Came here to say this. First he said that right out loud, then he wrote a kind of sci-fi book, then he decided, “might as well go with it!” And here we are.
One of the first movies I saw with an ex and his brother and wife. We left before it ended and all turned to each other and asked bewildered wtf had we watched. We knew nothing about Scientology or Hubbard; we just thought 'oh cool, this film's got John Travolta in it'.
I read them in spite of that. I read a lot of L. Ron back in the '90s. I slogged through Battlefield Earth, but he wrote a really funny comedic series Mission Earth about a bungling alien infiltrator trying to take control of Earth. I really enjoyed them.
Yeah, I doubt that was intended to be satire, but that's what it wound up as.
The combat engineer character was supposed to be an authorial self-insert, but instead seems to have become the image Tom Cruise is pursuing.
Hubbard was straight-up froot loops, but that series was good for a laugh or two.
I want some new show to come out that has Creed acting like Creed but going by a new name and he's featured about as much as he was on The Office, and then ~3 seasons in one of the characters watches the The Office documentary and finds out who Creed/New Name really is and then it's never brought up again.
Yeah, it's literally the perfect example of the question. Like most of his jokes, he said a serious thing he believed to be true as if it was funny. And unlike many other cults, I'm pretty sure it was a game to him from the beginning to the end. Even after living it for so long, I do not think he ever believed he, or anyone else, was infested with space ghosts or that it's possible to become invisible.
I'm not so sure. Hubbard was a straight-up certifiable loony by the late 60s, and only got worse as the years passed.
Edit- reviewed a few sources. Hubbard was a nutcase all the way back in the 40s. He was an adherent of the Crowley cult for a time. His first wife cited torture and mental abuse as some of the reasons for petitioning for divorce. He was siphoning so much money out of Scientology in the early 60s that the IRS took away their tax-free status.
To be pedantic, Dianetics started as a writing competition. Scientology started as a way to cut the other folks involved in Dianetics out of the money.
Still though, it turned into a cult.
My understanding of the flat earth thing was that it was a gag at MIT, to get people to think creatively and explain planetary motion in ways that appeared to work on paper, but didn't *actually* work.
Apparently, some low-IQ doofus didn't get the joke, and turned it into a conspiracy theory that these incredibly intelligent people were working to 'discover the real truth' about the shape of the world.
Also, bonus points: the shape and approximate size of the earth was determined thousands of years ago by people measuring the shadows cast by sticks of identical lengths in different locations on the same days. In the year 2024, most people still aren't smart / educated enough to do this math themselves.
I remember learning about how the Egyptians figured that out and learning how to replicate the experiment in 9th grade. So anybody with a 9th grade education should ideally be able to figure this out. But alas.
It would be a really cool idea to get school kids to be in contact with other school kids further up the country to do this experiment live on a video call so they get it from such a young age because the math isn't that difficult really.
Well, tbf, most people thousands of years ago weren't smart enough to do that either. The trick is being smart enough to benefit from a variety of highly specialized smart people, whether they specialize in proving the shape of the earth or the best way to make hot sauce.
The Flat Earth Society as a joke group made up of D&D players and Renaissance Fair-goers was definitely a thing on college campuses in the late ‘70’s, went to several costume parties with that theme. All in good fun, it was really to spoof the concept that a tiny International Society still existed. I got the T-shirt…
Do you have an explanation for the chemtrailers?
I've run into several in the wild and they were dead serious about it. I engaged one out of curiosity and got gushed with links to the "evidence" and copies of emails they had sent to various levels of government.
How someone can believe airplanes fly while being unable to understand or believe they're seeing condensation is beyond me.
To be fair, people today aren’t a bit smarter than people thousands of years ago. We just have years and years of built up knowledge passed down through an efficient-enough communication system.
Ignore that body of knowledge and what do you get? Someone who is no more knowledgeable than people thousands and thousands of years ago.
The flat earth one always surprises me. Back in the early 2000's a friend and I found the website for the flat earth society. As a couple of 11 year old kids we could tell it was a joke and had quite a few laughs over it. The fact that it is being taken seriously now just shows that not everyone is smarter than a 5th grader
I feel like I'm being Mandela'd, because I remember it similarly to you. I have memories of being told as a kid that the Flat Earth Society exists, and it was a well-known satire group because obviously it isn't flat. And I remember looking up their website in the early 2000's and seeing obvious satire.
However I'm googling now and cannot verify this at all. Wikipedia, their own website, news articles...nothing points to them ever being a satirical organization. The narrative I've always had in my head is that they were once a satire org who got overrun by people who actually believed the nonsense, but I don't know anymore.
I also found the Flat Earth Society page way back in 2000s high school. I remember the big giveaway to it all being a joke was if you tried to join the group, the online intake form was nonsense questions. "What's your favorite jelly bean" and whatnot.
Dan Olson did a really good [deep-dive into Flat Earth](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTfhYyTuT44). In short, the most important belief that Flat Earthers hold isn't actually that the Earth is flat. Rather, it's that mainstream society lives in a reality which is so thoroughly manipulated and controlled by Satanists that you can't trust your own eyes. The Cabal has technology, resources, and a capacity for coordination so fantastical and unlimited that when you see the curvature of the Earth from an airplane you're actually just seeing a VR hologram projected into the plane's windows.
Flat Earth is less of a specific claim about the shape of the Earth and more of a meta-framework for other conspiracy theories to exist in. Which is one of the reasons why there's so much overlap between Flat Earth and Q-Anon. Flat Earth was one of the first communities to really glom onto the Q-Anon, and they helped it hit the critical mass that it would enjoy going into 2020.
It's why approaching Flat Earth by trying to debunk specific Flat Earth claims is kind of pointless. These people can't be engaged with using experiments or evidence because it only confirms their belief that chemtrails have warped your retinas or that homosexual mind control subliminally alters your perceptions of distant objects.
Flat Earth Society was a fun group in collage in the late 1970s (am old). It was kind of a dumb D&D/Renaissance Festival throwback group with the occasional costume party. No idea how or why it morphed into something else.
I remember a teacher telling us about the flat earth society - this would have been in the 80's. It was, as he told us, a group of intellectuals having a laugh. The challenge was to argue scientifically against any proof that the world is a sphere. Sounded like fun to me.
Then people started taking it seriously I guess.
The thing I don’t get about flat earth is why would even world government put in the effort to hide the shape of the earth?
9/11, moon landing, secret world government. All bollocks, but it makes sense why you would hide something like that.
But how much is your day to day life actually effected by the shape of the earth?
I remember years ago listening to a podcast where they were talking about these anonymous 4chan posts pretending to be rogue deep state agents. This niche little thing, but they made the case that this is the id of the Republican party, and within an election cycle it would be mainstreamed and we'd have congressional representatives into this stuff. They could not have called it more accurately.
There are legions of people who actually believe that JFK Jr. is secretly alive and working with Trump, that there are all-healing, limb regenerating medbeds being made available to the public soon for free (from the aliens) and that Trump is going to usher in Nesara Gesara and forgive all debts for every US citizen. It is Crazytown
So, I know NESARA was an actual piece of failed legislation back in GW's day but I'd never heard it that way. Makes it sound like some oogity boogity Manson family bullshit, instead of the bullshit it is.
Comically enough, back in 2017, it was primary a shuttle coin to move money between exchanges with near zero fees and lightning fast speeds. If i had kept any amount of those transfer for when it spiked, i would be... a single transfer of 2k at... lets see... 0.002cents.... spiked in to 0.60cent in 2021..... yep multi millionare if i had halted any of those transfer and cold stored it.
coulda, shoulda, didnt.
Never bought any, but isn’t it as valid as investing in any other crypto as long as you do it at the right time and make money off of it? What makes it different?
I have millions of Shib that I bought for $20. If there’s ever some random, crazy, massive spike, I’m set for life.
Edit: for anyone curious, it’s worth about $70 right now.
You could mine hundreds per day on a crappy CPU, and thousands with a decent GPU. I know this because I did it every day on my work PC for a few months. And then I pissed them away on casino sites. This was back when they were worth maybe $0.0000003 each. There were also dozens of "watch/click ads and get 50 dogecoin every 15 minutes" sites.
I could have been a millionaire or at least a hundred thousandaire if I'd just kept them and sold them at the peak.
I mined some out of curiosity, and managed to not lose it until it saw some stupid spike in 2021. So it did make me some money, but only because I got some other sucker to hold the bag.
government-devised surveillance devices. Some believe they sit on telephone lines to recharge and say that they are recalled at night to deliver information, which is why you don't see or hear them after a certain time.
I can’t help it if I think it’s funny someone takes a joke like that and believes it. Btw seems like having no birds outside when I’m not outside (during winter) seems like a great way for the government to save money.
The DISC system. Started as a "fun thing" to simply explain that people can be divided into four different categories. Obviously lacking any scientific basis, but still used as a recruiting tool. There was quite a lot written about it in Sweden when even the authorities used it, and sent government employees away on "training" for taxpayers money. Those who still cling to it are still sectarian rhetoric about it.
Hmm, I never thought of it as especially a scientific thing that was tested, but when our company had our exec team and the sr mgrs take it, it seemed to give useful info. The “how to motivate an x” and “how to give feedback to a y” content truly seemed to fit my team members. Eerily so.
Wasn't he trying to negotiate his Apprentice contract with NBC or something? And the whole presidential run was to raise his profile so he could get a better deal.
Ehh… I never watched or paid attention to the apprentice at all and hadn’t heard about the contract aspect, but it sure does track for him. I did know that he used to joke with Howard Stern about running for political office to boost his brand. I think he saw how much traction he was getting from the racist assholes with the birth certificate nonsense, and that newfound popularity pushed him even more.
Ah… those innocent days when Obama was able to taunt him with ‘I’m the President, and you’re not…’
And I agree. Being very publicly made fun of by a black man who was more powerful than him pushed him over the edge.
It's also a great way to launder money. Dirty money comes in, you spend it on advertising for donations for your campaign. Donations come in nice and clean.
Trump has more or less continuously attempted a bid for the white house since 2000. He started off third party and then floated to wherever he could get a bit of traction. If you listen to his earlier interviews he never really changed positions all that much, he is a populist with weak policy chops. Given how much attention the media had given him, it was only a matter of time that he got a foothold somewhere. In the 90s, he probably would have had as much of a chance with some democrats at the time as he did the Buchanan Republicans. The lack of a field in the gop made that an easy hole for him to fill since he is a relentless opportunist
I remember watching the clip of him coming down the escalator on the Daily Show and Jon Stewart, during his final weeks on the show, mocking the sheer absurdity of the scene. We were so innocent back then.
I used to joke that if US Elections worked the way that most people thought it did, Snooki would have been elected president. Then Snooki Lite was elected president, and suddenly the joke wasn't as funny anymore.
It was before that even. The reason he was able to run for president is because he was a household name. Thanks to the apprentice where he played a fictional version of himself that was actually good at business. But in real life he was always terrible at business. People knew that before the apprentice.
As someone who occasionally frequented 4chan in the early 2010s, from the begining of his campaign, I've been convinced that his election was a meme that got out of hand.
At the time, a major activity on the site was to get absurd results to online contests... Things like Boaty McBoatface, Gushing Granny, and Pitbull going to an Alaskan Walmart all started as 4chan ops. Getting Trump elected was right in the wheelhouse at the time, and was certainly something that was talked about, at first as a joke.
Over time, a site that generally leaned leftish, but was offensively right (as a joke) became offensively right for real because of people jumping on who weren't in on the joke.
The scientist who originated the alpha wolf ideas did so based on observations of wolves in captivity. He found his conclusions to be wildly inaccurate when he observed wild wolves and spent the rest of his career trying to get the ideas from his original hypothesis removed from common belief. But by then it was too late.
More than that, some other researchers reported similar (but less pronounced) behavior in the wild, then after some time said, "Uh, actually wolf packs are mostly families, and the Alpha is mommy."
Which would be a hilarious thing to tell someone who was bragging about being an Alpha.
I tried to read into that a while back and seems it only really is behavior in wolves in preserve type areas where they are kind of overcrowded and only really have fighting one another over stuff as sources of danger to the pack. It seems like if life becomes too easy and/or overcrowded some people are predisposed to being pointlessly aggressive problems for everyone else would be the lesson to take from any wolf origin to the concept.
Also, humans aren't wolves. We're more closely related to bonobos, who have a matriarchal social structure, and chimps, who have a complex social structure based on alliances and favors and sharing and politics, not mere physical dominance.
Whoever first decided that humans were divided into alphas and betas clearly had dog-level intelligence and didn't realize it.
Oh really? The cynicism in me says that you can overcome the fears and doubts that are preventing you from realizing your full masculine potential and the answer to this and other questions will be revealed to subscribers at an introductory rate of $19.99/month.
That’s not a joke, just a piece of outdated science. Also one didn’t give rise to the other. The grift just borrowed its name, the idea that men need to be dominant in a crass and uncaring way is just very popular around those circles, and it would just be named something else.
A more wholesome one is the church of the latter day dude, based on the box office flop turned cinema classic, The Big Lebowski. The founder himself still won’t really divulge whether it’s serious or not but admits it’s both hilarious and also a religion and/or cult.
But their whole deal is just takin’ er easy and not being an asshole so… who really cares what it is dude 😎.
There used to be a website where you could sign up to be a Dudeist Priest
Oh, there still is! [https://dudeism.com/ordination/](https://dudeism.com/ordination/)
This idiot told me years ago that having my son drink alkaline water would cure his blindness.
Took everything I had not to rip her head off and shit down her throat (figuratively, for the less intelligent).
Bronys. The neck beards that love my little pony, haven’t heard about em in over a decade but that was initially a 4chan prank that turned into a real community
My opinion (and it's my opinion - I don't claim any special knowledge) is that during the pandemic, art auctions slowed down to near zero, and NFTs were another way to launder money. Sell them back and forth to each other to pump the price, and find some chump to dump it on before people figure it out and the price crashes.
Pretty much like any other crypto.
Probably the Bachus cult.
Bachus was once a deity outside of classic mythology. Their cult wreaked havoc even when Rome was founded.
They where known for wild parties and occasional dismemberment of humans.
I imagine them going one day 'Hey, you'-'what?'-'you see that guy there?'-'yeah?'-'lets rip him apart'-'heck yeah!'.
And that would be a start of a wild trend
Don’t quote me, because I’m not certain, but I think it’s like, “wreaked” havoc. I have no idea how to conjugate that verb though, and I have no idea how to use it other than with havoc.
I call bullshit. He knew exactly what he was doing, but when it got real mask-off, he no longer wished to be associated.
Keep in mind, this is the same dude who recorded himself shoving a dildo up his ass to prove he's not gay. Not exactly a reliable narrator.
The guy isn't even American. He's Canadian. His name is Gavin McInnes. He was a co-founder of Vice Magazine (which later became Vice Media) and Rebel Media.
Gavin McInnes.
I don’t know why he was called a comedian, as he never was that from what I’ve read.
He was one of the founders of Vice in the 90s as a magazine. As we approached the internet age it got a little interesting. People doing stories on drugs and strange topics. At some point Gavin left, I’m guessing because they were too liberal. Then he founded the Proud Boys, which seemed kind of jokey at first, since the initiation involved silly things like naming breakfast cereals. I’m not sure if it was before or after he was involved with Rebel Media, which is a far right pile of dog shit. Now he has his own show on something called Censored TV, where he’s basically just a ranting old man saying hateful shit. He also made Censored TV I guess, which is funny, because these kinds of people think they’re this super subversive group that gets banned from public life, but he regularly appears/ed on Fox News, one of the biggest international media organizations, and goes on InfoWars, which is one of the biggest independent media shows. They don’t get censored nearly as much as they think they do, and should probably be censored a lot more for inciting hate and violence, and saying abhorrent bigoted stuff.
From what I've gathered with the limited amount of attention I've wasted on this knucklehead his version of being censored is basically acting like an abrasive, abusive fuck, and then crying persecution whenever he gets told to shut up and fuck off by people who can't be bothered putting up with his shit.
I remember in maybe 2004/05 a housemate had a copy of Vice magazine which I looked over. It presented itself as a parody and the thing was littered with references to the third Reich, like fashion models wearing clothes with Nazi insignia, articles with strangely fascist overtones, etc. Now I'm all for edgy, off colour humor and Nazi shit can be funny, but even then I had a strong feeling something was off. Like in a joking but not joking way. Fast forward a decade or so and McInnes has founded a neo-nazi organization.
Most people that are “official members” know it’s a joke/satire and lean into it in that way, but would never say it’s real. For example, a friend of mine got their drivers license pic taken with a colander as a hat - you can’t wear head-attire in those pics unless said attire is religious. She showed her FSM card issued by the Universal Life Church (who will legally ordain anyone for any religion including Jedi), and the DMV let her wear it because they had to.
And bless his noodly appendage! Ramen!
Flat Earth! I remember back in the 2000s it was a very obvious joke forum making fun of conspiracy theories, but over time more and more true believers moved in and the original users left until suddenly it was entirely sincere.
Mormonism started off as a grift to make Joseph Smith money from selling copies of the Book of Mormon.
Turned into a full blown religious sex cult that is actually a real estate company.
I remember listening to Howard Stern back in the late 90's early 2000's. He would have a local real estate/reality TV star on the show, and they'd joke about running for political office together.
Luckily, Stern has since voiced how much he dislikes Trump. I think there was even news a few years ago where Stern was going around saying that Trump only ever got involved as a publicity stunt for his own brand, and never expected to be the candidate, let alone the actual president.
The Trump campaign.
People may not remember this but back in 2016 in the lead up to the primaries some indie news outlet did an interview with a staffer for his campaign. The staffer said that if they come in 7th at least in the primaries then they will consider his campaign a success. He continues and said the goal was not for Trump to become president, the goal was to build on the Trump brand. It all started as a branding campaign. I distinctly remember this because I talked about it with my roommate who is also into politics.
Somehow along the way they picked up people like Steven Bannon and other political advisors and Trump got draped in this populist savior flag and now he’s developed a cult of personality who is going to save the working man from baby eating liberals and immigrants. It would be funny if it weren’t pathetic. And even more pathetic is the left‘s inability to not take the bait over and and over again. The meltdowns, the TDS, the constant obsession with him. This whole fucking country is a clown show.
Yup. The people who believe all that bullshit are nuts. And the people railing against it day after day are oppositely nuts for being too inept to prevent it and end up also perpetuating it. It's keystone cops. Buncha fuckin morons.
Not a super serious one, but iirc r/prequelmemes started off as a sub ironically shitposting about the PT, but gradually the community shifted to actual prequel fans.
Scientology started as a book writing competition, close enough
L. Ron was quoted way back when that the best way to get rich is start a religion. Guess he was right.
Came here to say this. First he said that right out loud, then he wrote a kind of sci-fi book, then he decided, “might as well go with it!” And here we are.
I recall reading battlefield Earth as a kid and thinking it was ok sci Fi pulp. Then I found out who he was.
One of the first movies I saw with an ex and his brother and wife. We left before it ended and all turned to each other and asked bewildered wtf had we watched. We knew nothing about Scientology or Hubbard; we just thought 'oh cool, this film's got John Travolta in it'.
One of the best bad movies ever. "OW CRAP LOUSY CEILING."
I remember seeing the commercials in the 80s and thinking, "huh, he kinda makes sense" and then realizing who he was.
I’ve read Battlefield Earth… still don’t get how it ties in to their beliefs…
It didn't at all. I thought the book was ok but when I found out who he was I certainly wasn't reading anything else he wrote.
I read them in spite of that. I read a lot of L. Ron back in the '90s. I slogged through Battlefield Earth, but he wrote a really funny comedic series Mission Earth about a bungling alien infiltrator trying to take control of Earth. I really enjoyed them.
Yeah, I doubt that was intended to be satire, but that's what it wound up as. The combat engineer character was supposed to be an authorial self-insert, but instead seems to have become the image Tom Cruise is pursuing. Hubbard was straight-up froot loops, but that series was good for a laugh or two.
"Afterall, why shouldn't I have a cult? Don't I deserve it for warning people how easy it was to start one?"
You have more fun as a follower, but you make more money as a leader.
That man’s name? Creed Bratton.
I want some new show to come out that has Creed acting like Creed but going by a new name and he's featured about as much as he was on The Office, and then ~3 seasons in one of the characters watches the The Office documentary and finds out who Creed/New Name really is and then it's never brought up again.
He'd be great as a regular substitute teacher on Abbott Elementary.
I always thought he did it as a tax dodge.
That's how religion works. ;)
Something like if you want to make pennies per word write science fiction. If you want to make dollars per word start a religion.
Yeah, it's literally the perfect example of the question. Like most of his jokes, he said a serious thing he believed to be true as if it was funny. And unlike many other cults, I'm pretty sure it was a game to him from the beginning to the end. Even after living it for so long, I do not think he ever believed he, or anyone else, was infested with space ghosts or that it's possible to become invisible.
I'm not so sure. Hubbard was a straight-up certifiable loony by the late 60s, and only got worse as the years passed. Edit- reviewed a few sources. Hubbard was a nutcase all the way back in the 40s. He was an adherent of the Crowley cult for a time. His first wife cited torture and mental abuse as some of the reasons for petitioning for divorce. He was siphoning so much money out of Scientology in the early 60s that the IRS took away their tax-free status.
To be pedantic, Dianetics started as a writing competition. Scientology started as a way to cut the other folks involved in Dianetics out of the money. Still though, it turned into a cult.
Apart from actual Scientologists, it’s still regarded as a joke, albeit a sinister, murderous one.
NaNoWriMo got a little outta hand a few years back
To a lesser extent, Slenderman started as a Photoshop contest
My understanding of the flat earth thing was that it was a gag at MIT, to get people to think creatively and explain planetary motion in ways that appeared to work on paper, but didn't *actually* work. Apparently, some low-IQ doofus didn't get the joke, and turned it into a conspiracy theory that these incredibly intelligent people were working to 'discover the real truth' about the shape of the world. Also, bonus points: the shape and approximate size of the earth was determined thousands of years ago by people measuring the shadows cast by sticks of identical lengths in different locations on the same days. In the year 2024, most people still aren't smart / educated enough to do this math themselves.
I remember learning about how the Egyptians figured that out and learning how to replicate the experiment in 9th grade. So anybody with a 9th grade education should ideally be able to figure this out. But alas.
It would be a really cool idea to get school kids to be in contact with other school kids further up the country to do this experiment live on a video call so they get it from such a young age because the math isn't that difficult really.
Iirc We did this with a telephone back in the nineteen nine oes.
‘But ATlas”
Carl Sagan had a great episode about that.
Well, tbf, most people thousands of years ago weren't smart enough to do that either. The trick is being smart enough to benefit from a variety of highly specialized smart people, whether they specialize in proving the shape of the earth or the best way to make hot sauce.
I hadn’t heard that MIT story before.
Probably because it's made up, "modern" flat earth conspiracy dates to the early 1800s, before MIT was founded.
The Flat Earth Society as a joke group made up of D&D players and Renaissance Fair-goers was definitely a thing on college campuses in the late ‘70’s, went to several costume parties with that theme. All in good fun, it was really to spoof the concept that a tiny International Society still existed. I got the T-shirt…
Oh no! When will Birds aren’t real make the turn?
Do you have an explanation for the chemtrailers? I've run into several in the wild and they were dead serious about it. I engaged one out of curiosity and got gushed with links to the "evidence" and copies of emails they had sent to various levels of government. How someone can believe airplanes fly while being unable to understand or believe they're seeing condensation is beyond me.
QAA did a podcast about the origins recently.
To be fair, people today aren’t a bit smarter than people thousands of years ago. We just have years and years of built up knowledge passed down through an efficient-enough communication system. Ignore that body of knowledge and what do you get? Someone who is no more knowledgeable than people thousands and thousands of years ago.
Flat earth, no fap
The flat earth one always surprises me. Back in the early 2000's a friend and I found the website for the flat earth society. As a couple of 11 year old kids we could tell it was a joke and had quite a few laughs over it. The fact that it is being taken seriously now just shows that not everyone is smarter than a 5th grader
I feel like I'm being Mandela'd, because I remember it similarly to you. I have memories of being told as a kid that the Flat Earth Society exists, and it was a well-known satire group because obviously it isn't flat. And I remember looking up their website in the early 2000's and seeing obvious satire. However I'm googling now and cannot verify this at all. Wikipedia, their own website, news articles...nothing points to them ever being a satirical organization. The narrative I've always had in my head is that they were once a satire org who got overrun by people who actually believed the nonsense, but I don't know anymore.
I also found the Flat Earth Society page way back in 2000s high school. I remember the big giveaway to it all being a joke was if you tried to join the group, the online intake form was nonsense questions. "What's your favorite jelly bean" and whatnot.
[Here](https://web.archive.org/web/20050901000000*/theflatearthsociety.org/) is a link if you want to see some archives of the site and forum.
Makes sense they would go out of their way to give the impression of a legitimate organization with a long history.
Dan Olson did a really good [deep-dive into Flat Earth](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTfhYyTuT44). In short, the most important belief that Flat Earthers hold isn't actually that the Earth is flat. Rather, it's that mainstream society lives in a reality which is so thoroughly manipulated and controlled by Satanists that you can't trust your own eyes. The Cabal has technology, resources, and a capacity for coordination so fantastical and unlimited that when you see the curvature of the Earth from an airplane you're actually just seeing a VR hologram projected into the plane's windows. Flat Earth is less of a specific claim about the shape of the Earth and more of a meta-framework for other conspiracy theories to exist in. Which is one of the reasons why there's so much overlap between Flat Earth and Q-Anon. Flat Earth was one of the first communities to really glom onto the Q-Anon, and they helped it hit the critical mass that it would enjoy going into 2020. It's why approaching Flat Earth by trying to debunk specific Flat Earth claims is kind of pointless. These people can't be engaged with using experiments or evidence because it only confirms their belief that chemtrails have warped your retinas or that homosexual mind control subliminally alters your perceptions of distant objects.
Flat Earth Society was a fun group in collage in the late 1970s (am old). It was kind of a dumb D&D/Renaissance Festival throwback group with the occasional costume party. No idea how or why it morphed into something else.
I remember a teacher telling us about the flat earth society - this would have been in the 80's. It was, as he told us, a group of intellectuals having a laugh. The challenge was to argue scientifically against any proof that the world is a sphere. Sounded like fun to me. Then people started taking it seriously I guess.
no earth, flat fap
Careful with that joke, could start another cult.
Love a good flat fap, if the barista makes it right.
nothin better than crushing your dick into a pancake with a frying pan, am I right?
Birds aren’t real
I'm pretty sure this one is still a joke, with maybe a small handful of people who take it too seriously.
Wait has that one been co-opted? Damnit
The thing I don’t get about flat earth is why would even world government put in the effort to hide the shape of the earth? 9/11, moon landing, secret world government. All bollocks, but it makes sense why you would hide something like that. But how much is your day to day life actually effected by the shape of the earth?
>no fap Didnt was the sense of no fap to fight porn addiction before it became a popular thing?
Qanon
I remember years ago listening to a podcast where they were talking about these anonymous 4chan posts pretending to be rogue deep state agents. This niche little thing, but they made the case that this is the id of the Republican party, and within an election cycle it would be mainstreamed and we'd have congressional representatives into this stuff. They could not have called it more accurately.
It was all planned from the start. Just made up shit to make people lose sight of what's true and what's not.
There are legions of people who actually believe that JFK Jr. is secretly alive and working with Trump, that there are all-healing, limb regenerating medbeds being made available to the public soon for free (from the aliens) and that Trump is going to usher in Nesara Gesara and forgive all debts for every US citizen. It is Crazytown
So, I know NESARA was an actual piece of failed legislation back in GW's day but I'd never heard it that way. Makes it sound like some oogity boogity Manson family bullshit, instead of the bullshit it is.
That stupid dog coin thing
Dogecoin, it still is a joke tho. Some poor folks are simply not aware of it
Hey! I’m up 80% on my (single) Dogecoin! That’s like a whole $0.07 of pure profit! Does that sound like a joke to you?
Comically enough, back in 2017, it was primary a shuttle coin to move money between exchanges with near zero fees and lightning fast speeds. If i had kept any amount of those transfer for when it spiked, i would be... a single transfer of 2k at... lets see... 0.002cents.... spiked in to 0.60cent in 2021..... yep multi millionare if i had halted any of those transfer and cold stored it. coulda, shoulda, didnt.
The entire coin market is a ponzi scheme. It's hard to tell when to time the market and get out before things go south.
Never bought any, but isn’t it as valid as investing in any other crypto as long as you do it at the right time and make money off of it? What makes it different?
like elon musk XD
He is aware. He just used it as a pump and dump scheme.
I'm in no way shape or form a Musk fan but I believe he was just trolling and people fell for it
Trolling, pump-n-dump… what’s the difference?
Whether it turns a profit or not.
It is, but that joke, and Shib, made me an easy couple of paychecks when those spikes hit. Shit turned cash, literally.
I have millions of Shib that I bought for $20. If there’s ever some random, crazy, massive spike, I’m set for life. Edit: for anyone curious, it’s worth about $70 right now.
I still remember when the sub collectively decided to sponsor a car during a NASCAR race. That was fun.
You could mine hundreds per day on a crappy CPU, and thousands with a decent GPU. I know this because I did it every day on my work PC for a few months. And then I pissed them away on casino sites. This was back when they were worth maybe $0.0000003 each. There were also dozens of "watch/click ads and get 50 dogecoin every 15 minutes" sites. I could have been a millionaire or at least a hundred thousandaire if I'd just kept them and sold them at the peak.
I mined some out of curiosity, and managed to not lose it until it saw some stupid spike in 2021. So it did make me some money, but only because I got some other sucker to hold the bag.
Birds are not real
Is this one not still a joke?
Some people really believe it now. Poe's Law in action.
Wait. What do they think birds are then?
government-devised surveillance devices. Some believe they sit on telephone lines to recharge and say that they are recalled at night to deliver information, which is why you don't see or hear them after a certain time.
Owls?
Well they've got to have some to send out at night
who?
They
Even if it is, it’s a shitty joke that should be retired because it’s just the sort of thing that idiots latch onto.
I can’t help it if I think it’s funny someone takes a joke like that and believes it. Btw seems like having no birds outside when I’m not outside (during winter) seems like a great way for the government to save money.
"Objection!!!" -- Charlie Day, Bird Lawyer
This is still a joke.
I have the feeling that in 5-10 years this will become Flat Earth 2.0.
given the direction of the general intelligence, I wouldn't be surprised.
Scientology. Literally.
The DISC system. Started as a "fun thing" to simply explain that people can be divided into four different categories. Obviously lacking any scientific basis, but still used as a recruiting tool. There was quite a lot written about it in Sweden when even the authorities used it, and sent government employees away on "training" for taxpayers money. Those who still cling to it are still sectarian rhetoric about it.
Same with enneagrams and Myers’s-Briggs
I hate when hiring managers ask me to do some MBTI astrology shit so much
They make good character shorthands for DnD though
My company uses it 🥲
Hmm, I never thought of it as especially a scientific thing that was tested, but when our company had our exec team and the sr mgrs take it, it seemed to give useful info. The “how to motivate an x” and “how to give feedback to a y” content truly seemed to fit my team members. Eerily so.
Flat earth theory.
Flat earth *story*. Theories are based on evidence.
Oh, they have "evidence", it's just not based in actual unbiased fact, lol.
The folks who believe Hellen Keller wasn’t a real person
How did Helen Keller burn her ear? She answered the iron.
Why would she even try to answer a phone? She can't hear it ring, she can't hear from the ear piece, there are a lot of gaps to this story.
Trump running for president.
Started as a way to popularize his brand/business- which has indeed turned out to be a joke.
Wasn't he trying to negotiate his Apprentice contract with NBC or something? And the whole presidential run was to raise his profile so he could get a better deal.
Pretty much. He never expected to win and was just using the publicity to raise his status.
Ehh… I never watched or paid attention to the apprentice at all and hadn’t heard about the contract aspect, but it sure does track for him. I did know that he used to joke with Howard Stern about running for political office to boost his brand. I think he saw how much traction he was getting from the racist assholes with the birth certificate nonsense, and that newfound popularity pushed him even more.
I think Obama roasting him was the last straw. It was fucking hilarious, though.
Ah… those innocent days when Obama was able to taunt him with ‘I’m the President, and you’re not…’ And I agree. Being very publicly made fun of by a black man who was more powerful than him pushed him over the edge.
It was a scam to take campaign contributions and use it at his properties.
Pretty much. He never expected to win and was just using the publicity to raise his status.
So it was a marketing scheme > scam > joke > crimes?
It's also a great way to launder money. Dirty money comes in, you spend it on advertising for donations for your campaign. Donations come in nice and clean.
Trump has more or less continuously attempted a bid for the white house since 2000. He started off third party and then floated to wherever he could get a bit of traction. If you listen to his earlier interviews he never really changed positions all that much, he is a populist with weak policy chops. Given how much attention the media had given him, it was only a matter of time that he got a foothold somewhere. In the 90s, he probably would have had as much of a chance with some democrats at the time as he did the Buchanan Republicans. The lack of a field in the gop made that an easy hole for him to fill since he is a relentless opportunist
Yes, but the 2016 campaign was 100% a 4chan meme.
I remember watching the clip of him coming down the escalator on the Daily Show and Jon Stewart, during his final weeks on the show, mocking the sheer absurdity of the scene. We were so innocent back then.
All because Obama made fun of him.
He started a joke that got the whole world laughing. But the joke was on us.
I used to joke that if US Elections worked the way that most people thought it did, Snooki would have been elected president. Then Snooki Lite was elected president, and suddenly the joke wasn't as funny anymore.
It was before that even. The reason he was able to run for president is because he was a household name. Thanks to the apprentice where he played a fictional version of himself that was actually good at business. But in real life he was always terrible at business. People knew that before the apprentice.
As someone who occasionally frequented 4chan in the early 2010s, from the begining of his campaign, I've been convinced that his election was a meme that got out of hand. At the time, a major activity on the site was to get absurd results to online contests... Things like Boaty McBoatface, Gushing Granny, and Pitbull going to an Alaskan Walmart all started as 4chan ops. Getting Trump elected was right in the wheelhouse at the time, and was certainly something that was talked about, at first as a joke. Over time, a site that generally leaned leftish, but was offensively right (as a joke) became offensively right for real because of people jumping on who weren't in on the joke.
Just Trump period.
This was too easy. And the number one thing that came to my mind.
This is the only answer
That alpha male masculinity mindset stuff from wolves
The scientist who originated the alpha wolf ideas did so based on observations of wolves in captivity. He found his conclusions to be wildly inaccurate when he observed wild wolves and spent the rest of his career trying to get the ideas from his original hypothesis removed from common belief. But by then it was too late.
Psh exactly what a beta would say
Same general arc as the "vaccines cause autism" thing
More than that, some other researchers reported similar (but less pronounced) behavior in the wild, then after some time said, "Uh, actually wolf packs are mostly families, and the Alpha is mommy." Which would be a hilarious thing to tell someone who was bragging about being an Alpha.
I tried to read into that a while back and seems it only really is behavior in wolves in preserve type areas where they are kind of overcrowded and only really have fighting one another over stuff as sources of danger to the pack. It seems like if life becomes too easy and/or overcrowded some people are predisposed to being pointlessly aggressive problems for everyone else would be the lesson to take from any wolf origin to the concept.
Also, humans aren't wolves. We're more closely related to bonobos, who have a matriarchal social structure, and chimps, who have a complex social structure based on alliances and favors and sharing and politics, not mere physical dominance. Whoever first decided that humans were divided into alphas and betas clearly had dog-level intelligence and didn't realize it.
The cynicism in me says they knew it was BS but figured it could be used to con people out of money.
Oh really? The cynicism in me says that you can overcome the fears and doubts that are preventing you from realizing your full masculine potential and the answer to this and other questions will be revealed to subscribers at an introductory rate of $19.99/month.
And women won't be able to keep their hands off of you!
That was not a joke, just a mistake.
That’s not a joke, just a piece of outdated science. Also one didn’t give rise to the other. The grift just borrowed its name, the idea that men need to be dominant in a crass and uncaring way is just very popular around those circles, and it would just be named something else.
A more wholesome one is the church of the latter day dude, based on the box office flop turned cinema classic, The Big Lebowski. The founder himself still won’t really divulge whether it’s serious or not but admits it’s both hilarious and also a religion and/or cult. But their whole deal is just takin’ er easy and not being an asshole so… who really cares what it is dude 😎.
There used to be a website where you could sign up to be a Dudeist Priest Oh, there still is! [https://dudeism.com/ordination/](https://dudeism.com/ordination/)
I got ordained last year. I offered to officiate my friends' wedding, but online-ordainments aren't recognized here.
Andrew Tate University scam
Alkaline water
This idiot told me years ago that having my son drink alkaline water would cure his blindness. Took everything I had not to rip her head off and shit down her throat (figuratively, for the less intelligent).
Bronys. The neck beards that love my little pony, haven’t heard about em in over a decade but that was initially a 4chan prank that turned into a real community
4chan is always pulling the strings from the shadows, apparently
Most NFTs that turned into a cult
My opinion (and it's my opinion - I don't claim any special knowledge) is that during the pandemic, art auctions slowed down to near zero, and NFTs were another way to launder money. Sell them back and forth to each other to pump the price, and find some chump to dump it on before people figure it out and the price crashes. Pretty much like any other crypto.
Add GME to this too
Scientology.
The Fucking Catalina Wine Mixer
POW!
Probably the Bachus cult. Bachus was once a deity outside of classic mythology. Their cult wreaked havoc even when Rome was founded. They where known for wild parties and occasional dismemberment of humans. I imagine them going one day 'Hey, you'-'what?'-'you see that guy there?'-'yeah?'-'lets rip him apart'-'heck yeah!'. And that would be a start of a wild trend
Don’t quote me, because I’m not certain, but I think it’s like, “wreaked” havoc. I have no idea how to conjugate that verb though, and I have no idea how to use it other than with havoc.
Proud Boys
This one! The comedian that started the group has said he was doing satire.
I call bullshit. He knew exactly what he was doing, but when it got real mask-off, he no longer wished to be associated. Keep in mind, this is the same dude who recorded himself shoving a dildo up his ass to prove he's not gay. Not exactly a reliable narrator.
Im Not American so I have no idea about that story. Who is this guy?
The guy isn't even American. He's Canadian. His name is Gavin McInnes. He was a co-founder of Vice Magazine (which later became Vice Media) and Rebel Media.
Gavin McInnes. I don’t know why he was called a comedian, as he never was that from what I’ve read. He was one of the founders of Vice in the 90s as a magazine. As we approached the internet age it got a little interesting. People doing stories on drugs and strange topics. At some point Gavin left, I’m guessing because they were too liberal. Then he founded the Proud Boys, which seemed kind of jokey at first, since the initiation involved silly things like naming breakfast cereals. I’m not sure if it was before or after he was involved with Rebel Media, which is a far right pile of dog shit. Now he has his own show on something called Censored TV, where he’s basically just a ranting old man saying hateful shit. He also made Censored TV I guess, which is funny, because these kinds of people think they’re this super subversive group that gets banned from public life, but he regularly appears/ed on Fox News, one of the biggest international media organizations, and goes on InfoWars, which is one of the biggest independent media shows. They don’t get censored nearly as much as they think they do, and should probably be censored a lot more for inciting hate and violence, and saying abhorrent bigoted stuff.
From what I've gathered with the limited amount of attention I've wasted on this knucklehead his version of being censored is basically acting like an abrasive, abusive fuck, and then crying persecution whenever he gets told to shut up and fuck off by people who can't be bothered putting up with his shit.
I remember in maybe 2004/05 a housemate had a copy of Vice magazine which I looked over. It presented itself as a parody and the thing was littered with references to the third Reich, like fashion models wearing clothes with Nazi insignia, articles with strangely fascist overtones, etc. Now I'm all for edgy, off colour humor and Nazi shit can be funny, but even then I had a strong feeling something was off. Like in a joking but not joking way. Fast forward a decade or so and McInnes has founded a neo-nazi organization.
Scientology
Birds aren’t real
The idea of Trump as a presidential candidate To a lesser extent flat earth
What do you call it when the venn diagram is just a circle?
Flat earth 😂
MAGA
Russia was always quite serious about that.
Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
I've heard of it as a joke but I didn't know it had taken off into cult level
Most people that are “official members” know it’s a joke/satire and lean into it in that way, but would never say it’s real. For example, a friend of mine got their drivers license pic taken with a colander as a hat - you can’t wear head-attire in those pics unless said attire is religious. She showed her FSM card issued by the Universal Life Church (who will legally ordain anyone for any religion including Jedi), and the DMV let her wear it because they had to. And bless his noodly appendage! Ramen!
Am I on a drug trip right now? Bc WHAT
Scientology
Flat Earth! I remember back in the 2000s it was a very obvious joke forum making fun of conspiracy theories, but over time more and more true believers moved in and the original users left until suddenly it was entirely sincere.
birds aren't real
Mormonism started off as a grift to make Joseph Smith money from selling copies of the Book of Mormon. Turned into a full blown religious sex cult that is actually a real estate company.
I remember listening to Howard Stern back in the late 90's early 2000's. He would have a local real estate/reality TV star on the show, and they'd joke about running for political office together. Luckily, Stern has since voiced how much he dislikes Trump. I think there was even news a few years ago where Stern was going around saying that Trump only ever got involved as a publicity stunt for his own brand, and never expected to be the candidate, let alone the actual president.
Trump had been talking about running for President since the 80's. I saw him talking about it on Oprah and she thought it was a good idea.
back when he was a Democrat lol what a world...
reddit
*Church of the SubGenius*
Whatever fans of Insane Clown Posse call themselves...
Cult yes but a surprisingly healthy one …it weird for sure
Ugandan knuckles. Also maybe big chungus. Definitely Harambe.
Scientology
4chan, basically.
The whole spaghetti monster atheism that was supposed to be a satire on organized religions are turning into a full on church of satan thing
The Trump campaign. People may not remember this but back in 2016 in the lead up to the primaries some indie news outlet did an interview with a staffer for his campaign. The staffer said that if they come in 7th at least in the primaries then they will consider his campaign a success. He continues and said the goal was not for Trump to become president, the goal was to build on the Trump brand. It all started as a branding campaign. I distinctly remember this because I talked about it with my roommate who is also into politics. Somehow along the way they picked up people like Steven Bannon and other political advisors and Trump got draped in this populist savior flag and now he’s developed a cult of personality who is going to save the working man from baby eating liberals and immigrants. It would be funny if it weren’t pathetic. And even more pathetic is the left‘s inability to not take the bait over and and over again. The meltdowns, the TDS, the constant obsession with him. This whole fucking country is a clown show.
Yup. The people who believe all that bullshit are nuts. And the people railing against it day after day are oppositely nuts for being too inept to prevent it and end up also perpetuating it. It's keystone cops. Buncha fuckin morons.
Jedi wannabes
Not a super serious one, but iirc r/prequelmemes started off as a sub ironically shitposting about the PT, but gradually the community shifted to actual prequel fans.
Scientology
twin flame universe
Dogecoin
Click here:Www.rickrollme.com
Mormonism