So today I drove five hours to see the eclipse, had a tire blow out, didn't see the eclipse because of thick clouds, and got stuck in traffic for hours on the way back. (I'm still not home.) But at least I haven't been shot by maniac, yet.
Any updates? It's been 8 minutes, you're starting to worry me.
RIP ArbitraryValue. Do you guys remember how excited he was about the eclipse there at the end? It's all he could talk about. That's what I'll remember most.
I'll miss him too, the eclipse lovin bastard.
If only we could have done something.
You didn't? I upvoted his last comment.
Upvote and F in the comments. I loved Arbitrary Value as much as I love any other random commenter.
We should erect a memorial of jeans and beans in their honor. It's what they would've wanted.
Hehe, erect.
We did all we could.
I remember when he blew a maniac in traffic who shot a thick cloud on his back for hours that he didn't get to see because of the eclipse. He never made it home because he was too tired.
That's close enough to how I remember it, too.
You didn't shoot anyone either tho, did you?
It's been two hours. They for sure murdered someone.
It's been 6 hours I'm getting worried
Asking the important questions
God told her to because of the eclipse
When the Creator tells you to do something like that, you want to get it in writing just in case the judge has a different theological take on the matter.
Is it legally admissible if its on some gold plates that only I can read?
Only in Utah
Given that the last guy who tried that ended up in jail, again, I would say no.
You just have to get God to write it in green ink at a 45° angle, then it's okay.
After these things God tested Abraham and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.”
--Genesis 22:1-2
Ya, Yahweh is a bit of a dick.
Moses needed to get "Don't kill people" written in stone but these folks just believe anything they hear
Blind obedience to god telling you to murder someone, no matter how dear they are to you, is one of the most highly praised actions in the Abrahamic canon.
If you liked "Florida Man", you're gonna love "Florida Woman"
It's not the Sunshine State when there's an eclipse going on. Doh!
Thank God we have laws to keep guns out of the hands of obvious crazy people.
There is no mental health treatment in our society.
I have come to believe that blind faith is a socially accepted mental illness.
The ICD-11 definition for delusion clearly defines religion, but then commits special pleading to excuse religious belief.
mental health treatment in america is to grab a gun, wave it at people then drown in your addiction of choice. This woman chose "religious conspiracy bullshit"
If anything, there is anti treatment. Organisations are waiting and ready to exploit your mental illness at every turn.
Oh maximizing addictions and false logic are the best ways to make money though. Who the fuck cares if it's bad for the poors. It will never affect the god holy rich who are above it all.
That's because our health system is a fucking joke. Thanks republiclowns!! Working as intended.
Georgia woman. It was a Georgia woman that crossed into Florida. WTH is up with that headline?
She knew where she belonged
Florida has a reputation to maintain
Recruiting outside talent I see. I guess you have do that with an aging population.
It's so weird that they freaked out this much over just this Eclipse. There was an eclipse last year and I didn't hear a peep from these people.
Maybe because last year they didn't have Marjorie Taylor-Greene tell them that earthquakes and eclipse are a warning from god?
2017 was all "Look at the science! Isn't this cool!"
But then THAT path only brushed the Bible Belt...
I think it's because giant singing and man-eating plants are a real concern.
They happen about every 18 months, and thus are a rather normal and common natural phenomenon.
Crazies gonna crazy, though.
Every 6 months really. They just happen in places people aren't a lot of the time. Heck next year north America will get another eclipse.... But you'd have to travel to northern Canada in early spring to see it and it doesn't sound nearly as fun a vacation spot as Mexico I bet to the chasers.
Not a Florida woman. Georgia woman. Georgia is exporting their crazy to Florida.
this is a lie by Big Florida!
(/s)
If God told her to then it should be legal.
No one can prove God didn't tell her to go on a shooting spree.
We need to subpoena god.
Gonna be hard for the marshalls to deliver it. Or, at least to return from delivering it.
just give it to the pope.
I'm sure he can pass it on.
Won't he just ignore it? I'm sure he's seen all the MAGAs ignoring subpoenas and court orders with zero consequences.
And morally ok. Because powerful sky man told her so.
If you go on YouTube and look up videos of the eclipse yesterday, you'll see a ton of videos about why the eclipse marks the beginning of the end of the world. Just pure and total insanity or people taking advantage of that insanity. You might be surprised but you probably won't be because you know in your heart that we're just that far gone now.
This is why I literally groaned when I read another post on lemmy about LLMs using YouTube to learn from...
Ffs do we want these things to be unhinged conspiracy theorist Nazi replicators? I can't think of a worse data set to use than YouTube.... Maybe 4chan, but I don't doubt that's already been scraped.
I'll never forget when Google released their early development ai in the early 2010's and 4chan turned it into a racist sexist genocidal maniac in like a week
Also, fuck it. What good would a Microsoft owned AI chat bot do for you? This is like getting mad at 4chan for sabotaging the Mnt Dew's naming contest. Everyone knew that Pepsi wasn't going to actually use that name and they embarrassed a billion dollar, multi national corporation.
Hey fair enough I stand corrected.
I just remember hearing about it around the same time as the mtn dew thing you mentioned. That and I vaguely remember a school doing the same thing asking the internet for a name and 4chan just said "hold my beer"
Ffs do we want these things to be unhinged conspiracy theorist Nazi replicators?
Only if I can personally generate some kind of profit from it.
Yeah I was going to say this is what overpopulation looks like. Then I remembered the witch trials in the 1600s and thought there's plenty more crazy shit people have done. There's more people now and arguably less crazy shit. Stuff like this is always going to happen though, human condition. Still horrible, we've got lots of work to do as a species.
Feels like 1 step forward 2 steps back with this whole "civilisation" thing.
the eclipse marks the beginning of the end of the world
I mean, we gotta mark the Beginning of the End somewhere, right? Might as well be during an eclipse.
Wasn't the eclipse not visible from Florida?
Organised religion is a cancer of the mind.
Those of us who grew up without it literally can’t imagine scenarios like this, though I’ve heard disturbing things from people who seem otherwise sane that make me understand what drives some to do these things. When you’ve internalised fables of good vs evil and that’s how you define reality, it’s a small step to think you have to commit atrocities to save the innocent. You don’t have to have a very divergent mentality to convince yourself of this.
We will all be better off when the vast majority of people give up these fables and begin to live in the real world.
friend, just reading the headline - this isn't organized religion at work, this is psychosis. she could have said the Care Bears told her to do it - same thing.
Psychosis PLUS organised religion. That’s my point, friend. Psychosis alone is a tragedy we should work to address as a society. But many of these stories would not end in senseless violence if there weren’t an underlying system of fantastical belief that bolstered people’s delusions and convinced them their delusions were divinely inspired.
if you have been close to or worked with psychotic people, you might recognize they don't necessarily need religion to come to fantastical conclusions and potentially act on them. i mean, maybe the radio told her. or the coffee pot. or the person who lives in the walls. or the cat.
fwiw, i'm not a massive defender of religion (nor especially a hater). i just think it's a mistake to blame religion for what is sometimes organic disease of the brain (among various possible causes).
This bullshit has convinced non-psychotic people to commit atrocities. It’s not a leap to think it convinces actually psychotic people their delusions are true. Especially when they say so themselves.
No, but if you have a person without glaring mental health issues, adding religion can put them in a state of mind very similar to madness.
Ehh I dunno... I'm as atheist as anyone with an IQ above 60, but I think religion is just a convenient scapegoat for mental illness here. I'm pretty sure someone who shoots strangers on the highway would have done it in a world without religion too, and they would say it's a different mystical force that made them do it. I don't think Christianity actually moved this person to do this.
I think religion is just a convenient scapegoat for mental illness here.
It acts more as a place for mental illness to be hidden, camoflauged, or accepted as devotion or prophecy.
When someone's delusions overlap with what a church accepts as their ancient prophets' experience, that illness doesn't get proper treatment.
Yep it muddies the waters that distinguish what is rational from irrational. Like a dark damp festering basement, it gives mold a place to fester and grow.
Welcome to a place where you don't need logic; you just need this magical thing called "faith." Such mainstream religions were just the most successful cults.
Welcome to a place where you don’t need logic; you just need this magical thing called “faith.” Such mainstream religions were just the most successful cults.
People generally aren't all or even mostly rational or logical. It's difficult even for people with deep science or technical backgrounds to think in a structured way for long periods of time.
Even if you got most people off of organized religion they'd be on some other bullshit.
Evidence for that is actually all around us too. Organized religion is seeing more and more people walk away from it, but people remain just as full of shit as they were in church.
To your last point I don't know if I see that. Most of the religious nutjobs - organized or free of association - seem predominantly concentrated among right-wing circles. See the rising Christian nationalists for instance. Those who are walking away from religious faith tend to be more on the left side of the spectrum and ironically far more adherent to the teachings of Jesus in his best of image.
It's not one side or another of the political spectrum that's full of shit, it's people in general.
I have easily encountered just as many anti vax crackpots for instance coming from the left as from the right.
That is complete and total bullshit and any reputable statistics survey can prove it.
Let's not bOtH sIdeS this with absurd anecdotes.
Lol yeah you're right it's only right wingers that have irrational beliefs. 👍
Yep, now you're getting it. The vast majority are definitely on the right.
Nearly all conspiracy theories are peddled by right-wing mouthpieces; e.g., Alex Jones and adopted by their right-wing audience.
Right-wingers, statistically on average, are less educated and more susceptible to misinformation.
In the case of anti-vaxx, especially post-Covid, the vast majority are right-wing.
These both sides enlightened centrist false equivalence fallacies are cute and easy for the brain to process, but they aren't grounded in reality.
Dude the right wing doesn't have a monopoly on bullshit, but you can go on believing that (bullshit) if you like and continue to be a living counterexample to your own bad argument.
They account for the vast majority and surveys prove it. You've got nothing and are living in this strange delusional state of cognitive dissonance absent of any substantive evidence whatsoever.
Religion isn’t a scapegoat, and it has nothing to do with IQ. Very smart people are roped into it, and that’s what I mean by it being a social cancer.
Very smart people are raised with stories that they take as reality – that supplant their ability to judge reality for what it is – and it at best colours how they interpret everything for the rest of their lives, and at worst amplifies and gives focus to mental conditions they already have.
Religion is a warped lens through which people are forced to see reality from such a young age, they are incapable of seeing actual reality, and in some cases it just amplifies the otherwise mild mental illness they’d likely have had already.
Without it, some people would already have been disturbed, but with it those people are given a purpose for their delusions.
But in this case this lady is obviously mentally ill why are you ignoring that?
I’m not ignoring that.
My point is that religion is uniquely capable of taking the delusions of the mentally ill and nurturing them into violence.
Even for the mentally stable, it often leads to fantasy. But when mental illness and religion coincide, people who would otherwise be relatively benign in their delusions very easily become convinced their delusions are divine and their violent instincts are justified by scripture. It happens so often, we need to begin acknowledging it.
i think religion is one of many things which can weaponise mental illness. i also think, in a world without religion, some people would still hear voices and feel compelled to do terrible or dangerous things as a result.
Of course there would still be people like that. What I’m saying is there are exponentially more people like that when they’ve been raised from birth to believe in nonsense that warps their sense of right and wrong.
Take the story of Chad and Lori Daybell. She was a normal, successful woman who wasn’t a psychopath. She fell in with a pastor who convinced her of extreme religious ideals, after which they murdered their own children in a misguided belief they’d be safer in heaven than on earth.
I can list examples like that until the cows come home. Normal people who have become convinced to commit atrocities after being drawn into religion to extremes. It’s a psychological virus that can infect anyone. Most large-scale wars have a religious basis. All the biggest genocides have been committed in the name of religion. The best and fastest way to control people and warp their reality is to make them believe in a god.
We’re better than this.
Take the story of Chad and Lori Daybell. She was a normal, successful woman who wasn’t a psychopath. She fell in with a pastor who convinced her of extreme religious ideals, after which they murdered their own children in a misguided belief they’d be safer in heaven than on earth.
Your re-telling of Chad and Lori Daybell sounds too tidy to be true. It's like the first fifteen minutes of a horror movie with a completely happy, care-free life and then she bumps into a pastor and that chance encounter did her in.
Like sure, she poison pilled herself on religion partially but the whole "they were a normal couple" dream-scape section of the 48 hours special you're narrating here is the type of thing that constantly has me talking at the TV when those nuance-bereft junk piles are playing at my house.
She was obviously fucked up before she met the guy, just like a lot of cult followers are fucked up before they seek the guidance of their "guy".
Some people are fucked up from birth, some become fucked up later, and some are varying degrees of fucked up...but people are messy and it's not like they all used to be a happy go-lucky adventurer like you until they took one religion to the knee.
I think people get the relationship inverted. Many people become religious to fill whatever gap they had in the first place. Many people become cult-leaders because they were already sick in the head.
I abbreviated their story to keep my comment short, and linked the full thing for people who want to learn more.
In truth, the reason she was so susceptible to his offshoot of their religion was because she’d been raised believing in the mainstream religion, which he warped a bit in order to gain followers to his cult. She was primed for it because she couldn’t imagine a reality outside of the belief system in which she was raised, and his cult was only slightly outside that and built upon it.
Look up the story yourself, if you like. That’s why I linked it. My quick summary wasn’t ‘too tidy to be true’, and I can give you links to many, many more stories exactly like that one. Loads of normal people have committed atrocities – often against their own children – because their Christian faith told them to. A great many of them weren’t mentally ill until they became religious. Many committed those atrocities because they became convinced heaven was a better place for their children, that demons were real and trying to corrupt their kids, etc. Google it yourself; I’m not trying to filter knowledge here. These were normal people until they became religious.
Like I said, we should be talking about the damage these fables are doing. We should be talking about the damage done by indoctrinating children so they can’t discern reality from fantasy and right from wrong. We should be questioning our leaders when they say morality only exists in their stories, when the opposite is true. This shot is causing us irreparable damage as a society.
Look up the story yourself, if you like.
I'm thoroughly aware of the story which is why I find your summary of it lacking.
I don't like religion at all, but it's entirely clear to me that people's emotional and social needs created religion, and then our love of hierarchical structures created organized religion.
You could wipe religion off the Earth tomorrow and it'd be back by next Tuesday as long as you didn't wipe out all the people on the planet with it.
You're firing in a scatter shot manner at a general human sociological phenomenon and are pretty off target in this case especially, where it's pretty obvious the person had a mental illness.
You’re right, and I don’t disagree with you at all. Yes, we’ve had an emotional need for stories – more for connection with one another than for individual understanding, which cultural stories provide.
I’m saying there’s a difference between cultural stories and organised religion. The former is benign and can translate our questions into a semblance of meaning, and the latter which becomes dictatorial dogma that amplifies the worst of us, turning our basest instincts into abhorrent action.
I don’t think we disagree that much, you and I. I used to think organised religion wasn’t something I could get behind, but I thought to each their own.
The more I learned about it and the more I saw the bad influence it did to people I loved, the more I realised it’s nothing but a terrible influence in the world, holding us back as a people, and causing needless suffering and death.
I don’t think we disagree that much, you and I.
Yeah, I don't think we're very far apart in thought either, there's just some specifics in this case that make organized religion especially not really the culprit in these cases and we disagree on the specifics.
I too hate religion and organized religion probably even more so, and I don't think "to each his own" as much as I'm simply resigned to the fact that it's a part of the human experience, and will probably be around as long as we are.
i also think, in a world without religion, some people would still hear voices and feel compelled to do terrible or dangerous things as a result.
Religion is just a creation of man. I would argue that we have the relationship inverted and that we have religion partially because people heard voices and felt compelled to do terrible or dangerous things as a result.
i don't necessarily disagree with you; neither would Julian Jaynes. i'm just not going to blame organized religion for something (hearing compelling voices) that would exist with or without it.
Oh I think we're in complete agreement on that point.
Like yeah organized religion sucks it too (and how!), but I don't think it did this one...sorry fellas.
Take a society with no mental health assistance and then pepper it with tons of religious fervor. It's a recipe for disaster.
I'm in the middle of the first episode of the third season of the podcast Long Shadow. This one is going to be about mass shootings. Looks like they haven't added it to their website yet, but both of the prior seasons were excellent so I expect this to be more of the same.
Take a society with no mental health assistance and then pepper it with tons of religious fervor.
Then add in a whooole lotta guns
I mean … if I wasn’t already avoiding that shithole state …
In 1976, Larry Cohen made a film called "God Told Me To," where random people commit murders in the name of God. The movie explains it as (spoiler alert) the influence of aliens, but apparently such a thing doesn't actually need science fiction explanations.
Edit: Also, we live in what was the path of totality in Indiana and watched the eclipse in a park. When we came home, my daughter saw a bunch of people in a church parking lot doing some post-eclipse bowing down in prayer (I missed it) and she thought it was hilarious.
"I fell to my knees in that Aldi parking lot" is a popular meme on instagram currently, due to a sighting of Christians welcoming the end times in an Aldi parking lot.
I watched a video yesterday about the whole history of TimeCube.com, and it had the same sorts of patterns we see in online radicalization today. Someone with an untreated mental illness posted regularly on a website, and was egged on by people who thought it was funny. Then some kid who also has an untreated mental illness sees it and takes it seriously. Then that kid does something horrific because of it. (In TimeCube's case the kid jumped in front of a train after meeting the old guy and being rebuffed.)
Can you please link to the video? That sounds really interesting.
Fuckin TimeCube, man. That shit was wild back in the day. I hadn't heard about someone taking it seriously.
"TAIIIIME CYUBE!"
i don't remember which of them said it so weirdly/dramatically, but it has stayed with me.
I wasn't paying attention was some Alex Jones type telling people to do this last week?
Apparently a lot of people on tiktok thought the eclipse was the rapture
I guess everyone else out of the path of totality just stayed on Earth then?
Come on, what do I say here? Lock her in jail? Push her off the cliff?? Craziness should not be supported unless it’s in a tiny padded cell under constant supervision. Too many people in this country claim insanity and if she really is, let her watch Boomerang all day; if she’s not test her boomerang-ability
It's because she didn't wear the special glasses. Or mental illness; probably the latter.
It was the chemtrails. I have photographic proof of Chemtrails visibly crossing the eclipse. I know Joe Biden scheduled the eclipse so we all look up at the right time to be exposed to the mind control chemicals
… is this really easier for some people to believe, than mental illness?
I had to explain to someone that the glasses are needed because you never stare at the sun no matter how dim it may seem. I'm not sure what they originally thought the glasses were for but I get the idea they thought the eclipse was giving of weird energy or powers...
There's never people who God tells them to go cook really good food for the poor. Or maybe we just don't hear about them because that's not really news worthy.
There objectively very very many who say just that, you don't hear about it because no one cares if you're doing something good they only care when you're being shitty.
Those people get arrested and charged with a crime.
I mean. There is the woman who said god told her to sleep with the homeless guy
Now that sounds more spicy. I gotta run this strategy by my wife...hold on...."the sky daemon from the eclipse asked me to please find a local gangbang. I know, I know, I will ask for proof of testing and will definitely meet them all in a public place like a MacDonalds. So?" Yeah she said no.
I can't believe this isn't the onion
Folks on Talk Radio and the Televangelical circuit have been doing dime-store prophecies about the Eclipse being the end of the fucking world for fucking months. I was honestly a bit surprised shit like this wasn't more common.
Maybe Americans are building up a tolerance to the endless media hysteria.
Shit man, wait until you hear about Andrea Yates.
her story is actually pretty tragic and fucked up, if you look into it.
The ONLY way to Prevent this is if someone SHOOTS Her First!
Kamoulox
"Troopers stopped the woman after she drove for about 16 miles (26 kilometers) and found her with an AR-15 rifle and 9mm handgun."
What was she thinking? You need two hands to shoot an AR-15...
Jesus, take the wheel
Nah, she was gonna go Schwarzenegger style and just prop it up on her left arm while it's still on the wheel.
"And we're also going to cite you for unsafe driving."
She votes right wing btw
Classic cause of Moon Madness.
The only thing crazier than Florida Man...
That Hod guy sure tells a lot of people stupid things.
So today I drove five hours to see the eclipse, had a tire blow out, didn't see the eclipse because of thick clouds, and got stuck in traffic for hours on the way back. (I'm still not home.) But at least I haven't been shot by maniac, yet.
Any updates? It's been 8 minutes, you're starting to worry me.
RIP ArbitraryValue. Do you guys remember how excited he was about the eclipse there at the end? It's all he could talk about. That's what I'll remember most.
I'll miss him too, the eclipse lovin bastard.
If only we could have done something.
You didn't? I upvoted his last comment.
Upvote and F in the comments. I loved Arbitrary Value as much as I love any other random commenter.
We should erect a memorial of jeans and beans in their honor. It's what they would've wanted.
Hehe, erect.
We did all we could.
I remember when he blew a maniac in traffic who shot a thick cloud on his back for hours that he didn't get to see because of the eclipse. He never made it home because he was too tired.
That's close enough to how I remember it, too.
You didn't shoot anyone either tho, did you?
It's been two hours. They for sure murdered someone.
It's been 6 hours I'm getting worried
Asking the important questions
When the Creator tells you to do something like that, you want to get it in writing just in case the judge has a different theological take on the matter.
Is it legally admissible if its on some gold plates that only I can read?
Only in Utah
Given that the last guy who tried that ended up in jail, again, I would say no.
You just have to get God to write it in green ink at a 45° angle, then it's okay.
Ya, Yahweh is a bit of a dick.
Moses needed to get "Don't kill people" written in stone but these folks just believe anything they hear
Blind obedience to god telling you to murder someone, no matter how dear they are to you, is one of the most highly praised actions in the Abrahamic canon.
If you liked "Florida Man", you're gonna love "Florida Woman"
It's not the Sunshine State when there's an eclipse going on. Doh!
A meeting technicality!
We put the Wo in Man!
Thank God we have laws to keep guns out of the hands of obvious crazy people.
There is no mental health treatment in our society.
I have come to believe that blind faith is a socially accepted mental illness.
The ICD-11 definition for delusion clearly defines religion, but then commits special pleading to excuse religious belief.
mental health treatment in america is to grab a gun, wave it at people then drown in your addiction of choice. This woman chose "religious conspiracy bullshit"
If anything, there is anti treatment. Organisations are waiting and ready to exploit your mental illness at every turn.
Oh maximizing addictions and false logic are the best ways to make money though. Who the fuck cares if it's bad for the poors. It will never affect the god holy rich who are above it all.
That's because our health system is a fucking joke. Thanks republiclowns!! Working as intended.
Georgia woman. It was a Georgia woman that crossed into Florida. WTH is up with that headline?
She knew where she belonged
Florida has a reputation to maintain
Recruiting outside talent I see. I guess you have do that with an aging population.
It's so weird that they freaked out this much over just this Eclipse. There was an eclipse last year and I didn't hear a peep from these people.
Maybe because last year they didn't have Marjorie Taylor-Greene tell them that earthquakes and eclipse are a warning from god?
2017 was all "Look at the science! Isn't this cool!"
But then THAT path only brushed the Bible Belt...
I think it's because giant singing and man-eating plants are a real concern.
They happen about every 18 months, and thus are a rather normal and common natural phenomenon.
Crazies gonna crazy, though.
Every 6 months really. They just happen in places people aren't a lot of the time. Heck next year north America will get another eclipse.... But you'd have to travel to northern Canada in early spring to see it and it doesn't sound nearly as fun a vacation spot as Mexico I bet to the chasers.
Not a Florida woman. Georgia woman. Georgia is exporting their crazy to Florida.
this is a lie by Big Florida!
(/s)
If God told her to then it should be legal.
No one can prove God didn't tell her to go on a shooting spree.
We need to subpoena god.
Gonna be hard for the marshalls to deliver it. Or, at least to return from delivering it.
just give it to the pope.
I'm sure he can pass it on.
Won't he just ignore it? I'm sure he's seen all the MAGAs ignoring subpoenas and court orders with zero consequences.
And morally ok. Because powerful sky man told her so.
If you go on YouTube and look up videos of the eclipse yesterday, you'll see a ton of videos about why the eclipse marks the beginning of the end of the world. Just pure and total insanity or people taking advantage of that insanity. You might be surprised but you probably won't be because you know in your heart that we're just that far gone now.
This is why I literally groaned when I read another post on lemmy about LLMs using YouTube to learn from...
Ffs do we want these things to be unhinged conspiracy theorist Nazi replicators? I can't think of a worse data set to use than YouTube.... Maybe 4chan, but I don't doubt that's already been scraped.
I'll never forget when Google released their early development ai in the early 2010's and 4chan turned it into a racist sexist genocidal maniac in like a week
You mean Tay? That was Microsoft. One of the researchers involved thinks it was actually interacting with Russian chat bots, not 4chan.
Also, fuck it. What good would a Microsoft owned AI chat bot do for you? This is like getting mad at 4chan for sabotaging the Mnt Dew's naming contest. Everyone knew that Pepsi wasn't going to actually use that name and they embarrassed a billion dollar, multi national corporation.
Hey fair enough I stand corrected.
I just remember hearing about it around the same time as the mtn dew thing you mentioned. That and I vaguely remember a school doing the same thing asking the internet for a name and 4chan just said "hold my beer"
Only if I can personally generate some kind of profit from it.
Yeah I was going to say this is what overpopulation looks like. Then I remembered the witch trials in the 1600s and thought there's plenty more crazy shit people have done. There's more people now and arguably less crazy shit. Stuff like this is always going to happen though, human condition. Still horrible, we've got lots of work to do as a species.
Feels like 1 step forward 2 steps back with this whole "civilisation" thing.
I mean, we gotta mark the Beginning of the End somewhere, right? Might as well be during an eclipse.
Wasn't the eclipse not visible from Florida?
Organised religion is a cancer of the mind.
Those of us who grew up without it literally can’t imagine scenarios like this, though I’ve heard disturbing things from people who seem otherwise sane that make me understand what drives some to do these things. When you’ve internalised fables of good vs evil and that’s how you define reality, it’s a small step to think you have to commit atrocities to save the innocent. You don’t have to have a very divergent mentality to convince yourself of this.
We will all be better off when the vast majority of people give up these fables and begin to live in the real world.
friend, just reading the headline - this isn't organized religion at work, this is psychosis. she could have said the Care Bears told her to do it - same thing.
Psychosis PLUS organised religion. That’s my point, friend. Psychosis alone is a tragedy we should work to address as a society. But many of these stories would not end in senseless violence if there weren’t an underlying system of fantastical belief that bolstered people’s delusions and convinced them their delusions were divinely inspired.
if you have been close to or worked with psychotic people, you might recognize they don't necessarily need religion to come to fantastical conclusions and potentially act on them. i mean, maybe the radio told her. or the coffee pot. or the person who lives in the walls. or the cat.
fwiw, i'm not a massive defender of religion (nor especially a hater). i just think it's a mistake to blame religion for what is sometimes organic disease of the brain (among various possible causes).
This bullshit has convinced non-psychotic people to commit atrocities. It’s not a leap to think it convinces actually psychotic people their delusions are true. Especially when they say so themselves.
No, but if you have a person without glaring mental health issues, adding religion can put them in a state of mind very similar to madness.
Ehh I dunno... I'm as atheist as anyone with an IQ above 60, but I think religion is just a convenient scapegoat for mental illness here. I'm pretty sure someone who shoots strangers on the highway would have done it in a world without religion too, and they would say it's a different mystical force that made them do it. I don't think Christianity actually moved this person to do this.
It acts more as a place for mental illness to be hidden, camoflauged, or accepted as devotion or prophecy.
When someone's delusions overlap with what a church accepts as their ancient prophets' experience, that illness doesn't get proper treatment.
Yep it muddies the waters that distinguish what is rational from irrational. Like a dark damp festering basement, it gives mold a place to fester and grow.
Welcome to a place where you don't need logic; you just need this magical thing called "faith." Such mainstream religions were just the most successful cults.
People generally aren't all or even mostly rational or logical. It's difficult even for people with deep science or technical backgrounds to think in a structured way for long periods of time.
Even if you got most people off of organized religion they'd be on some other bullshit.
Evidence for that is actually all around us too. Organized religion is seeing more and more people walk away from it, but people remain just as full of shit as they were in church.
To your last point I don't know if I see that. Most of the religious nutjobs - organized or free of association - seem predominantly concentrated among right-wing circles. See the rising Christian nationalists for instance. Those who are walking away from religious faith tend to be more on the left side of the spectrum and ironically far more adherent to the teachings of Jesus in his best of image.
It's not one side or another of the political spectrum that's full of shit, it's people in general.
I have easily encountered just as many anti vax crackpots for instance coming from the left as from the right.
That is complete and total bullshit and any reputable statistics survey can prove it.
Let's not bOtH sIdeS this with absurd anecdotes.
Lol yeah you're right it's only right wingers that have irrational beliefs. 👍
Yep, now you're getting it. The vast majority are definitely on the right.
Nearly all conspiracy theories are peddled by right-wing mouthpieces; e.g., Alex Jones and adopted by their right-wing audience.
Right-wingers, statistically on average, are less educated and more susceptible to misinformation.
In the case of anti-vaxx, especially post-Covid, the vast majority are right-wing.
These both sides enlightened centrist false equivalence fallacies are cute and easy for the brain to process, but they aren't grounded in reality.
Dude the right wing doesn't have a monopoly on bullshit, but you can go on believing that (bullshit) if you like and continue to be a living counterexample to your own bad argument.
They account for the vast majority and surveys prove it. You've got nothing and are living in this strange delusional state of cognitive dissonance absent of any substantive evidence whatsoever.
Religion isn’t a scapegoat, and it has nothing to do with IQ. Very smart people are roped into it, and that’s what I mean by it being a social cancer.
Very smart people are raised with stories that they take as reality – that supplant their ability to judge reality for what it is – and it at best colours how they interpret everything for the rest of their lives, and at worst amplifies and gives focus to mental conditions they already have.
Religion is a warped lens through which people are forced to see reality from such a young age, they are incapable of seeing actual reality, and in some cases it just amplifies the otherwise mild mental illness they’d likely have had already.
Without it, some people would already have been disturbed, but with it those people are given a purpose for their delusions.
But in this case this lady is obviously mentally ill why are you ignoring that?
I’m not ignoring that.
My point is that religion is uniquely capable of taking the delusions of the mentally ill and nurturing them into violence.
Even for the mentally stable, it often leads to fantasy. But when mental illness and religion coincide, people who would otherwise be relatively benign in their delusions very easily become convinced their delusions are divine and their violent instincts are justified by scripture. It happens so often, we need to begin acknowledging it.
i think religion is one of many things which can weaponise mental illness. i also think, in a world without religion, some people would still hear voices and feel compelled to do terrible or dangerous things as a result.
Of course there would still be people like that. What I’m saying is there are exponentially more people like that when they’ve been raised from birth to believe in nonsense that warps their sense of right and wrong.
Take the story of Chad and Lori Daybell. She was a normal, successful woman who wasn’t a psychopath. She fell in with a pastor who convinced her of extreme religious ideals, after which they murdered their own children in a misguided belief they’d be safer in heaven than on earth.
I can list examples like that until the cows come home. Normal people who have become convinced to commit atrocities after being drawn into religion to extremes. It’s a psychological virus that can infect anyone. Most large-scale wars have a religious basis. All the biggest genocides have been committed in the name of religion. The best and fastest way to control people and warp their reality is to make them believe in a god.
We’re better than this.
Your re-telling of Chad and Lori Daybell sounds too tidy to be true. It's like the first fifteen minutes of a horror movie with a completely happy, care-free life and then she bumps into a pastor and that chance encounter did her in.
Like sure, she poison pilled herself on religion partially but the whole "they were a normal couple" dream-scape section of the 48 hours special you're narrating here is the type of thing that constantly has me talking at the TV when those nuance-bereft junk piles are playing at my house.
She was obviously fucked up before she met the guy, just like a lot of cult followers are fucked up before they seek the guidance of their "guy".
Some people are fucked up from birth, some become fucked up later, and some are varying degrees of fucked up...but people are messy and it's not like they all used to be a happy go-lucky adventurer like you until they took one religion to the knee.
I think people get the relationship inverted. Many people become religious to fill whatever gap they had in the first place. Many people become cult-leaders because they were already sick in the head.
I abbreviated their story to keep my comment short, and linked the full thing for people who want to learn more.
In truth, the reason she was so susceptible to his offshoot of their religion was because she’d been raised believing in the mainstream religion, which he warped a bit in order to gain followers to his cult. She was primed for it because she couldn’t imagine a reality outside of the belief system in which she was raised, and his cult was only slightly outside that and built upon it.
Look up the story yourself, if you like. That’s why I linked it. My quick summary wasn’t ‘too tidy to be true’, and I can give you links to many, many more stories exactly like that one. Loads of normal people have committed atrocities – often against their own children – because their Christian faith told them to. A great many of them weren’t mentally ill until they became religious. Many committed those atrocities because they became convinced heaven was a better place for their children, that demons were real and trying to corrupt their kids, etc. Google it yourself; I’m not trying to filter knowledge here. These were normal people until they became religious.
Like I said, we should be talking about the damage these fables are doing. We should be talking about the damage done by indoctrinating children so they can’t discern reality from fantasy and right from wrong. We should be questioning our leaders when they say morality only exists in their stories, when the opposite is true. This shot is causing us irreparable damage as a society.
I'm thoroughly aware of the story which is why I find your summary of it lacking.
I don't like religion at all, but it's entirely clear to me that people's emotional and social needs created religion, and then our love of hierarchical structures created organized religion.
You could wipe religion off the Earth tomorrow and it'd be back by next Tuesday as long as you didn't wipe out all the people on the planet with it.
You're firing in a scatter shot manner at a general human sociological phenomenon and are pretty off target in this case especially, where it's pretty obvious the person had a mental illness.
You’re right, and I don’t disagree with you at all. Yes, we’ve had an emotional need for stories – more for connection with one another than for individual understanding, which cultural stories provide.
I’m saying there’s a difference between cultural stories and organised religion. The former is benign and can translate our questions into a semblance of meaning, and the latter which becomes dictatorial dogma that amplifies the worst of us, turning our basest instincts into abhorrent action.
I don’t think we disagree that much, you and I. I used to think organised religion wasn’t something I could get behind, but I thought to each their own.
The more I learned about it and the more I saw the bad influence it did to people I loved, the more I realised it’s nothing but a terrible influence in the world, holding us back as a people, and causing needless suffering and death.
Yeah, I don't think we're very far apart in thought either, there's just some specifics in this case that make organized religion especially not really the culprit in these cases and we disagree on the specifics.
I too hate religion and organized religion probably even more so, and I don't think "to each his own" as much as I'm simply resigned to the fact that it's a part of the human experience, and will probably be around as long as we are.
Religion is just a creation of man. I would argue that we have the relationship inverted and that we have religion partially because people heard voices and felt compelled to do terrible or dangerous things as a result.
i don't necessarily disagree with you; neither would Julian Jaynes. i'm just not going to blame organized religion for something (hearing compelling voices) that would exist with or without it.
Oh I think we're in complete agreement on that point.
Like yeah organized religion sucks it too (and how!), but I don't think it did this one...sorry fellas.
Agreed. I was raised Catholic but I rebelled every step of the way and GTFO as soon as I could. Yeah angels will get you stuff like this.
Take a society with no mental health assistance and then pepper it with tons of religious fervor. It's a recipe for disaster.
I'm in the middle of the first episode of the third season of the podcast Long Shadow. This one is going to be about mass shootings. Looks like they haven't added it to their website yet, but both of the prior seasons were excellent so I expect this to be more of the same.
https://longlead.com/article/long-shadow
Then add in a whooole lotta guns
I mean … if I wasn’t already avoiding that shithole state …
In 1976, Larry Cohen made a film called "God Told Me To," where random people commit murders in the name of God. The movie explains it as (spoiler alert) the influence of aliens, but apparently such a thing doesn't actually need science fiction explanations.
Edit: Also, we live in what was the path of totality in Indiana and watched the eclipse in a park. When we came home, my daughter saw a bunch of people in a church parking lot doing some post-eclipse bowing down in prayer (I missed it) and she thought it was hilarious.
"I fell to my knees in that Aldi parking lot" is a popular meme on instagram currently, due to a sighting of Christians welcoming the end times in an Aldi parking lot.
I watched a video yesterday about the whole history of TimeCube.com, and it had the same sorts of patterns we see in online radicalization today. Someone with an untreated mental illness posted regularly on a website, and was egged on by people who thought it was funny. Then some kid who also has an untreated mental illness sees it and takes it seriously. Then that kid does something horrific because of it. (In TimeCube's case the kid jumped in front of a train after meeting the old guy and being rebuffed.)
Can you please link to the video? That sounds really interesting.
Sure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7lWCqbgQnU
Thanks!
Fuckin TimeCube, man. That shit was wild back in the day. I hadn't heard about someone taking it seriously.
"TAIIIIME CYUBE!"
i don't remember which of them said it so weirdly/dramatically, but it has stayed with me.
I wasn't paying attention was some Alex Jones type telling people to do this last week?
Apparently a lot of people on tiktok thought the eclipse was the rapture
I guess everyone else out of the path of totality just stayed on Earth then?
Come on, what do I say here? Lock her in jail? Push her off the cliff?? Craziness should not be supported unless it’s in a tiny padded cell under constant supervision. Too many people in this country claim insanity and if she really is, let her watch Boomerang all day; if she’s not test her boomerang-ability
It's because she didn't wear the special glasses. Or mental illness; probably the latter.
It was the chemtrails. I have photographic proof of Chemtrails visibly crossing the eclipse. I know Joe Biden scheduled the eclipse so we all look up at the right time to be exposed to the mind control chemicals
… is this really easier for some people to believe, than mental illness?
I had to explain to someone that the glasses are needed because you never stare at the sun no matter how dim it may seem. I'm not sure what they originally thought the glasses were for but I get the idea they thought the eclipse was giving of weird energy or powers...
There's never people who God tells them to go cook really good food for the poor. Or maybe we just don't hear about them because that's not really news worthy.
There objectively very very many who say just that, you don't hear about it because no one cares if you're doing something good they only care when you're being shitty.
Those people get arrested and charged with a crime.
I mean. There is the woman who said god told her to sleep with the homeless guy
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10630427/Personal-trainer-finds-church-going-wife-cheating-homeless-man-Video.html
Now that sounds more spicy. I gotta run this strategy by my wife...hold on...."the sky daemon from the eclipse asked me to please find a local gangbang. I know, I know, I will ask for proof of testing and will definitely meet them all in a public place like a MacDonalds. So?" Yeah she said no.
I can't believe this isn't the onion
Folks on Talk Radio and the Televangelical circuit have been doing dime-store prophecies about the Eclipse being the end of the fucking world for fucking months. I was honestly a bit surprised shit like this wasn't more common.
Maybe Americans are building up a tolerance to the endless media hysteria.
Shit man, wait until you hear about Andrea Yates.
her story is actually pretty tragic and fucked up, if you look into it.
The ONLY way to Prevent this is if someone SHOOTS Her First!
Kamoulox
"Troopers stopped the woman after she drove for about 16 miles (26 kilometers) and found her with an AR-15 rifle and 9mm handgun."
What was she thinking? You need two hands to shoot an AR-15...
Jesus, take the wheel
Nah, she was gonna go Schwarzenegger style and just prop it up on her left arm while it's still on the wheel.
"And we're also going to cite you for unsafe driving."
She votes right wing btw
Classic cause of Moon Madness.
The only thing crazier than Florida Man...
That Hod guy sure tells a lot of people stupid things.