this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2024
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I was reminded of a particular anecdote I need to get out of my system.
There was a time on a particular fiction series' fan forum's IRC channel when I had to convince a very enthusiastic teenage fan that the instructions they found on 4chan to open a portal to a parallel world of that particular work of fantasy fiction was actually a method for synthesizing and inhaling poison gas.
The weird part was that they admitted they knew it was probably just a cruel prank, but were still willing to try just in case it was real. We had to actually find and link articles where the same reaction was exhibited as an actual documented suicide method, if an unreliable one at that, to convince them not to go for it.
By my estimate that person was about high school age, almost certainly over 13 and probably over 15. Mostly their behavior seemed normal for the age, certainly overenthusiastic about the fandom and with obvious signs of teenage ennui, but both of those are typical for someone in their mid-teens. It was just this strange incident of extreme gullibility and self-destructive devotion to a fandom that really stuck with me.
That's a terrifying story. I'm happy it seems to have worked out ok.
A state of mind that's unfortunately quite common. See religion for example, magical kingdom ruled by an all-powerful being that lets you in if you behave accordingly. But you have to die first. Yet people gobble it up and even do bad things to other people just for the case that maybe it might be real, even if it likely isn't.
In this case it sounded like a bunch of amoral assholes on 4chan tried to trick a vulnerable individual to kill themselves. A religion that operated like that would not be able to sustain itself and spread.
I would argue that such things do happen, the cult "Heaven's Gate" probably being one of the most notorious examples. Thankfully, however, this is not a widespread phenomenon.
Yet, amoral assholes tricking vulnerable people with tales of magic is how religion spreads.
No it isn't you idiot. But please continue to spout 90s era New Atheism propaganda as if it will change anyone's minds at this point.
of course they’re one of these
how did you imagine this was gonna go?
Nit: "New Atheism" was the decade after that. Gary Wolf coined the term in a Wired story from 2006.
Thanks for the clarification. I kinda missed that entire thing online during the time.