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.
Subcultures among subcultures have existed for as long as humans in their infinite creativity existed.
Babyfurs and Diaper Lover Furries-They focus on regression. And they really love diapers.
Densha Otaku - They love photographing trains. They also get extremely violent when you ruin their shot of trains.
Cyberdeck Builders- They build retro computers with 80s SciFi aesthetic and take things too far… Using or even building hardware to mimic timigs exactly like they behaved in 70s.
Grandmacore - People obsessed with grandma aesthetics. Very. Very. Obsessed.
Swedish Raggare - American 1950s greaser culture filtered through rural Sweden and dialled to 11.
Sapeurs - Rural Kinshasa men spend 1000s of dollars, sometimes sacrificing rent and food, to buy high end designer shit from Europe. They walk through dirt roads dressed like 19th century French dandies.
Otherkin & Therians - They think they aren’t humans or at least partially non humans.
Birds aren’t real- They think birds aren’t real. And that they are all robots, drones sent by CIA or other secretive gangs.
Chronological Revisionists - Popularised by a German historian named Heribert Illig, followers of the Phantom Time Hypothesis believe that the Early Middle Ages (specifically 614–911 AD) never actually happened. They claim that Holy Roman Emperor Otto III and Pope Sylvester II completely fabricated three centuries of history, including the entire existence of Emperor Charlemagne, just so Otto could rule during the monumental year 1000 AD. According to them, we are actually living in the early 1700s.
The Tartaria - They believe that a technologically advanced, global utopian empire called Tartaria existed until the late 1800s. This empire supposedly used the domes and spires on old buildings (like world’s fair pavilions or old European castles) to pull free, wireless electromagnetic energy straight from the ether. They believe a massive, worldwide “Mud Flood” wiped them out, and modern history was rewritten to hide the existence of free energy.
Deros Believers - Shaver claimed that humanity used to share Earth with an ancient, advanced race. When the sun started emitting toxic radiation, the advanced race fled the planet, leaving behind their underground cities. According to Shaver, these caves are now inhabited by Deros (Detrimental Robots)—degenerate, sadistic humanoids who use the abandoned ancient “ray technology” to project voices into the minds of surface-dwellers, cause freak accidents, and steal our thoughts.
There are a few more… But I’m too bored to type them here.
As a psych nurse stealing thoughts is a symptom I’ve always struggled to comprehend. It happens at the right frequency that I’m sure it’s real (often enough in different people, but not often enough that they would have met to copy each other). But it’s also such a bizarre concept that I can’t imagine perceiving it happen. I can picture being so scared you think you’re being watched all the time and plotted against, and I can imagine seeing, hearing, or even feeling and smelling things that aren’t there. But thought stealing has to be a completely surreal sensation that I am entirely unfamiliar with.
What do you mean “stealing”? I have never heard this before.
Patients say the government, their ex, etc are “stealing their thoughts.” Idk if it’s a disorganized way of saying they’re reading their thoughts. I do know thought blocking is a thing so maybe they’re attributing that to the process of having their mind read? Idk but thought withdrawal is a common enough delusion that it’s an option on some assessment forms. Idk either man the mere concept of the sensation is almost entirely alien to me as well.
Again, I have never heard those terms and I have a psych degree. Where did you hear that? It’s not established lingo afaik…
It’s ok like half the techs I’ve worked with have bachelor’s in Psych and still barely know what schizophrenia is. The academic degree apparently translates very poorly to clinical work. I’ve got a fucking associates but apparently nursing school is just way more rigorous for less years.
The delusion that always baffles me is gang-stalking. For the ones who don’t know, there is a fairly common delusion where someone believes that they are being gang-stalked. They think random people going about their day-to-day lives are actually secretly working together to stalk the one person specifically. They think people band together and form massive gangs for various surveillance/stalking reasons. For fun/gossip, for government tracking, for secret shadow cabals keeping tabs on people, etc.
That person you pass during your walk, who politely nods as they pass you? They were an agent, and now everyone knows where you are.
That girl you see walking her dog past your house three times every day? She’s making a thrice-daily report on you.
That utility worker, doing maintenance on the power lines? They secretly installed an antenna to track when you’re at home.
That dude who edges past you in the grocery store, because you took up the entire goddamned aisle with your cart sitting in the very middle of the row while you stopped for three fucking minutes to look at three different brands of pickles? (Just pick one and get the fuck out of the way already!) Obviously he was trying to plant nanite tracking robots on your groceries, so the group can listen to your thoughts after you eat them.
I think it’s due to the (extremely common) “I’m being watched” paranoia, without having a specific target to pin the blame on. Instead of that breaking the delusion and realizing that nobody specific is watching them, they simply pin the blame on everyone around them.
The even worse part is that if you simply search up “Gang stalking”, you’ll find the wiki article on it… But you’ll also find a bunch of websites made by deluded people, who legitimately believe they (and thousands of others around the world) are being gangstalked. They call themselves “targeted individuals” and it very quickly becomes a self-perpetuating delusion. Any attempts to break them out of it only serve to reinforce the delusion, because obviously you’re a gang-stalker sent to try and trick them.
well the interesting thing is that it actually CAN happen, it’s just extremely rare and is almost always related to prejudice in some way (somebody non-white or a gay couple move to a conservative rural community) or domestic violence on the part of someone powerful enough to have lackeys (or peers, like a cop and their coworkers). The church of scientology has also been known to use gangstalking against people who speak out. But no the goverment isn’t stalking random people because they’re telepathic (my brother-in-law’s delusion).
Lol as if we need to watch you get groceries to plant our nanobots on them. They self-replicate and were present on all groceries 3 days after one waa casually dropped in your grocery store, which would have happened sometime during 2018/2019 timeframe, depending on how close our nearest gang members were to that store. We only supplant half their living expenses in return for spying on people who seem otherwise boring, so they need to work at least part time jobs (turns out that helps with the spying, so a bit of a bonus!) and also obviously need to spend a certain portion of their time spying, so it took about 7 months to deploy the nanobots to every grocery store and food market worldwide even with our extensive network.
And we don’t just listen to our targets’ thoughts. We steal them, or at least credit for them. Ever had a thought that you know came from somewhere but you can’t remember where it came from? It came from you but we steal the credit, or if we can’t (because too many people know about it already), we turn it into a new Mendella effect and make those people look crazy while we set up the credit for the replacement to go to us.
Bearenstein bears used to be known for the pun but we Mendella effected it so hard that everyone only talks about the ending being different and don’t even remember the pun while we rake in all that Barenstain bears money and street cred (which is surprisingly a lot for a children’s storybook multiverse where we haven’t even split the timeline yet with Brother Bear’s evil twin saga).
By the way, can you tell me where it was that a girl walked her dog by a location three times in one day? That’s sloppy and whoever it was requires additional training in avoiding raising suspicion. Or maybe it wasn’t one of our agents, though odds of that are pretty low, considering our gang makes up about 84% of the world’s population. Actually, nm, I’ll just do a quick search of our database for anyone who has walked their dog past the same house more than twice in one day… Oh nm, it was Sally Spyson, a member of the “we’re 84% of the world population, why do we still need to be so secretive instead of rubbing it in?” faction that deliberately leaves hints and opposes the evil “the secrecy is 84% of the fun in spying (other than the sex, drugs, and cool spy tools, of course)” faction.
I have a nephew whom I love very much, who suffers from paranoid schizophrenia. Whenever he has an episode I try to explain that nobody’s talking about him behind his back because people in general don’t give a shit about anyone but themselves and if they talk about anyone it’s only about themselves.
In other words of course, but still. We are not that important to others. So much so it is a real societal concern.
Birds aren’t real is another joke that people starting taking seriously like flat Earth.
I remember when both were joke subreddits. Then it turns out that if you have enough people pretending ridiculous shit some of them will take it seriously.
The KKK has a similar origin story.
Ultimately, this is how Scientology started.
A pub bet, to a running joke, to a mass delusion we allow to continue because not doing so would subject the old world power structures (“religion”) that are still operating today to the same scrutiny.