Interesting in this context is completely divorced from morally good/bad. Could be any group from any area at any time in history. I’ll start with a few, followers of the cult of pythagoras, contemporary black Hebrew Israelites, antiracist skinheads and the Amish (neo-luddites in general). Don’t be racist or a prick to other people discussing.
Juggalos are pretty out there. Huffing nitrous, and drinking shitty beer and root beer? And they are super proud of it. I’m pretty sure there’s meth involved. I don’t think they do much harm to anybody but themselves, and maybe anybody they influence into becoming a juggalo. But man, what a weird group of people.
I like Faygo red pop tho. I’m glad the brand hasn’t been dragged with the cult.
Nobody talks about or looks at Faygo without thinking of juggalos. Sorry to burst your bubble.
Fair enough. I meant that the Faygo company isn’t as deep in the ax-wielders as Timbs are in the rap community. They produce their full range still & sometimes make new flavors.
They’re still a good brand, is what I’m saying.
I’ve known a handful of juggalos. I can’t claim that the ones I’ve met are necessarily representative of them as a whole.
But I will say that overall the ones I’ve met have been really solid people. Not the brightest bulbs out there, but also very aware of that fact.
I think the best way to think of them is they’re the weird kids you went to school with who weren’t smart enough to be nerds. They’re a pretty welcoming and friendly group as long as you give them some basic respect, and they really look out for each other. There have been two occasions where one has literally offered the shirt off his back.
Some of them definitely have some drug issues, but the ones I’ve met are mostly just regular stoners in clown makeup, most of them haven’t even been big drinkers.
Juggalos get a bad rap, but I think it’s mostly a handful of loud assholes making all the rest of them look bad, I’ve never had a bad interaction with one and I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.
I’d back this up entirely, I know none of them well, but I’ve met a bunch and none that I’ve met land outside your characterization.
In fact the awareness, like you said, of being both permanently “off the beaten path”, but not usefully so and basically involuntarily - that’s such a common thread, and yep I’ve seen those folks be super generous, too.
Idk I’m ready to start treating juggalos almost as a protected class of some kind lmao, juggalo hate seems to come exclusively in the “I’ve never really met one but they seem gross” variety.
Maybe a fun way to think about it - give me a choice between dinner with any random juggalo vs dinner with any random American voter, if I really think about it, rolling those dice, I’m picking the rando juggalo every time…
So I sorta see this with subcultures that get negative attention. Back when being gay was looked at as bad generally in society every gay man I met (so uncloseted) was generaly very nice and like you describe with juggalos. As it became more accepted more and more where willing to come out of the closet and now I would not say the typical gay man I meet (I say man because I have not met a whole lot of gay women) is just typical of anyone. Most nice enough, some jerks. I have seen that in furry interactions now a days. Generally nice if you accept them as they are.
Interesting observation! To rephrase, sounds like you’re saying that for a persecuted subculture, the vocally “out” members behave almost like polite ambassadors for the rest of the group lol
Kinda. My theory is its kinda a combination of people who are out have to be strong and kind while jerks just won’t come out till its safe. I by no means am saying people who come out later are jerks just that as a percentage they will be larger than earlier on.
Yeah, makes sense and sounds like the kinda thing sociologists have a word for probably lol
probably. I mean im just a rando making observations with no method so maybe I just have to small a pool of experience and im all wrong.
One of my former best mates is a juggalo, and let me tell you, if you e got a problem they’re absolutely the guys you want at your back. Every single one I’ve ever met has been a stand up sort.
Honestly that doesn’t seem that weird. People hanging out and having a good time together with the use of drugs?
Wall Street finance bros do the same thing and I find that way more problematic
The benedryl abusers. https://www.reddit.com/r/DPH/
I can only assume these people can’t get their hands on any other kind of high and are desperate. After a certain amount you start seeing spiders.
The Gadget Cult worships a 90s cartoon mouse
It’s not too interesting but there is a subreddit full of people who apply LLMs to do physics research. The place itself can be rather unhinged, but every week or so someone posts about how they have uncovered a groundbreaking theory of the universe. Such posts are so abstracted as to be disagreeable to the rest of this community. They are the writings of a mind turned in upon itself, an idea several reflections deep in a fun house mirror.
I (LLM hater, non-physicist) use this community to find cool science-ish sounding words for my sci-fi worldbuilding.
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Appears to be https://www.reddit.com/r/LLMPhysics/
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online, stumbled upon chronic lyme community at least on 2 different forums(i believed i had lyme one time as i had encountered with a tick but wasnt bitten years before, until i realized most of them had some sort mental issue going on) because i was suffering from some unusual neurological conditions, which lyme may cause.
they believe lyme isnt curable according to them and can explain any range of symptoms, even if its not related to lyme. plus they believe it is endemic in other countries where lyme doesnt occur. and any tick species can carry it. like they believed every skin rash that may look like a bullyesys as a sign of lyme.
they also ended up harassing and issuing death threat against the ACTUAL infectious disease specialist who discovered lyme, because he was contradicting chronic lyme believers. and mostly its midwestern white women who believes this stuff. now to that end, theres a whole industry apparently furthering the delusions. now draws in all sorts of people.
Lyme doctors, naturopaths will try to prey on people by convincing them to take a lyme specific test from a well known questionable company that makes these blood tests. and then they have the LYME mds prescribe them actual Long term antibiotics, months or years on it. they believe the side effects is causing is treating the “chronic lyme” symptoms. at the same time they also take supplements “extraction from plants” as supplemental treatment, again it causes unknown side effects, so they think its treating it. they are getting constant thrush infections, from the ANTIBIOTICS. and the lyme mds, also dont take insurance, red flag here. thier family members have reported, some of them suffered some permanent neurological damage from taking antibiotics for too long, or some wierd plant supplement. and guess which politics they side with.(and this was pre trumps 1st term). very dangerous as it involves MDs preying on people, prescribing them actual meds to things they may not have. and furthering the delusions of “chronic lyme” people.
also any attempt to confront or question chronic lyme will draw thier ire.
basically health conspiracy.
It’s chronic fatigue syndrome, which can be triggered by actual Lyme, but hangs around after whatever illness has been cleared from the body. They mistakenly think it’s still a bacteria in there. The antibiotics help their symptoms because a broad range of antibiotics act as a strong anti inflammatory in ways current NSAIDs don’t, so it feels like it makes them better. The bladder pain community I’m in deals with the same crap of people thinking they have a permanent ‘embedded infection’ and there are people who take antibiotics for years.
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Long Covid is real, though. Probably some autoimmune shit going on. Women are notoriously ignored in medical studies and are more likely to have autoimmune disorders.
When no one helps you, you cling onto the first bullshit that make sense. And let me be clear on how there is absolutely no help for chronic, weird symptoms as a woman. You slowly just start to lose your mind as your life falls apart and no real doctor will offer anything but vitamin D and antidepressants. (It was endometriosis. I had undiagnosed endometriosis for 20 years no one gave a shit about).
if you try to confront them , or tell them it something else they become very hostile to you on other sites, they will legit stalk you on the site you critcized them with facts and hound you, its basically a cult so to speak. its more like psychosomatic illness or delusional parasitosis.
They have an illness destroying their life (even if it’s not the one they think it is) and they’ve found a medication that actually makes them feel better. Everyone tries to take this medication away (antibiotics) without providing anything else effective in it’s place. It’s understandable why they’re hostile.
CFS\Long Covid isn’t solely psychosomatic in the cases where an illness triggered it, that’s autoimmune.
There’s no good options for them right now outside of social support, but they certainly don’t get that in my country either. So I get why they’re absolutely hostile and just leave them be.
since they dont know what they have(so csf is not even on the table for them), they dont seek out 2nd opinions and just attribute all thier symptoms to “chronic lyme”, because its an “LYME DOCTOR” convincing them.
Wait. Is chronic Lyme not actually a thing? There are quite a few long/chronic types of things I’m aware of that are quite real, but also still not super well understood. I assumed Lyme was in there with those. Real, but more of a side-side-effect of a disease that breaks something in weird ways for different people.
Chronic lyme is pseudoscience, its the belief that “lyme” isnt curable. but people dont attribute the neurological damage from lyme as a sequelae or the fact that there a bunch of other diseases that cause symptoms similar to lyme. so they seek out LLMD to give them confirmation biases(LLMD are unethical asf, but thier MD license arnt in danger.) by the way, chronic lyme was coined by a mom, like with other fake diseases, and they also lean into anti-vax a bit. almost any posts about lyme on any forum/video, always have someone chiming in to look into the Chronic lyme. there was an episode of monsters inside me, about lyme i think the official channel deleted the video as it was drawing unnecessary attention,
the problem is these people also seeing UNETHICL MDs who prescribe them questionable blood tests and antibiotics, which as you know if you take abx too long it can cause THRUSH infections, and neurological problems, like peripheral neuropathy. since these docs usually dont take Insurance, because eitherthey know insurance will try to investigate fraud, or whatever, they CHARGE BY THE HOUR, USUALLY hundreds.
lyme, if you leave untreated long enough it causes syndromes similar to RA, and other neurolgoical diseases, which can be long term or permanent. what the CL people believes is this is a permanent infection. also as a note they dont believe in Infectious diseases specialists too,.
Wow thanks for that follow up info. I had no idea. I also looked it up some and read a few things in it. Hard to know what is accurate or true, but yeah. It makes a lot of sense that it is the untreated infection leading to neurological damage and it’s that neuro damage that is mistaken for an ongoing infection. I can see how people would believe that.
Sad that it’s being taken advantage of too, ugh.
I remember being TERRIFIED of getting Lyme as a kid because there was this kinda perception/belief in permanent illness or severe damage and all that. Not that Lyme isn’t dangerous or deadly, but good to know it’s not some spooky forever mystery disease.
remember the scientist who discovered lyme, was stalked, harrassed and had death threats against him, he had to get private security. he was also saying theres no such thing as CHRONIC lyme. its basically a cult with an industry behind it. like someone said it likely it some other disorder, like CF or a mental component. if you dont live in lyme “country”, or unless you were near there but dint see a tick or anything, ubt a telltales bullseye rash.
It’s just chronic fatigue syndrome.
Boyfriend took me to see The Seventh Seal over the weekend, and in that I learned that Flagellantism rose out of the Black Death. As in, they couldn’t psychologically handle the Black Death so much that they turned to whipping themselves to pray for the plague to end. They would travel through towns, performatively whip themselves, and scream at people to repent.
Yeah they’ve inspired some really cool fictional characters.
Think about how awful covid was, even for a lot of people who didn’t get seriously ill. Now imagine if we knew nothing about where it came from or how to prevent or heal it, and nobody, absolutely nobody could reliably give any insight.
Then it lasts for seven years, nearly halving the population, before coming back seven years after that. In a place where seven is a religiously significant number.
I would have gone fucking nuts too.
The Weather Underground were a leftist militant group in the US who did a bunch of bombings and riots in the 1970: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_Underground
There’s a decent documentary about them: https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0343168/
I’m not typically in favor of bombing things. You know, like in general. That said, blowing up a statue, waiting for it to be rebuilt and then blowing it up again is pretty funny.
Yeah. Also AFAIK, they bombed a bunch of buildings, but only at times they knew no one would be in them, and never killed or injured anyone.
Then they blew it up a third time.
when did they chill out and start serving public apis
Fun fact. Both are started at the University of Michigan and the latter was named as an homage to the leftist group.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_Underground_(weather_service)
I follow paranormal/UFO/ghost/Milab/conspiracy literature. I collect books by these authors and I like to follow individuals on their career trajectory though the subject matter. I’m more interested in the people and the amount and rate that they deviate from the mainstream.
I’ve noticed that their views and books tend to get more fringe and extreme the further they go on their career, which isn’t too surprising, but what surprised me more was that there was less infighting than I expected, and a surprising groupthink product where all their ideas come together.
How do you reconcile aliens and bigfoot, witches, ghosts, and automatic writing, loch Ness monster, time slips and self-mummifying monks, tulpas, poltergeists and UFOs, cattle abduction and missing persons, Jewish space lasers and fae folk, changelings and vaccine mind control? It seemed like many of these were exclusive OR concepts?
They all seem to come together under one porous, unifying theory of everything supernatural. There’s no real guidelines, the whole raft of authors are just continually “yes, and”-ing each other into this vast soupy mass of theories which, if I had to put a label on it, boils down to transdimensional demonology.
It’s like they all sort of figured out that infighting is not so profitable, and so they are practicing academic radical acceptance without any real guiding force.
That’s my take-away, anyway.
antiracist skinheads
I’ve read about these guys. Their take on it is that the skins started as a working class solidarity movement (the short hair is for safety while working on factory machinery) that got corrupted by nationalism and they have more in common with immigrant workers than with their own country’s capitalists.
Non-racist skinheads pre-date the racist ones.
Ska is a Jamacain music style that white working class British youth got into due to working and living alongside Jamaican immigrants, leading to mixing with punk to create 2 Tone.
The racists started to co-opt and taint the movement later on.
I am a bald white guy, I have this patch on both of my battle vests.
And fuck white power skinheads, and fuck nazi punks.
Nazi punks FUCK OFF!
I learned about them after using “skinhead” in a derogatory way to a music buff. That was the same conversation where I learned that ska is actually older than reggae, which is still wild to me.
Similar is just actual punk culture in general
I’ve looked into them too a while ago and the skinhead subculture is pretty interesting. I’m going off of memory but I’m pretty sure the subculture started in London in the 1960s. There were three big subcultures at the time in London, the posh upper class were “mods”, the lower class “rude boys” got their influences and style from Jamaican immigrants, and finally the “skinheads” were the middle class had their shaved heads and Doc Martens. The second wave of skinheads in the 70s and 80s in the UK and US were basically anti-punks. They were the punks who were mad about the commercialization of their culture and they shaved their mohawks, traded their battle jackets for flannels, and moved from pink music towards ska. And finally the third wave in the 80s and 90s were the racists who were getting tired of getting their teeth kicked in at punk shows. And since hating people for no reason doesn’t have a style or culture of its own, those shitbags (I would argue very successfully) stole the working class style of the skinheads
Knights Templar, one of the oldest secret societies that may or may not still exist.
They most definitely still exist today. I studied in a private Jesuit run school. We were taught survival skills in the cubs & scouts. Then we were taught defensive combat skills.
You could also enroll in fencing & marital arts, but I had other things on my mind at the time.
Very historically interesting group.
The Free Zone folks.
Basically, they’re Scientologist Lutherans. They love the teachings of Scientology and the works of L. Ron Hubbard. They’re fully onboard with all the wacky Scientologist beliefs and practices. But they think the church itself is hopelessly corrupt and shouldn’t be followed. They believe everyone should be able to read about Xenu without having to pay the church a bunch of money.
I read Gypsy Boy recently and one of the most fascinating parts was the dynamic between the Romani and Irish Travelers. I guess it’s naive to have assumed there would be comradarie since they have similar lifestyles.
I found Urban eXperiment to be kind of an interesting group. They’re the folks who built a hidden cinema in the Paris Catacombs.
Oh wild
The Luddites were a labour movement with really admirable goals. They were only anti technology because it was being used to screw over textile workers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite
They weren’t even really anti technology - breaking the tech was the means available to them that worked. Protesting and petitioning didn’t get them anywhere, so they decided on direct action to make it hurt the capitalists in the only place they care about. That meant smashing looms and carders and everything else, because those were incredibly expensive.
That meant smashing looms and carders and everything else, because those were incredibly expensive.
Like data centers and ram are
Oh that’s interesting! I had a different internal definition of the term. Thanks for sharing!
Here’s an excellent recent book on the topic. https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/brian-merchant/blood-in-the-machine/9780316487740/
Margaret Killjoy did a great couple of episodes on them as well
Yea, they were an example of early anti-capitalist organization. Their biggest weakness was identifying the means of production as their enemy, not the owners of capital themselves, which became a valuable lesson for future organizers.
Spiritualists conducting scam stances in 1850s Boston, the Fox sisters. Their scam was done by “knocking noises” that were generated by the sisters cracking joints or even just tapping on the table or floor.
The circles they traveled in included Quakers, suffragettes, high society, and financiers. (Some of their early seances centered on stock market predictions, and made them a good deal of money.)
I just love that intersection of societies coming together to be scammed by some pretty bright women, in a really interesting time in our national history. Strict religious beliefs in a marriage with new age free thought.
I have kind of wanted to write a book centered on that time but never found a good hook.
My grandmother was an eventual product of that generation in Boston. Very equal rights for women while in a weird religious sect, Christian Science, founded by feminist Mary Baker Eddy.
Knocking with your feet to pretend there is a ghost is still an alive and well practice. I don’t have exact instances on hand but John Wolfe on YouTube has covered a lot of ghost hunting content and some people in there do it.
Today there are more technological ways to create ghostly knocking using various devices, but if the “ghost hunter”/“medium” is taken to a location they can’t prep beforehand, some of them still do basic knocking tricks.
monkey.jpeg
I don’t remember the specifics since it’s been a while, but I think these are the John Wolfe videos that cover fake knocking
