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.
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/
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.
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.
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 punk 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
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.
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’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…
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
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
Rojava coverage by famed bagel chucking weirdo Robert Evans.
Very interesting.
Space deniers.
They are a sub-set of flat earthers. Not all flat earthers are space deniers, but every space denier I’ve seen is a flat earther.
Some of the more prominent ones like Level Earth Observer spend innumerable hours picking apart International Space Station live footage as “fake”. Things like space rocket launches need to be picked apart to absurd degrees as well. Every camera glitch, every stutter, every little movement is hyper-analyzed and declared to be a fraud.
I find it all fascinating. Some of these deniers put forth their own lay theories, which are usually very Biblical in bent, but many of them like LEO will twist themselves into incoherent knots refusing to admit they have a viewpoint and that they are “just asking questions” despite pushing back in a very particular way to all the answers they get.
Some of them like “CC from New York, Westchester County” are just totally off the deep end, not even playing word games, just conspiratorially ranting without even internal consistency.
I’ve only ever interacted with a space denier directly once and it was as equally interesting as it was frustrating.
There’s a big flat earth/space denier overlap with other fringe ideas like young earth creationism which gets you into Kent Hovind territory. That’s interesting in its own way but also full of slime.
I’ve always found puritanical groups quite interesting. They seem to evolve out of any subculture be it religious or not. Take the ‘straight edge’ culture, a group of hardcore punk kids who rebelled against the excesses of the punk underground and swear an oath against drinking, drugs and casual sex.
On the religious front you have groups like the shakers. An offshoot of the quakers whose utopian vision prohibited all sex. As a consequence the movement all but died out as they couldn’t reproduce to create new members!
I’ve changed my mind - I just remembered The ‘Zizians’ cult. They are absolutely the strangest group I’ve ever heard about.
Oh hey I just finished part 2 of the BtB episodes about them
EDIT: lol that’s part 1 you linked to, I assumed it was Strange Aeons
I think the Bruderhof people are the most authentic Christians in the modern world. They are communist (live in community without personal property) and are a cult of Christ.
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.
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.
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.
Yeah lots of meh in that kind of thing in my experience.
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
Knights Templar, one of the oldest secret societies that may or may not still exist.
Very historically interesting group.
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.
Spiritualists conducting scam seances 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.
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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’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.
Edit: The first two guesses were wrong, but I’m not going to confirm or deny any more of them because outing the group really isn’t my goal. While not a furry myself I have seen a lot of people make fun of them or worse over the years. I wouldn’t say things are getting better in that regard either.
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!
I actually don’t remember these. The style reminds me a bit of Care Bears though
I know you’re not gonna confirm but gotta throw my guess out there https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animalympics
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.”
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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You can’t just say this and not drop the name
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.
