Why beg when you can bestow? This extract from the ‘History’ section of See Through Network’s Wikipedia article, 2030 marks how and why zero-budget climate activists flipped from Oliver Twist to Tom Sawyer (NB: by then, Wikipedia had adopted the Network’s pioneering The Truth Lies narrative model*).
This article explains the See Through Network’s methodology, while demonstrating it.
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Origins of the Network’s Tom Sawyer Theory of Change
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Contemporary accounts by early See Through Network collaborators cite Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer as the foundation of the Network’s Theory of Change.
As early as the summer of 2021, a key collaborator wrote in her diary:
‘Another long strategy meeting. Must be the fifth time Tom bloody Sawyer has come up. Maybe if I read it they’d stop going on about it’ .(citation needed)
Incubation Phase Network methodology was guided more by literature and politics than mainstream management theory. Before the 2026 publication of the network’s Theory of Change, the Network’s strategy and external communications were largely driven by Mark Twain’s 1876 novel.
Interviewed in 2028 for the NHK news special「炭素排出削減」って何だ？ (Tanso haishutsu ttenanida?: What On Earth Is ‘Carbon Drawdown’), See Through Network Founder Robert Stern described his first encounter with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer as a child in London in the ‘60s and ‘70s:
‘Before the book got cancelled for its liberal use of what we now know as ‘the N-word’, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was widely taught as a children’s book. I suppose it was because the main character was a child and Brits found Twain’s transcription of Mississippi dialect quaint. But even as a kid I thought the novel was an profound and wise analysis of human psychology’.[90]
The chapter that formed the basis of the Network’s Theory of Change occurs at the start of the novel. Chapter 1 introduces Tom as a mischievous, quick-witted, but fundamentally decent charmer. Chapter 2. ‘Strong Temptations–Strategic Movements–The Innocents Beguiled’ showcases Tom’s intuitive grasp of the human psyche, and agile storytelling instincts.
It relates Tom’s masterful transformation of a punishment (whitewashing a long stretch of fencing) into a profitable enterprise (his friends end up paying Tom all their worldly goods for the privilege of taking a turn).
Tom employs reverse psychology and opportunistic storytelling to turn a:
net loss (loss of a morning’s freedom)
into a comprehensive gain (‘an apple core, a kite, a dead rat on a string, twelve marbles, part of a jews-harp, a piece of blue bottle-glass to look through, a spool cannon, a key that wouldn’t unlock anything, a fragment of chalk, a glass stopper of a decanter, a tin soldier, a couple of tadpoles, six fire-crackers, a kitten with only one eye, a brass door-knob, a dog-collar—but no dog—the handle of a knife, four pieces of orange-peel, and a dilapidated old window sash’).
By the end, Twain writes, ‘If he hadn’t run out of whitewash he would have bankrupted every boy in the village’.
Tom Sawyer Interpretations
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Economists and management theorists often cite Tom’s whitewashing trick as an example of irrational wealth transfer.[91] Literary critics tend to characterise Tom’s manipulation a ‘con trick’.[92]
Network strategists saw the former interpretation as uninteresting, and the latter as a misreading, observing: ‘There’s an important distinction between the kind of deception used by conjurers and the outright lying of fraudsters.[93]
The See Through Network’s interpretation is the result of its pragmatic ‘Outcomes, Not Motivations’ principle. The same approach underlies its The Truth Lies In Bedtime Stories podcast format, which provokes listeners to question why they sometimes care about ‘truth’, and sometimes don’t, without mentioned climate change.
Applied to Twain’s work, the Network asks readers to consider:
a) what would happen if the ‘truth’ were revealed
b) why anyone would want to ask
In a 2028 Reference News (参考消息: Cānkǎo Xiāoxī) profile, a Network Trustee references Twain’s Tom Sawyer character when asked to explain the difference between a fraudster and legitimate ‘storytelling’:
Con tricksters lie in order to win at someone else’s cost. Tom creates positive value from what appears to be a negative circumstance, ‘just’ by re-framing the same narrative in a fresh way. A fraudster requires someone to lose, but who loses by the end of Chapter 2? No one. Tom is a win-win engineer, a psychological alchemist (心理煉金術士) who creates emotional gold from base metals’. [94]
For the See Through Network, Tom Sawyer’s key lesson was not how to make money, but how Tom’s storytelling leaves all parties not only satisfied, but the heroes of their own narratives.
To challenge common accusations of being ‘manipulative’, the Network’s applied its other core principle of Radical transparency.
This took the form of links to detailed articles explaining the manipulations that only a tiny number of people were curious to read, including fake Wikipedia articles.
Tom Sawyer, game theory and the framing effect
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In turning a zero-sum game into a positive-sum, or win-win game, Tom – without recourse to outright lying – left everyone happy by the end of Chapter 2:
- Aunt Polly was delighted the fence was perfectly whitewashed and satisfied Tom had done his penance for skipping school.
- His friends were convinced they’d got good value for their payment.
- Tom was ‘rolling in wealth’
The mechanism by which Tom achieved this outcome was the Framing effect, ‘a cognitive bias where people’s decisions change depending on how options or statements are framed, even when they are logically identical’.
The framing effect is a widely used by advertisers, populists, cults and disinformation ‘trolls’, amongst others, to convince people to remain the hero of their own narratives while acting against their interests.
Tom’s own reflection on his triumph explains the framing effect as an expression of Reverse psychology: ‘he had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it—namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain’.
Twain, in his hyperbolic authorial persona, adds his adult gloss to Tom’s childish perspective. ‘If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. And this would help him to understand why constructing artificial flowers or performing on a tread-mill is work, while rolling ten-pins or climbing Mont Blanc is only amusement. There are wealthy gentlemen in England who drive four-horse passenger-coaches twenty or thirty miles on a daily line, in the summer, because the privilege costs them considerable money; but if they were offered wages for the service, that would turn it into work and then they would resign’.
The See Through Network’s own interpretation of the tale was from their perspective of zero-budget climate activists:
‘Tom’s whitewash triumph is a lesson in combating today’s greenwash and Big Oil disinformation. It demonstrates the power of framing, and of giving ordinary people better stories to make themselves the heroes of. Tom teaches us how to engineer win-win situations through framing and storytelling, rather than bribery or violence. Instead of framing climate action as a penance or act of sacrifice, why not make it aspirational, make people feel better about themselves, and keen to evangelise their narrative to others’.[95]
Tom Sawyer Approach and ‘C-Bomb’ Ratings
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From its 2021 inception, the See Through Network had used the Tom Sawyer approach in its public-facing outreach projects with C-Bomb ratings of 1 or 2 (i.e. those which ‘never’ or ‘barely’ mentioned triggering works like ‘climate’ or ‘carbon’).
Tom Sawyer approach is a defining feature of the Network’s Transparent Trojan Horse methodology to smuggle climate messaging into apparently unrelated content or activities, unlabelled with ‘triggering ‘green’ terminology that closed ears’.[96]
Tom Sawyer Approach in private negotiations
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During the See Through Network’s Incubation Phase, the Oliver Twist approach (qv) had proved ineffective in private negotiations.
Third parties, despite having requested meetings, were habituated to a power dynamic that placed themselves in the benefactor role, based on two erroneous presumptions:
- They were engaged in a zero-sum negotiation
- Any climate activist entity should therefore adopt a deferential stance
Consequently, third parties entered into meetings assuming they were negotiations in which they held leverage. The higher their status, the greater their delusion.
The Network didn’t need any money, but Age of Voluntary meant that third parties were accustomed to ‘green’ NGOs seeking funding, or greenwashing services pitching for their business.
This familiar power dynamic cast businesses as potential benefactors who were being ‘pitched to’ by supplicants, rather than potential early adopters of a free service designed to authenticate climate integrity.
Before the launch of the www.seethroughnetwork.org website, this problem was exacerbated by the need for the Network to preface any call to action with a long explanation of the Network’s complex and innovative methodology.
The launch of the See Through Network website obviated the need for protracted exposition, permitting the Network to foreground its ‘red lines’ much earlier.
Internal discussions summarised this new approach as ‘if you’re not serious about taking action to reduce carbon, let’s not waste time for both of us by pretending you do’.[97]
External Tom Sawyer Reaction
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Initial suggestions of a pivot from an ‘Oliver Twist’ supplicant stance to a ‘Tom-Sawyer’ bestower stance in private discussions were widely discussed with non-Network advisors and focus groups.
The Sawyer/Benefactor stance was consistent with its public-facing content, but external reaction to the Twist-Sawyer transition proposal was overwhelmingly negative.
The main criticism was that ‘important’ people who might be ‘valuable contacts’ might find it ‘offputting’, ‘confrontational’ or ‘uncomfortable’. [98]
Such critics were further alarmed when told triaging the vast majority of people and businesses who will not be first adopters was part of the point of the proposed pivot. One frustrated pivot proponent wrote in their diary:
‘We tried explaining that most of these ‘important’ people were in fact time-suckers, and every breath spent talking to them was a breath wasted. They loved the idea of the Tour de France challenge [asking business leaders if they were one of the 98% who follow rather than the 2% of leaders who could win the race] but were frit to actually try it in practice.’ [citation needed]
Most external opinions were that abandoning the familiar Oliver Twist stance would be damaging, and ‘blow all the goodwill the Network has acquired, and kill off hard-earned leads for good’.[99]
Internal Tom Sawyer Reaction
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Even within the Network, support for the Oliver Twist-Tom Sawyer pivot was patchy, with no clear consensus.
Most members acknowledged the logic of applying a consistent public and private methodology, but remained apprehensive at risking losing potential partners by offending them with what they saw as an ‘unnecessarily aggressive approach’. [100]
Objections echoed those of external advisors, fearing powerful people might perceive a Tom Sawyer approach as being perceived as ‘gratuitously confrontational, discourteous, arrogant or ‘cheeky’. [101]
Such concerns became acute when details of the ‘Tom Sawyer Spectrum’ (see below) emerged. Many intuitively rejected the hypotheses that:
- The Network’s target 2% were already receptive to the Network’s mission and projects, no matter how they are presented, so there was no risk of deterring them.
- Past experience had indicated most of the 98% of followers wouldn’t go first anyway, so there was nothing to lose if they were offended.
- A Tom Sawyer approach was more likely to nudge marginal Fast Followers into becoming First Adopters, precisely because it cast them in a higher-status role.
Pivot advocates theorised that the more intense the Tom Sawyer stance, the more effective it should be in expanding the target audience from 2%. They conjectured it could expand potential take-up up from 2% to 5+% of all businesses.
Network members familiar with the Challenger Model sales technique were more supportive.
The Challenger Model, a copyrighted sales technique, was designed for businesses constrained by operating for profit. Pivot supporters reasoned that similar techniques, based on out-of-copyright literary classics, were more appropriate for a zero-budget ecosystem, and were worth trying.
Proponents noted that advisors, internal or external, who’d endured the repeated failure of Oliver Twist meetings during the Incubation Period were much more likely to favour a switch to Tom Sawyer than those who hadn’t. ‘There was a clear divide. Those who’d sat through hours of meetings being patronised by men in suits who either didn’t understand, or want to understand that they need us more than we needed them, were less concerned about ‘losing’ them as potential partners.’ [101]
Tom Sawyer Taxonomy
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Based on internal and external consultation and feedback, the Network spent the autumn of 2025 developing a Tom Sawyer approach taxonomy. Five key features emerged:
- Leverage: from the start, frame the third party as supplicant, not benefactor.
- Compromise: any concessions from 1 to be framed as moving towards collegial, win-win collaboration, not as a ‘negotiation’.
- Criteria: immediately test proposed third-party collaboration against the See Through Goal. Summarily reject anything that falls short.
- Barter Assets: establish See Through’s negotiating assets up front, principally a) its expanding pool of eyeballs, b) Best Story (qv Fabulous Fables) and high-quality ‘free’ expertise.
- Payment Terms: Require up-front ‘payment’ when negotiating the barter terms of their access to 4 to demonstrate sincerity, avoid cheating, and save time.
Tom Sawyer Spectrum
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A basic 5-point spectrum emerged to define the degree of intensity with which this strategy was applied. From mildest to most intense:
- ‘Tom Lite’
- ‘Short Tom’
- ‘Standard Tom’
- ‘Tall Tom’
- ‘Extreme Tom’
As these categories were differentiated by a broad range of subtle and context-driven variations in vocabulary, body language, tone and register, the Network saw no value in developing further refinements.
Pivot proponents experimented with these variations on topics unrelated to carbon drawdown, such as domestic discussions about Christmas arrangements and parking fines.[citation needed]
Tom Sawyer Scoring System
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To objectively assess the success or failure of this new approach, before every experiment, Network analysts used two criteria to create specific Pre-Meeting Goals (PMGs):
- Variable: the predicted best-case offers a particular potential partner could make by the end of the meeting.
- Fixed: which of the See Through Network’s menu of carbon-reducing Calls to Action (CTAs) the potential partner was most likely to adopt.
Comparing PMGs to post-hoc outcomes, a score would be assigned as follows:
Negative score = damaged the Network’s reputation/‘blew’ a promising lead
0 = ended in zero commitment to even consider a single CTA.
1-3 = left door ajar to consider future CTA.
4-6 = agreed to consider one CTA
6-8 = promised to consider more than one CTA
10 = committed to all PMGs
[10+ = exceeded all PMGs]
Applied retrospectively to the last 4 years of meetings using the Oliver Twist approach, the average score hovered around 2.
The ‘December Experiments’
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In what became known as the See Through Network’s ‘December Experiments’, Tom Sawyer methodology was deployed to the first three third-party meetings to crop up in early December 2025.
By chance, the first three happened to cover all of the Network’s first-encounter scenarios:
- Scheduled video calls requested by third parties (in this case, a Chinese strategy, comms and marketing consultancy)
- Scheduled in-person meetings with third parties (in this case, a random attendee at a London social event)
- Unscheduled in-person meetings with third parties (in this case, a Member of Parliament with a background in sustainability who had been in regular contact)
(The Network had by 2025 largely abandoned initiating meetings with third parties, as it was no longer necessary).
Before each meeting, the Network predicted the ‘default’ outcome using Oliver Twist method (out of 10), based on past experience.
- Unsolicited video call/China: predicted ‘Oliver Twist’ score: 4
- Unsolicited face-to-face meeting/random attendee: predicted ‘Oliver Twist’ score: 1
- Solicited face-to-face meeting/MP. Predicted ‘Oliver Twist’ score: 3
In each case, the Network initiated discussions at ‘Standard Tom’, dynamically adjusting downwards to ‘Lite’ or upwards to ‘Extreme’ in real time, depending on the response.
The actual scores of the ‘December Experiments’, using Tom Sawyer approach (out of ten) and the final intensity deployed were:
- Unsolicited video call/China: outcome score 11. intensity applied Standard Tom.
- Unsolicited face-to-face meeting/random attendee:outcome score 6. intensity applied Extreme Tom.
- Solicited face-to-face meeting/MP: outcome score12. intensity applied Extreme Tom
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