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.
In the early days of the Internet - mid-90s or so - my buddy happened upon a community of “gainers” online. They are apparently gay men into feeding each other and being obese. Also typically opposed to body hair.
Early internet was weird. I found a forum where gay men would write public, erotic love letters detailing their willingness to contract, or transmit HIV to each other on purpose. Like, viscerally describing giving or getting each other’s “pozzie” (HIV-positive status)
I get that kinks exist but this seems dangerous
Yikes! I think I’d rather be a gainer.
Another extremely odd group to pop out of the gay community? Bug chasers.
The word interesting is doing a lot of work here.
On one hand flat earthers are very interesting. Stupid the stupidest but interesting.
On the other hand it’d be better if there were no flat earthers at all for them to be interesting in the first place.
Well, someone has to fight the globalist agenda
Pretty much. In terms of “harmless” interesting? Maybe hobby biking? It started as a parody of hobby horsing, which is already a hilariously cringey thing.
For the uninitiated, hobby horsing is when people run around on foot completing tiny horse agility courses, while holding a toy broomstick horse between their legs. One of these:
It’s basically what happens when horse girls don’t have horse girl money. And no, I’m not making this up:
Hobby biking started as a parody of that. They got rid of most of a BMX bike, only keeping the front wheel and handlebars. They don full BMX gear. Full helmet, hard plate pads, riding boots, etc… Then they run through BMX and mountain bike courses on foot, while pushing this wheel (or sometimes even just the front handlebars without a wheel) along in front of them.
There is also the natural offshoot, hobby moto. Where people take modified motocross bike frames, and carry them through dirtbike courses:
I don’t know what’s more funny the content of your comment or the fact that you put in such a massive effort to illustrate your point.
Either way thank you! I woke up to this and it put me in a better mood!
Interesting that one of the more popular weather forecasting sites is named after a terrorist group
Owned by IBM now.
I’ve been using WU for probably 15 years. It’s been one of the most consistent weather sites and apps as far as decent quantity and quality of data. I had completely forgotten about the terrorist group with the same name. Now I’ll never be able to unsee it.
Just an fyi the black Hebrew Israelites have a history of some pretty problematic beliefs and history. The Southern poverty law center (they keep track of hate groups in the U.S.) have a write up on them.
Oh I know that’s why I made the point of morally good/bad not being part of the equation. Just interesting. I saw some CRAZY videos of them in public. So, I looked into their general ideas and beliefs. They are like half the reason I made the thread.
The Luddites were a labour movement with really admirable goals. They were only anti technology because it was being used to screw over textile workers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite
Yea, they were an example of early anti-capitalist organization. Their biggest weakness was identifying the means of production as their enemy, not the owners of capital themselves, which became a valuable lesson for future organizers.
They weren’t even really anti technology - breaking the tech was the means available to them that worked. Protesting and petitioning didn’t get them anywhere, so they decided on direct action to make it hurt the capitalists in the only place they care about. That meant smashing looms and carders and everything else, because those were incredibly expensive.
That meant smashing looms and carders and everything else, because those were incredibly expensive.
Like data centers and ram are
Oh that’s interesting! I had a different internal definition of the term. Thanks for sharing!
Here’s an excellent recent book on the topic. https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/brian-merchant/blood-in-the-machine/9780316487740/
Margaret Killjoy did a great couple of episodes on them as well
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/
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’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.
The antinatalists are always a fun and cheerful bunch. . .
Yeah, I’m not a fan of them but its an interesting philosophy to learn about.
It’s a take but if anyone went to kill any of them I’m betting they would attempt to defend their life or loved ones. It’s easy to say it’s less suffering to not exist although no one actually knows what if anything exists after death or before birth. In the case of pansychism or something similar to samsara the story could be more involved than many think aka it’s not as simple as just not being born a human or dying to end suffering.
I would specify that we ought to decrease needless and avoidable suffering for all minds. That is not all suffering is needless, for instance surgery, exercise, physical therapy, mental healing are often accompanied by great suffering but ultimately bring one closer to wellbeing. It’s the suffering that brings one away from wellbeing that ought to be diminished. Now the belief that there is no mind before birth or after death is based on assumptions the same as one believing there is mind before birth or after death. The most accurate stance would be an agnostic one, aka just admitting we don’t actually know one way or the other.
You are probably confusing antinatalists and efilists. The antinatalism movement is about not having children, because they perceive it as immoral, as the kids cannot choose being born, and being alive means you are doomed to suffer. That position does not necessarily take stances on what you should do, when you are already alive; that requires some other ideological standpoints. Efilists on the other hand, are the edgy (and dangerous) ones, that think everything would be better as dead.
Seems the ones I’ve run into were both, particularly on their subreddit. The point still kind of stands. If one believes they ought not have been born then there are solutions to their dilemma and if they truly believe that then they are free to act upon that, particularly in locations with legal assisted suicide.
Now as to the morality of the act of having children. It really does depend on some axioms. The first one that comes to mind is whether or not we have free will, what was the state of a mind (if any) before being born, what is the overall state of reality. In a circumstance like samsara being or not being birthed as a human on this earth isn’t really going to change the overall circumstance, same kind of situation with pansychism in many versions. These are all things once again no one has any answers to either way so the best course is an agnostic take. Maybe having kids is immoral, maybe not, no one really knows and it’s okay that we don’t know right now.
I think it is actually important to draw the distinction between antinatalism and efilisim. Antinatalisim at its core has the strong idea of how an individual should be able to choose for themselves. That is their whole justification for the thought, that they do not want to have kids, since the kids cannot choose that for themselves. That high value being assigned to personal choice, then, is in direct opposition with the dark goal, where the efilist ideology on the other hand seems to almost unavoidably lead: the idea, that everything should die, and that it should be helped to happen.
Personally I am probably a bit too nihilistic, and perceive, that we humans just tend to assign too much value on thoughts, that only exist in the human experience of reality. Antinatalism sounds like a valid ideology, if you care the most about individual’s right to choose for themself. But there are other things, that people might value more, depending on what they care about.
I get you, it’s just that if you follow the implications of antinatalism it bleeds into efilism. You’re explaining why they view birth as unethical but it leads to conclusions that work against the concept of personal choice as reasoned above. Now to add to the issue at hand i would imagine such individuals are more than willing to limit personal choice in other contexts. Like we should stop people from murdering even if that’s their personal choice and we should imprison them even if it’s their personal choice to be free. Absolute personal choice is a messy concept to get behind.
I do respect your time and appreciate our discussion. I get that you’re not in that corner so to speak. I guess I’m more of a non-dualistic unified reality nihilist, not only does it not matter but division between one thing and another is more so a perspective or illusion of domain than an actual aspect of the true nature of reality. Here is maybe a better explanation. Everything is one, Brahman fell asleep and everything is just incarnations of Brahman in the same way when you dream everything is just you, incarnations of your mind. You see a tree while sleeping, well that’s just your mind in the form of a tree.
Oh yes, I cannot claim I am in any way an expert on antinatalism, nor do I follow their ideology (I mean, I cannot have children, so I guess I technically do…?). I just take their side against efilism, as the latter can be extremely harmless, and I would rather have the still life-respecting antinatalists dominate the discussions about the subjects in question, than let edgy anti-lifers, to gain more visibility and support.
I also appreciate your views, it is an interesting perspective to hear. Would you classify it as panpsycism, or does that focus too much on the consciousness part, in comparison?
I lean more towards just the weird metaphysical ideas, and coil that way to that another side of nihilistic views, where I just do not trust human perception of reality. Everything that exists to us, might be completely flawed, and what we perceive as absolute truths or assign as existing things and concepts (like math, or the concept of a mindl), might not be anything else than our delusions - we are unable to know, anyway. This of course leads to all the problems of impossibility of real knowledge and all that, but as we cannot exist outside our own perceived realities - be it separate beings, or all just one - we are just forced to live in that uncertainty. Everything that exists might be just physical things, our thoughts nothing but electric impulses, and we are just having the perception of them being something else… or maybe that is just delusion as well, too, and we just cannot comprehend what form of existence the reality is, as to us it, is how it is. This way nothing really matters, or more like mattering itself is just a human concept - yet everything inside human perspection still matters, to us.
I really don’t get how the they would defend their life in any way relates.
If for instance one truly believes they should not have existed in the first place then action that would end their existence theoretically shouldn’t be met with resistance as per their own beliefs.
thats rediculous. its not specific to them and the action they take is just not to have kids. if not having a kid is wrong then having one and not 2 is worse. violence and killing is a completely different thing.
I mean multiple nations allow legally assisted suicide. To say that no one should be born or that birthing a person is immoral infers that one’s own birth was immoral which infers it should not have happened to begin with. Now a statement is all well and good until it’s actually applied and one follows their beliefs all the way to all of its conclusions.
who said birthing a person is immoral in this thread? Our species destroying the planet from overuse of what it can provide is immoral. That does come from there being to many of us greedily grabbing for them. Its a knock on effect.
Related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntary_Human_Extinction_Movement
The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHEMT[A]) is an environmental movement that calls for all people to abstain from reproduction in order to cause the gradual voluntary extinction of humankind.
Are they equally pleasant to talk to?
Never tried talking to someone who takes that seriously. But “Voluntary” is in the name…
That’s a tad better but absolute extinction seems a smidge extreme when humans can indeed live in symbiosis with nature. I’m guessing a mind that has reached the conclusion extinction is the one and only way is quite unhappy.
I mean I get it. I mean we can live in symbiosis with nature and even have to some degree but it seems in our nature to not and those that don’t tend to get an advantage that then causes the non sustainable folk to dominate. Ideally I would like the population to go down to a point where we use less than what the earth produces in a year and honestly at this point its sorta gott be like half until the earth has some time to heal. This would be based on what we are actually doing and not a theoretical level that if we acted sustainable enough (which we currently don’t) would allow for the population size. It should be based on how we are actually behaving.
Idk humans existed for a long time before society and our near ancestors have been around for millions upon millions of years. It’s maybe like the last 200ish years where we’ve been a serious ecological menace. It’s a bit odd to take like 0.07% of the time we’ve been around to be judged by. I guess you can argue it back to like the beginning of known civilization but that’s still like 3.3%. the other 96.7% to 99.93% of the time we were ecologically insignificant in contrast to greater forces like ice ages. I still find the view needlessly extreme.
Now of course we have indeed fucked shit up pretty badly the last 200ish years and we need to fix it quick, fast, and in a hurry and the absolute laziest and fastest way of doing that is just killing everyone. It’s like the answer of a five year old. Let’s use technology and policy? Nah just kill everyone.
last 200 has been particularly bad but we have been not living in harmony before that. For most of civilization although some were not to bad. I mean yeah millions of years but why not just add apes at that point. But yeah 200 years ago our population was such that we did not do that much damage. heck 50 years ago was about when we started using more than one earth. If we had worked hard at sustainablility and kept our numbers in line we would be fine now. As I said though after all the damage we have done we need to drop to about a billion at least until we are optimally living sustainably. Which given humans will be a long assed time if at all.
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.
Rojava, an socialist autonomous region in northern Syria: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rojava_Revolution
And the Zapatistas, another successful socialist insurgency in mexico: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zapatista_Army_of_National_Liberation
Very interesting.
Rojava coverage by famed bagel chucking weirdo Robert Evans.
Do you happen to have a link about the bagel chucking though?
First couple of years of the show, pre covid. He would hurl said baked goods at the ceiling with a shout near the end of shows iirc.
Zapatistas mentioned, nice. They’re really interesting to read about, including how Mexico stopped trying to kill them.
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.
My dad was part of a masonic lodge later on in life and, what I got from meeting a couple of his colleagues and talking to him about it, it really wasn’t that interesting. It’s basically a social space for older men with some connections/money and a lot of rituals (which my dad described very giddily, lol, the superficial fool). Most likely influential in some way (as any group of uhh “funny” old men with reach can be) but kinda meh… it didn’t seem like he learned anything transcendental or important from his time there.
The free masons originally grew as a support and trust network.
It used to be that traveling was FAR less common. Consequently, travellers were seen as suspect. One of the major exceptions was masons. They would have to relocate to big projects e.g. a castle. They would stay long enough that the lack of trust was a problem, but not long enough to properly overcome it.
End result, they started vouching for each other. A local groups would vouch for the newcomers. They would introduce them and stop them getting ripped off.
Furthermore, stonemasonry was a dangerous trade. It was easy for a mason to be killed far from home. They clubbed together to support the families of members, as well as the disabled.
Wrap this up in Christianity based traditions and you have the masonic free masons. An early cooperative support and social networking group.
Yeah lots of meh in that kind of thing in my experience.
No idea what your dad’s like, but I reckon we in the secular west are write off rituals way too easily. They can have lots of value - silly fun not least of all, but also community building and meaning-making.
yeah it’s also my impression. i’ve never been with the freemasons but from my impression as an outsider, it’s a very outdated structure. not sure whether they still don’t allow women in. yeah, it’s basically a socializing circle for rich folks. lots of rituals, but no deeper spirituality as far as i can tell. you can probably learn more from 6 months at a 3-person philosophy circle than from a decade at the freemasons.
Uh, it’s very interesting if you’re into allegorical reinterpretations of universal deism and some esoteric rituals. But, yeah, the dinners are pretty much the highlight.
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.
I learned about them after using “skinhead” in a derogatory way to a music buff. That was the same conversation where I learned that ska is actually older than reggae, which is still wild to me.
I’ve looked into them too a while ago and the skinhead subculture is pretty interesting. I’m going off of memory but I’m pretty sure the subculture started in London in the 1960s. There were three big subcultures at the time in London, the posh upper class were “mods”, the lower class “rude boys” got their influences and style from Jamaican immigrants, and finally the “skinheads” were the middle class had their shaved heads and Doc Martens. The second wave of skinheads in the 70s and 80s in the UK and US were basically anti-punks. They were the punks who were mad about the commercialization of their culture and they shaved their mohawks, traded their battle jackets for flannels, and moved from 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
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!
Similar is just actual punk culture in general
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
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’ve met several people from a group of furries who were ‘themed’ around a specific cartoon from the 1980s-90s. (I’m trying to be vague here)
They had their own internet server way back in the early dialup days, and for all I know they might still exist as a group and meet up occasionally, but I don’t have any recent information.
Cowabunga?
No, but not a bad guess given what I wrote. I won’t confirm or deny any more guesses though.
I’ve met several people from a group of furries who were ‘themed’ around a specific cartoon from the 1980s-90s.
Lol, yes! That was my guess too!
Gotta be the Gadget Hackwrench bros.
I thought that was a relatively more recent (Russian?) group, but if you go digging you’ll find “Rangerphiles” more broadly. That would’ve been my guess. Within that was another subset: RAGE (Rangers Against Gadget Erotica) which I think, somewhat confidently, was a consequence of heavy Christian influence within the Ranger community with all the hangups and repression that entails. I can’t say I looked all that hard for an explanation, it was just a browser rabbit hole one night years ago, and I kind of put Christian Furries in a similar camp to LGBT Christians anyway - “I think it’s nonsense, spare me the details and mental gymnastics, but if you wanna retcon Christianity into something better - by all means please do because it’s pretty horrible on its face.”
