms.
🌱 Meme 2: 4-Step Meme Process
Concept: A step-by-step guide to meme propagation, disguised as plant care but ending in brain damage (a sacred NAFO rite).
Step 1–3 mirror biological cultivation: seeding, nourishing, and incubation.
Step 4 reveals the secret sauce: you must fall over, sustain meme-induced brain damage, and then — and only then — are you truly NAFO.
This maps hilariously well onto evolutionary algorithms and neuroplastic meme culture.
“The surest way to grow a smart machine is to evolve it.”
— Kevin Kelly
NAFO memes don’t emerge fully formed — they grow through feedback, chaos, and public humiliation of their creators. Each success is layered on a pile of failed posts, all part of the adaptive process.
🎯 So What Are We Looking At?
Both memes treat NAFO activity as biological process:
Fella accounts reproduce like cells.
Memes evolve like plants (with self-inflicted trauma as fertiliser).
Intelligence isn’t centralised — it’s emergent from the chaos.
And that’s exactly Kevin Kelly’s thesis:
“The central act of natural creation is to generate whole systems. Systems that are self-sustaining, systems that evolve, and systems that learn and adapt.”
— Out of Control, Introduction, p. 3 (1994 edition)“In the future, the most useful machines will not just do tasks but will design their own tasks, improve themselves, and adapt to our changing needs.” (paraphrased from themes in Chapter 3: The Rise of the Neo-biological Civilization)
NAFO is not a group. It’s an ecosystem.
And these memes are the user's manual for how it evolves:
Don’t wait. Act. Swarms don’t hold strategy meetings.
Don’t seek credit. The vibe is collective.
Laugh, then strike. Humor is armour and ammo.
Adapt faster than they lie. Reflex beats doctrine.
Be weird, be many. Disinfo hates unpredictability.
Thanks. Kev - you’re a fella
