the totally insane true story behind the 1970s film and book Sybil

it's always been hard to tell where the line gets drawn, with Richard and his brother, between noise-trolling/idea-jazz and actual convictions. If you look at SCG song titles it's like an encyclopedia of crank terms and there have been some onstage rants that were explicitly truther. SRB is a practitioner/scholar of magickq, that's def not a tongue in cheek thing, I dunno...

yeah honestly i'm not entirely sure what to think. i guess i would rather think of myself as a curious tourist of that land but not a permanent resident and/or taxpayer. an observer but not a participant.

i maintain that the james woods movie is pretty entertaining, if not only as a historical curio of some pretty different times that weren't really that long ago/have been within my lifetime.

One man has taken it upon himself to catalog all of the theories at SandyHookHoax.com. By way of credentials, creator Jay Johnson explains: “I am the only person in the world to solve LOST,” he writes (yes, the TV show).

^^ From one of the linked articles

Does this guy think life is like a video game where if you learn how to spot objects that look out of place, you can find all the clues to solve the case? It's like what's behind the PUA stuff, too--that with the right set of words and gestures you can control outcomes/other people. To me it signifies a need to have the "right answer" in order to rule out chance or uncertainty, and an inability to tolerate open-endedness or a variety of events or anything being unknown. That's probably a form of mental illness somehow or maybe just being ill-adjusted to life in our time (arguably a lot of overlap there).

I don't see this as being the same impulses that generated the SRA scare tho.

I guess I'm looking at the need to point fingers and assign blame for things that may not even be true, ie witch hunting. I don't really care how people organize their goals in life, however weird they are. It's the blaming and paranoia that interest me, I guess.

Like someone can bust PUA moves til they pass out, but it's not going to affect my life (it's also not going to happen to me, but w/e). HOWEVER - Someone decides that I'm a satan-worshipping serial rapist because I work at a school with a day care and don't have kids...that's an entirely different thing I think.

To me it signifies a need to have the "right answer" in order to rule out chance or uncertainty, and an inability to tolerate open-endedness or a variety of events or anything being unknown. That's probably a form of mental illness somehow or maybe just being ill-adjusted to life in our time (arguably a lot of overlap there).

This mechanism comes in a variety of strength levels and IMO is at the root of at least 85% of the things I see people say on the internet and probably a hefty chunk of the opinions people express irl too. THE modern intellectual vice IMO.

xp Hm yes. I was thinking of it from the point of view of the believer--that if they notice all the right cues and put them together they can have secret knowledge of something that will empower them to blame a diabolical party for bad things happening--instead of ever having to accept that PEOPLE DO BAD THINGS FOR UNKNOWABLE REASONS/BAD THINGS HAPPEN or that the causes are myriad and complex and require sweeping social actions to change. It's so much more exciting to be the privileged holder of secret knowledge about the government, a nice big target that doesn't require you to do anything about it except be comfortably outraged.

I'm having some trouble connecting that to the whole culture of SRA accusations maybe just because they seem SO FAR OUT to me and I can't get around the religious part.

Sounds like what you're both talking about can be described as a potent and toxic cocktail of arrogance and ignorance.

I am trying to say that combine that with political/legislative power and THAT is what scares me.

plus the major active ingredient FEAR

xpost

xp Arrogance and ignorance, yes, perfectly out.

i feel like we basically have a whole political party devoted to harvesting this energy today though, i mean legislation does get written based on OMG Shariah Law!!! etc. They have just abandoned the Satan theme bc it is too quaint now.

PUT

God damn Apple autocorrecting what I type to try and frustrate and silence me well IT WILL NOT WORK I tell you. #appletruth

i feel like we basically have a whole political party devoted to harvesting this energy today though, i mean legislation does get written based on OMG Shariah Law!!! etc. They have just abandoned the Satan theme bc it is too quaint now.
Scariest people next door imo

That's just me, though. I can see how other people wouldn't be as afraid of them.

i guess that what makes me apoplectically angry is the thought of basically sane if radically cynical ppl deliberately preying on this in order to get viewers/clicks/clout. I know G Beck is no longer on FOX but his little tutorials on there were such unbelievably blatant schizotypic-baiting it made me want to never stop vomiting. And he is IMO a sane person, doing untold damage to ppl's personal lives because he can, and it's easy, and it's I guess fun.

xpost

the ppl next door are fucking terrifying!

Man that salon thing has me in the worst mood, sorry guys

Yes, I agree. I'm sorry for bringing it up. This is what I do. I make everyone feel worse! Working on that.

Does anyone want to join my nuclear disarmament club it's really fun?!

This is what I do. I make everyone feel worse!

That is not true.

No I know, it's just one of several things I do.
Ask my parents!

...

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8022/7377723998_c0ce9118e5_c.jpg

hahaha awww, ILU, LL

:)
anything to scrub my brain and yours from thinking about how doomed we all are

LL don't feel guilty, I had already seen it b/c DJP linked it from facebook. EVIL EVIL DJP who makes everyone feel bad

I make everyone feel worse!

Don't be a total loon. DJP, otoh....

plus the major active ingredient FEAR

NOW WITH 30% MORE FEAR, ABSOLUTELY FREE

PHENYLKETONURICS: This product contains Fear

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e6/FearTheRecord.jpg

A couple of famous UK cases here which seem in retrospect to be part of the same general climate of SRA-related hysteria prevalent at the time.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2006/jan/12/childrensservices.uknews
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Ronaldsay_child_abuse_scandal

I saw a documentary on the Orkney case a few years ago. The most shocking thing was the complete refusal of the social workers concerned to accept they could ever have been wrong, even in the face of damning evidence to the contrary.

The objects seized during the raids were later returned; they included a videotape of the TV show Blackadder, a detective novel by Ngaio Marsh, and a model aeroplane made by one of the children from two pieces of wood, which was identified by social workers as a "wooden cross". The minister was asked to sign for the return of "three masks, two hoods, one black cloak", but refused to sign until the inventory was altered to "three nativity masks, two academic hoods, one priest's robe".

Thanks, I never heard of those. The same infernal procession, again and again, so fucking sad. Gonna see if I can find that BBC docu mentioned in the wiki link.

Participants itt will be excited for this new release (I know I am):

http://www.amazon.com/Going-Clear-Scientology-Hollywood-Prison/dp/0307700666

LL have you seen the documentary Witch Hunt, about Kern County? I was just reading about it and wondered if you'd seen it

that doc is REALLY good - super sad and awful, though

I just started watching

I saw that. It was on NF streaming, at least as of last year sometime. Very depressing.

Just came across these on Amazon; how are they?

Folk Devils and Moral Panics (Routledge Classics) by Stanley Cohen
Moral Panics: The Social Construction of Deviance by Erich Goode

Re: Kern Cty - I have not! If it is still on netflix, I most definitely will. (But if JL finds it "very" depressing, it must be pretty bad.)

Haven't read either of those books either. Sorry! I have read Charles McKay's Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds though -- if either of these books contain more contemporary examples, I'd add them to the reading queue.

Yeah you need to see Witch Hunt

I'm almost through it - it's just v sad hearing the families talk about their kids being taken from them. hearing their own firsthand accounts, patents & kids is really fascinating & sad & heartbreaking that it ever happened

I dunno that I found it any more depressing than any of the other reading that I've done, but it's more that it puts faces and lives to those stories, which I think is kind of good, overall.

In other news (yes I'm bored and trawling youtube) -- I found an old BBC (? I think? It seems like a BBC joint) doc called In Satan's Name about satanists and ritual abuse and mpd - it's pretty great.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4hy6BIWHpo

I also just discovered that the Ritual Abuse Taskforce still exists. STILL EXISTS

maybe they've changed their focus from satan

oh but there's this (sorry I'll stop)

h t t p://ritualabuse.u s/ritualabuse/articles/mcmartin-preschool-case-what-really-happened-and-the-coverup/

^^^ that's worth a read, lemme tell ya

xxpost that is a recurring theme-- the people who made a creed out of this shit are largely still sticking to their story today.

yeah, that's for sure -- it was so deeply a part of their reason for existing professionally and they banked everything on it, so goddammit, they're sticking to it

it's just so unconscionable to me, I don't know how they lie straight in bed at night

OTM. And yet, to recant something on that level is basically like... I dunno, I'd have to go study zen for the rest of my life. Ego defense is an amazing powerful thing

OTM

Root cause of many societal ills.

And all arguments on the internet.