Interesting in this context is completely divorced from morally good/bad. Could be any group from any area at any time in history. I’ll start with a few, followers of the cult of pythagoras, contemporary black Hebrew Israelites, antiracist skinheads and the Amish (neo-luddites in general). Don’t be racist or a prick to other people discussing.
The benedryl abusers. https://www.reddit.com/r/DPH/
I can only assume these people can’t get their hands on any other kind of high and are desperate. After a certain amount you start seeing spiders.
The Gadget Cult worships a 90s cartoon mouse
It’s not too interesting but there is a subreddit full of people who apply LLMs to do physics research. The place itself can be rather unhinged, but every week or so someone posts about how they have uncovered a groundbreaking theory of the universe. Such posts are so abstracted as to be disagreeable to the rest of this community. They are the writings of a mind turned in upon itself, an idea several reflections deep in a fun house mirror.
I (LLM hater, non-physicist) use this community to find cool science-ish sounding words for my sci-fi worldbuilding.
Link?
Appears to be https://www.reddit.com/r/LLMPhysics/
Nice stuff
You can’t just say this and not drop the name
I follow paranormal/UFO/ghost/Milab/conspiracy literature. I collect books by these authors and I like to follow individuals on their career trajectory though the subject matter. I’m more interested in the people and the amount and rate that they deviate from the mainstream.
I’ve noticed that their views and books tend to get more fringe and extreme the further they go on their career, which isn’t too surprising, but what surprised me more was that there was less infighting than I expected, and a surprising groupthink product where all their ideas come together.
How do you reconcile aliens and bigfoot, witches, ghosts, and automatic writing, loch Ness monster, time slips and self-mummifying monks, tulpas, poltergeists and UFOs, cattle abduction and missing persons, Jewish space lasers and fae folk, changelings and vaccine mind control? It seemed like many of these were exclusive OR concepts?
They all seem to come together under one porous, unifying theory of everything supernatural. There’s no real guidelines, the whole raft of authors are just continually “yes, and”-ing each other into this vast soupy mass of theories which, if I had to put a label on it, boils down to transdimensional demonology.
It’s like they all sort of figured out that infighting is not so profitable, and so they are practicing academic radical acceptance without any real guiding force.
That’s my take-away, anyway.
The Free Zone folks.
Basically, they’re Scientologist Lutherans. They love the teachings of Scientology and the works of L. Ron Hubbard. They’re fully onboard with all the wacky Scientologist beliefs and practices. But they think the church itself is hopelessly corrupt and shouldn’t be followed. They believe everyone should be able to read about Xenu without having to pay the church a bunch of money.
online, stumbled upon chronic lyme community at least on 2 different forums(i believed i had lyme one time as i had encountered with a tick years before, until i realized most of them had some sort mental issue going on) because i was suffering from some unusual neurological conditions, which lyme may cause.
they believe lyme isnt curable according to them and can explain any range of symptoms, even if its not related to lyme. plus they believe it is endemic in other countries where lyme doesnt occur. and any tick species can carry it. like they believed every skin rash that may look like a bullyesys as a sign of lyme.
they also ended up harassing and issuing death threat against the ACTUAL infectious disease specialist who discovered lyme, because he was contradicting chronic lyme believers. and mostly its midwestern white women who believes this stuff. now to that end, theres a whole industry apparently furthering the delusions. now draws in all sorts of people.
Lyme doctors, naturopaths will try to prey on people by convincing them to take a lyme specific test from a well known questionable company that makes these blood tests. and then they have the LYME mds prescribe them actual Long term antibiotics, months or years on it. they believe the side effects is causing is treating the “chronic lyme” symptoms. at the same time they also take supplements “extraction from plants” as supplemental treatment, again it causes unknown side effects, so they think its treating it. they are getting constant thrush infections, from the ANTIBIOTICS. and the lyme mds, also dont take insurance, red flag here. thier family members have reported, some of them suffered some permanent neurological damage from taking antibiotics for too long, or some wierd plant supplement. and guess which politics they side with.(and this was pre trumps 1st term). very dangerous as it involves MDs preying on people, prescribing them actual meds to things they may not have. and furthering the delusions of “chronic lyme” people.
also any attempt to confront or question chronic lyme will draw thier ire.
basically health conspiracy.
It’s chronic fatigue syndrome, which can be triggered by actual Lyme, but hangs around after whatever illness has been cleared from the body. They mistakenly think it’s still a bacteria in there. The antibiotics help their symptoms because a broad range of antibiotics act as a strong anti inflammatory in ways current NSAIDs don’t, so it feels like it makes them better. The bladder pain community I’m in deals with the same crap of people thinking they have a permanent ‘embedded infection’ and there are people who take antibiotics for years.
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Long Covid is real, though. Probably some autoimmune shit going on. Women are notoriously ignored in medical studies and are more likely to have autoimmune disorders.
When no one helps you, you cling onto the first bullshit that make sense. And let me be clear on how there is absolutely no help for chronic, weird symptoms as a woman. You slowly just start to lose your mind as your life falls apart and no real doctor will offer anything but vitamin D and antidepressants. (It was endometriosis. I had undiagnosed endometriosis for 20 years no one gave a shit about).
Wait. Is chronic Lyme not actually a thing? There are quite a few long/chronic types of things I’m aware of that are quite real, but also still not super well understood. I assumed Lyme was in there with those. Real, but more of a side-side-effect of a disease that breaks something in weird ways for different people.
It’s just chronic fatigue syndrome.
In the early days of the Internet - mid-90s or so - my buddy happened upon a community of “gainers” online. They are apparently gay men into feeding each other and being obese. Also typically opposed to body hair.
Early internet was weird. I found a forum where gay men would write public, erotic love letters detailing their willingness to contract, or transmit HIV to each other on purpose. Like, viscerally describing giving or getting each other’s “pozzie” (HIV-positive status)
I get that kinks exist but this seems dangerous
Yikes! I think I’d rather be a gainer.
Another extremely odd group to pop out of the gay community? Bug chasers.
Yikes! I think I’d rather be a gainer.
Interesting that one of the more popular weather forecasting sites is named after a terrorist group
I’ve been using WU for probably 15 years. It’s been one of the most consistent weather sites and apps as far as decent quantity and quality of data. I had completely forgotten about the terrorist group with the same name. Now I’ll never be able to unsee it.
Owned by IBM now.
Just an fyi the black Hebrew Israelites have a history of some pretty problematic beliefs and history. The Southern poverty law center (they keep track of hate groups in the U.S.) have a write up on them.
Oh I know that’s why I made the point of morally good/bad not being part of the equation. Just interesting. I saw some CRAZY videos of them in public. So, I looked into their general ideas and beliefs. They are like half the reason I made the thread.
The word interesting is doing a lot of work here.
On one hand flat earthers are very interesting. Stupid the stupidest but interesting.
On the other hand it’d be better if there were no flat earthers at all for them to be interesting in the first place.
Pretty much. In terms of “harmless” interesting? Maybe hobby biking? It started as a parody of hobby horsing, which is already a hilariously cringey thing.
For the uninitiated, hobby horsing is when people run around on foot completing tiny horse agility courses, while holding a toy broomstick horse between their legs. One of these:
It’s basically what happens when horse girls don’t have horse girl money. And no, I’m not making this up:
Hobby biking started as a parody of that. They got rid of most of a BMX bike, only keeping the front wheel and handlebars. They don full BMX gear. Full helmet, hard plate pads, riding boots, etc… Then they run through BMX and mountain bike courses on foot, while pushing this wheel (or sometimes even just the front handlebars without a wheel) along in front of them.
There is also the natural offshoot, hobby moto. Where people take modified motocross bike frames, and carry them through dirtbike courses:
I don’t know what’s more funny the content of your comment or the fact that you put in such a massive effort to illustrate your point.
Either way thank you! I woke up to this and it put me in a better mood!
Well, someone has to fight the globalist agenda
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jäger_Movement was a Finnish political movement whose aim was to liberate the Grand Duchy of Finland from the Russian Empire. It grew into a trained military battalion and formed a core of the White army in the Finnish Civil War.
One of the biggest reasons why Finland has been an independent country for 109 years.
The Diggers’ beliefs were informed by Winstanley’s writings which envisioned an ecological interrelationship between humans and nature, acknowledging the inherent connections between people and their surroundings; Winstanley declared that “true freedom lies where a man receives his nourishment and preservation, and that is in the use of the earth”.[7] With this the Diggers sought to establish a communistic utopia.[8]
The True Levellers advocated for an early form of public health insurance and communal ownership in opposition to individual ownership.
bro HELL YEAH
Also the Levellers! Very cool group of people. Can’t write about it now bc dying phone but look them up!
The political faction not the band although the band is great too
The Luddites were a labour movement with really admirable goals. They were only anti technology because it was being used to screw over textile workers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite
Yea, they were an example of early anti-capitalist organization. Their biggest weakness was identifying the means of production as their enemy, not the owners of capital themselves, which became a valuable lesson for future organizers.
They weren’t even really anti technology - breaking the tech was the means available to them that worked. Protesting and petitioning didn’t get them anywhere, so they decided on direct action to make it hurt the capitalists in the only place they care about. That meant smashing looms and carders and everything else, because those were incredibly expensive.
That meant smashing looms and carders and everything else, because those were incredibly expensive.
Like data centers and ram are
Oh that’s interesting! I had a different internal definition of the term. Thanks for sharing!
Here’s an excellent recent book on the topic. https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/brian-merchant/blood-in-the-machine/9780316487740/
Margaret Killjoy did a great couple of episodes on them as well
Subcultures among subcultures have existed for as long as humans in their infinite creativity existed.
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Babyfurs and Diaper Lover Furries-They focus on regression. And they really love diapers.
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Densha Otaku - They love photographing trains. They also get extremely violent when you ruin their shot of trains.
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Cyberdeck Builders- They build retro computers with 80s SciFi aesthetic and take things too far… Using or even building hardware to mimic timigs exactly like they behaved in 70s.
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Grandmacore - People obsessed with grandma aesthetics. Very. Very. Obsessed.
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Swedish Raggare - American 1950s greaser culture filtered through rural Sweden and dialled to 11.
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Sapeurs - Rural Kinshasa men spend 1000s of dollars, sometimes sacrificing rent and food, to buy high end designer shit from Europe. They walk through dirt roads dressed like 19th century French dandies.
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Otherkin & Therians - They think they aren’t humans or at least partially non humans.
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Birds aren’t real- They think birds aren’t real. And that they are all robots, drones sent by CIA or other secretive gangs.
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Chronological Revisionists - Popularised by a German historian named Heribert Illig, followers of the Phantom Time Hypothesis believe that the Early Middle Ages (specifically 614–911 AD) never actually happened. They claim that Holy Roman Emperor Otto III and Pope Sylvester II completely fabricated three centuries of history, including the entire existence of Emperor Charlemagne, just so Otto could rule during the monumental year 1000 AD. According to them, we are actually living in the early 1700s.
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The Tartaria - They believe that a technologically advanced, global utopian empire called Tartaria existed until the late 1800s. This empire supposedly used the domes and spires on old buildings (like world’s fair pavilions or old European castles) to pull free, wireless electromagnetic energy straight from the ether. They believe a massive, worldwide “Mud Flood” wiped them out, and modern history was rewritten to hide the existence of free energy.
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Deros Believers - Shaver claimed that humanity used to share Earth with an ancient, advanced race. When the sun started emitting toxic radiation, the advanced race fled the planet, leaving behind their underground cities. According to Shaver, these caves are now inhabited by Deros (Detrimental Robots)—degenerate, sadistic humanoids who use the abandoned ancient “ray technology” to project voices into the minds of surface-dwellers, cause freak accidents, and steal our thoughts.
There are a few more… But I’m too bored to type them here.
As a psych nurse stealing thoughts is a symptom I’ve always struggled to comprehend. It happens at the right frequency that I’m sure it’s real (often enough in different people, but not often enough that they would have met to copy each other). But it’s also such a bizarre concept that I can’t imagine perceiving it happen. I can picture being so scared you think you’re being watched all the time and plotted against, and I can imagine seeing, hearing, or even feeling and smelling things that aren’t there. But thought stealing has to be a completely surreal sensation that I am entirely unfamiliar with.
What do you mean “stealing”? I have never heard this before.
Patients say the government, their ex, etc are “stealing their thoughts.” Idk if it’s a disorganized way of saying they’re reading their thoughts. I do know thought blocking is a thing so maybe they’re attributing that to the process of having their mind read? Idk but thought withdrawal is a common enough delusion that it’s an option on some assessment forms. Idk either man the mere concept of the sensation is almost entirely alien to me as well.
The delusion that always baffles me is gang-stalking. For the ones who don’t know, there is a fairly common delusion where someone believes that they are being gang-stalked. They think random people going about their day-to-day lives are actually secretly working together to stalk the one person specifically. They think people band together and form massive gangs for various surveillance/stalking reasons. For fun/gossip, for government tracking, for secret shadow cabals keeping tabs on people, etc.
That person you pass during your walk, who politely nods as they pass you? They were an agent, and now everyone knows where you are.
That girl you see walking her dog past your house three times every day? She’s making a thrice-daily report on you.
That utility worker, doing maintenance on the power lines? They secretly installed an antenna to track when you’re at home.
That dude who edges past you in the grocery store, because you took up the entire goddamned aisle with your cart sitting in the very middle of the row while you stopped for three fucking minutes to look at three different brands of pickles? (Just pick one and get the fuck out of the way already!) Obviously he was trying to plant nanite tracking robots on your groceries, so the group can listen to your thoughts after you eat them.I think it’s due to the (extremely common) “I’m being watched” paranoia, without having a specific target to pin the blame on. Instead of that breaking the delusion and realizing that nobody specific is watching them, they simply pin the blame on everyone around them.
The even worse part is that if you simply search up “Gang stalking”, you’ll find the wiki article on it… But you’ll also find a bunch of websites made by deluded people, who legitimately believe they (and thousands of others around the world) are being gangstalked. They call themselves “targeted individuals” and it very quickly becomes a self-perpetuating delusion. Any attempts to break them out of it only serve to reinforce the delusion, because obviously you’re a gang-stalker sent to try and trick them.
Lol as if we need to watch you get groceries to plant our nanobots on them. They self-replicate and were present on all groceries 3 days after one waa casually dropped in your grocery store, which would have happened sometime during 2018/2019 timeframe, depending on how close our nearest gang members were to that store. We only supplant half their living expenses in return for spying on people who seem otherwise boring, so they need to work at least part time jobs (turns out that helps with the spying, so a bit of a bonus!) and also obviously need to spend a certain portion of their time spying, so it took about 7 months to deploy the nanobots to every grocery store and food market worldwide even with our extensive network.
And we don’t just listen to our targets’ thoughts. We steal them, or at least credit for them. Ever had a thought that you know came from somewhere but you can’t remember where it came from? It came from you but we steal the credit, or if we can’t (because too many people know about it already), we turn it into a new Mendella effect and make those people look crazy while we set up the credit for the replacement to go to us.
Bearenstein bears used to be known for the pun but we Mendella effected it so hard that everyone only talks about the ending being different and don’t even remember the pun while we rake in all that Barenstain bears money and street cred (which is surprisingly a lot for a children’s storybook multiverse where we haven’t even split the timeline yet with Brother Bear’s evil twin saga).
By the way, can you tell me where it was that a girl walked her dog by a location three times in one day? That’s sloppy and whoever it was requires additional training in avoiding raising suspicion. Or maybe it wasn’t one of our agents, though odds of that are pretty low, considering our gang makes up about 84% of the world’s population. Actually, nm, I’ll just do a quick search of our database for anyone who has walked their dog past the same house more than twice in one day… Oh nm, it was Sally Spyson, a member of the “we’re 84% of the world population, why do we still need to be so secretive instead of rubbing it in?” faction that deliberately leaves hints and opposes the evil “the secrecy is 84% of the fun in spying (other than the sex, drugs, and cool spy tools, of course)” faction.
I have a nephew whom I love very much, who suffers from paranoid schizophrenia. Whenever he has an episode I try to explain that nobody’s talking about him behind his back because people in general don’t give a shit about anyone but themselves and if they talk about anyone it’s only about themselves.
In other words of course, but still. We are not that important to others. So much so it is a real societal concern.
well the interesting thing is that it actually CAN happen, it’s just extremely rare and is almost always related to prejudice in some way (somebody non-white or a gay couple move to a conservative rural community) or domestic violence on the part of someone powerful enough to have lackeys (or peers, like a cop and their coworkers). The church of scientology has also been known to use gangstalking against people who speak out. But no the goverment isn’t stalking random people because they’re telepathic (my brother-in-law’s delusion).
Birds aren’t real is another joke that people starting taking seriously like flat Earth.
I remember when both were joke subreddits. Then it turns out that if you have enough people pretending ridiculous shit some of them will take it seriously.
The KKK has a similar origin story.
Ultimately, this is how Scientology started.
A pub bet, to a running joke, to a mass delusion we allow to continue because not doing so would subject the old world power structures (“religion”) that are still operating today to the same scrutiny.
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antiracist skinheads
I’ve read about these guys. Their take on it is that the skins started as a working class solidarity movement (the short hair is for safety while working on factory machinery) that got corrupted by nationalism and they have more in common with immigrant workers than with their own country’s capitalists.
Non-racist skinheads pre-date the racist ones.
Ska is a Jamacain music style that white working class British youth got into due to working and living alongside Jamaican immigrants, leading to mixing with punk to create 2 Tone.
The racists started to co-opt and taint the movement later on.
I am a bald white guy, I have this patch on both of my battle vests.
And fuck white power skinheads, and fuck nazi punks.
Nazi punks FUCK OFF!
I learned about them after using “skinhead” in a derogatory way to a music buff. That was the same conversation where I learned that ska is actually older than reggae, which is still wild to me.
I’ve looked into them too a while ago and the skinhead subculture is pretty interesting. I’m going off of memory but I’m pretty sure the subculture started in London in the 1960s. There were three big subcultures at the time in London, the posh upper class were “mods”, the lower class “rude boys” got their influences and style from Jamaican immigrants, and finally the “skinheads” were the middle class had their shaved heads and Doc Martens. The second wave of skinheads in the 70s and 80s in the UK and US were basically anti-punks. They were the punks who were mad about the commercialization of their culture and they shaved their mohawks, traded their battle jackets for flannels, and moved from punk music towards ska. And finally the third wave in the 80s and 90s were the racists who were getting tired of getting their teeth kicked in at punk shows. And since hating people for no reason doesn’t have a style or culture of its own, those shitbags (I would argue very successfully) stole the working class style of the skinheads
Similar is just actual punk culture in general
