How to Make a Speech - By Shadow of the Lotus

Shadow of the Lotus is a pretty cool dude.  I say that because it's true and not because the first paragraph of his guest article got me all hot and bothered.  Definitely not the latter.

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Hello all of you out there; I just got out of the shower and so I’m typing this only wearing a towel. Luckily for me, none of you can see this. Unluckily for you, NONE OF YOU CAN SEE THIS. What sculpted abs of absolute might or the absolutely hunkalicious way my hair falls against my bare skin can not be properly appreciated in words. You, fair readers, can only attempt to savor the absolute raw sex appeal that sits before you, typing away for your enjoyment. What I’m here to teach you deprived souls of the internet is how to give a speech. There are four central concepts you need to follow in forming and giving a speech and I am here to enlighten you with them. One word of advice, it’s best to reread each section once or twice after reading it or else you won’t really appreciate what’s going on; trust me.


1) Open your speech with a bang / sex appeal

Now, this may sound obvious to anyone who has ever had any success in doing anything, but you really need to set yourself up with a good first impression. I imagine the only reason you are continuing to read this at this point is because of how damn sexy that introduction was. What you say doesn’t even need to be related at all to what you’re about to talk about. More than likely, no one actually cares why you’re here to speak. There are very few instances in which one actually WANTS to hear a speech and I’d say 9 out of 10 times the speech is being forced on people. Can you remember back to high school and how you were called out of class to listen to some speaker talk about the horrors of whatever was determined evil for the day? I bet you can remember being called out to go to such speeches, but I bet you can’t remember a single one of them. I think this is best represented by one of the most famous of all contemporary speeches; Star Wars. George Lucas is a master of the speech medium (seriously, is there any better dialogue out there than Star Wars?) but where he really soars is with his openings. The opening of “A new hope” absolutely brings home the point of sex appeal.

Note: I’d tap that ass

2) Gain the audience’s pity

One of the surest ways of delivering a successful speech is to gain the audience’s pity. Competency is no match when compared to the absolute power of pity. I want all of you reading this to imagine that superman was coming to your school to give you a speech on why drugs are wrong. Now, all of you still awake, I want you to instead imagine an injured kitten is coming to your school to give you a speech on why drugs are bad. I have just helped every drug user reading this article quit drugs. Also, there is no shame in using pity as a way to win over an audience. Although all of those high school speeches absolutely failed to bring home the bacon, I bet if any of you did remember a speech from high school it was because the speaker who was given it used the power of pity. Some of us have a natural gift at pity such as being disabled in some fashion. However, the best part of pity is that you can fake it. Historical figures have long known that pity can make or break a speech. For example, just looks at Pericles. He is well known for his famous speech to the Athenians as to why they must continue to hold strong against the Spartans in the Peloponnesian war. The primary means by which Pericles was able to convince everyone to do such a stupid thing as oppose the Spartans was because he had their pity. Pericles had a horrible speech impediment (actually true). It also helped that Pericles followed rule 1 and had massive sex appeal.

Note: Pericles as seen on his visits to the Russian monarchy.

3) Show them that they’re stupid

This step should be the easiest of all for anyone to follow as it involves presenting reality to your audience. If you’re unable to do this step, you’re an idiot and should just stop reading right now; although I’m curious how you were able to read up to this point. The entire point of a speech is to educate the audience and there really isn’t a point in giving a speech if your audience is intelligent. To follow up on this point, you don’t have to worry about the audience being insulted either as they are there to learn. Occasionally you might find an intelligent audience member. However, you don’t have to worry about intelligent audience members for the most part as natural selection encourages stupid audiences; any smart audience member will have fled through an exit unless a) they are being forced to stay, b) the speaker is absolutely sexy, or c) they pity the speaker. In case this point isn’t sticking to you morons out there, I’ll present an example to prove my case. I imagine most of your idiots have no idea about the caste system in India; that’s ok as I’m here to teach you and I have pictures.

Here is how the caste system works.

Now, most of you probably understand how caste works in India, right? Well, I want you to check out this second picture now.

 

Wow, you guys are so stupid. I can’t believe you thought that first picture was all there was to caste divisions. Honestly, you are just so lucky I’m here to explain things for you. How stupid do you have to be to believe that first picture there.

By now, you’ve probably figured out you know nothing about how caste actually works in India. I hope I have illustrated my point.

4) Repeat what you said before

Hopefully the majority of you have read what I’ve typed so far once or twice. I did kind of suggest that anyone reading this article do as much and if you haven’t done so yet, I’ll give you time to do so.

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Ok? So, one of the most important things to follow in a speech is repetition. Without repetition, your audience will have trouble remembering what you said earlier. This is particularly important when it comes to laying out the general ideas of your speech. Unless you are some sex god like myself, your audience will likely drift off while you give your speech. Your speech is boring and no one really cares what you have to say no matter how pitiful you are. Their minds will instead focus on more interesting elements of their day but they will eventually come back to the noise you’re producing. If you explain what your speech is going to consist of before telling them what your speech consists of and then end on reviewing what your speech consisted of, there is a decent chance the audience will hear one of the three times you just gave your speech. This is particularly important when it comes to laying out the general ideas of your speech. Also, it’s more than likely that your audience will pay attention twice out of the three times you give your speech. Making them hear the same speech multiple times will remind them of their stupidity. This is particularly important when it comes to laying out the general ideas of your speech. If your audience isn’t feeling stupid at the start of the speech, you’ve basically wasted everyone’s time.

Well, I hope I was able to help some of you out there in giving better speeches. I hope you all have a wonderful day; I’ll be seeing you.

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He's not kidding.  He will fucking watch you through your windows.