• gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
      4·
      2 days ago

      Gedichte
      nur für mich
      und für dich
      stehn alleine auch für sich.

      What this means is that just like the mountains don’t depend on the humans to see and interpret them, poems (who are written only for myself, and coincidentally also for any reader who may stumble upon them) are meaningful in themselves, and don’t need to concern themselves with what humans think of them.

      it’s kinda like software code has a meaning in itself, but is ideally also a beautiful art of self-expression for any programmer who happens to read it.

      That doesn’t mean we can’t still admire and talk about them.

  • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.worldEnglish
    18·
    1 day ago

    Not directly relevant, but: I think M. Night Shyamalan’s movie Signs would have been better if it had turned out that wearing aluminum foil caps really did hide your thoughts from those aliens. I mean, it wouldn’t have been any stupider than aliens invading a planet full of a substance that killed them (water) and not being able to figure out how doorknobs work.

    • brsrklf@jlai.lu
      2·
      22 hours ago

      Invading a place that wants to kill you is not that unheard of. Some of us explore flanks of erupting volcanoes, abysses, or want to go to space/the Moon/Mars.

      Going there naked, and with absolutely no idea what you’re exposing yourself to, is bonkers though.

    • rockerface🇺🇦@lemmy.cafeEnglish
      9·
      1 day ago

      My favourite foil cap trope reference is Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn series. It has several characters with supernatural abilities that can affect other people’s emotions, and aluminum happens to block all kinds of magic powers in Sanderson’s larger book universe. So a lot of rich and important people wear hats that are lined with aluminum foil on the inside to protect them from emotional influence.

    • Demdaru@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      15 hours ago

      Can you blame them? You are honest to god worker at one-person company hired by coroporation to cut down trees en masse and then you cut one of them and it goest bzzt and suddenly someone is speaking of illegal tree cutting and damaging state infrastructure…bollocks, I tell ya, trees are meant to be cut, if they didn’t want their fancy-schmancy antennas cut they should’t look like them trees!

  • mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    19·
    2 days ago

    I recall an episode of Behind the Bastards where they explained how the “flat Earth” conspiracy theory was literally the core of a Nazi splinter group that was never stamped out

    • CarrotsHaveEars@lemmy.ml
      5·
      1 day ago

      -Which platform?
      -9 and 3/4 platform.
      -9 and 3 what?
      -9 and 3/4 pla…
      -Alright, I’m going watch something else.

        • CarrotsHaveEars@lemmy.ml
          5·
          1 day ago

          Nothing. It’s just that I am too old for this mystery component. Something can sound magical and mysterious to me, but not like a stupid platform number. In my opinion it’s more children orientated.

  • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
    12·
    2 days ago

    Then there’s David Ike who while crazy legit thinks there are like lizard people, there is no deeper meaning where it breaks down to “It’s da Jews”. He is crazy but has standards.

    • yermaw@sh.itjust.works
      2·
      1 day ago

      For the longest time I thought lizard people meant lizard people. Not an allegory or something.

      It still kinda makes sense to me. We’re aware that the planet is getting uninhabitable for humans, and we know what’s causing it. The people on charge go “actually no We’re gonna go even harder. Nobodies even getting a day off you fucks.”

      • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
        21·
        23 hours ago

        Oh yeah the whole lizard people thing has like three layers, Neo-Nazi dog whistle, David Ike style I think there are legit lizard people, politicians are lizard people social commentary, and Mark Zuckerberg is a lizard person because he is a weird looking motherfucker.

    • Blackmist@feddit.ukEnglish
      22·
      22 hours ago

      Pretty sure he does mean the Jews though. A race of shapeshifters controlling the world? Likes to big up The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

      Although I did like the bit where he claimed to be the son of God, which lead to a gang of 100 youths outside his house shouting “We want the Messiah!”

      • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
        1·
        22 hours ago

        He has gotten pissed at anti-semites who try to JQ him. While the conspiracy definitely is a dog whistle with Ike it is just that he is crazy.

  • SirSamuel@lemmy.world
    192·
    2 days ago

    My experience with those struggling with their grasp on reality has been, more often than not, that they blame various three letter agencies of the US government, not “the Jews”.

    Of course, conspiracy theorist aren’t usually struggling with mental illness, but rather an overblown sense of self-worth and the inevitable result of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

    Insert a George Carlin quote about how stupid the average person is

    • Saleh@feddit.org
      252·
      2 days ago

      A lot of things that were laughed at as being “conspiracy theories” surrounding three letter agencies later turned out to be true.

      • SirSamuel@lemmy.world
        141·
        2 days ago

        True.

        What I was thinking of was more along the lines of “There’s a midget working for the FBI hiding in my attic and stealing my clothes while I sleep” - an actual statement from a woman who was hypoxic (and didn’t have an attic)

        • vala@lemmy.world
          25·
          2 days ago
          • MK Ultra
          • Cointelpro
          • Tuskegee Syphilis Study
          • CIA assassination plots
          • Iran Contra

          All of these were “conspiracy theories” when I was young and now we know they really happened. This is just off the top of my head. These are not really “tame” in my book.

          • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
            41·
            1 day ago

            Counterpoint: the “Jews” didn’t kill Texas kids in a flood, the local Texas government that stole federal funds from the flood warning system to give bonuses to sheriffs did.

          • glitchdx@lemmy.worldEnglish
            12·
            1 day ago

            those ones were “cool” and “pulpy” conspiracy theories (maybe not the syphilis one, that’s just gross), and made for good fiction at the time. What’s retroactively traumatizing tho is just how much of them actually weren’t fiction.

        • Saleh@feddit.org
          13·
          2 days ago

          “Tame” like conducting experiments for chemical warfare on humans?

          “Tame” like smuggling Cocaine into the US to help a Fascist terrorist group in El Salvador murder tens of thousands of people on the one hand and paying weapons to fuel a war between Iraq and Iran on the other hand with that money?

          “Tame” like helping Saddam Hussein use chemical weapons? https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/08/26/215733981/new-details-on-how-u-s-helped-saddam-as-he-gassed-iran

          “Tame” like the NSA spying on everyone and everything?

          “Tame” like the NSA providing information on US citizens to Israel, while Israel is conducting targeted assassinations? https://theintercept.com/2019/05/29/israel-drone-strikes-intelligence-nsa/

    • ameancow@lemmy.worldEnglish
      81·
      2 days ago

      Conspiracists have been stranded to figure out their own chosen “other” to fear and hate since Israel stepped into the scene and the Republicans (and most dems) made any criticism of their genocide “anti semitism” in a playbook move straight out of internet trolling tactics.

      So you can turn your back on “God’s blessed war against the Muslim beasts” OR you can suddenly start softening towards the idea that Jewish Cabals are running our whole country.

      It’s been kind of spectacular to see the right splinter around the edges over this even before the Epstein stuff.

      Too bad none of it will actually make a real dent in a political ideology that is already built on cognitive dissonance.