415 Prison Planet Sausage Party

[vaMpiresoftWare]

I've listened to this episode multiple times now and I still have genuinely no fuckin idea what the concept is that they're talking about. Like usually it's not so hard to get a bead on it but... this is really challenging.

Loosh whoosh…

[EYE OF ZA]

I've listened to this episode multiple times now and I still have genuinely no fuckin idea what the concept is that they're talking about. Like usually it's not so hard to get a bead on it but... this is really challenging.

It makes perfect sense to me, but you have to keep in mind that these people are very dumb.

In Gnosticism, there are supposed to be two creator-gods. The good creator-god created spiritual existence and souls. The bad creator-god tried to imitate the good one, but it made the physical world and trapped souls within bodies, then decided it should be worshiped for all its hard work. All physical suffering is thus a result of the bad god's vanity project.

Now trim that down to a soundbite.

"Humans were created by an evil god to imprison souls in a cycle of suffering." 

Shave off the theism and replace it with something more respectable, like ancient aliens.

"Humans were created by aliens to imprison souls in a cycle of suffering."

Why do aliens care about souls and suffering? Nothing a bit of world-building can't fix.

"Humans were created by aliens to harvest loosh, a psychic fuel source produced by their suffering."

Everything else is new age/ancient aliens/conspiracy cruft of the kind that any Reddit belief will accumulate over time.

[Napoleon]

Reading subreddits and forums where they discuss these issues is fascinating. 80IQ people who don't understand why capitalist society is set up the way it is talking down to 70IQ people who know just as little. Many such cases I guess.

Also, guess everyone here is an Archon?

[Adam Bozarth]

hey man ... don't drain my loosh!

[vaMpiresoftWare]

Everything else is new age/ancient aliens/conspiracy cruft of the kind that any Reddit belief will accumulate over time.

I’m being pedantic and I definitely have spent too much time learning about this garbage but the overlap of this with ancient aliens/UFO religion/new age/starseed/conspiracy absolutely predates Reddit. Monroe’s book that is mentioned is from 1984. That was sort of the point that the first poster was trying to make. This belief isn’t new and it’s not from Reddit and it certainly isn’t connected to all of these other things because of Reddit. It’s connected to those beliefs because all of that shit has always been connected.

The “great” thing about this type of thinking is that it is all rooted in rejecting authority and reality so it all slots together perfectly. It is primarily about what they don’t believe. Reality isn’t real. People in power are all hiding something. The specifics are flexible. Individuals may find themselves drawn in by a specific belief and then expand from say Big Foot to Starseeds to Reptilians to Prison Planet to Antisemitism but this shit and the way it is all squished together predates the internet.

[Dr. Buttplug]

My experience has always been that the more niche and technical a subreddit tends to be the more sane it tends to be, but a lot of the really popular "generalist" subreddits are just cesspits

So... what specifically do you mean by "cesspit"? Overly sexual users who don't respect boundaries? Argumentative assholes? Malignant narcissists? All three? Something else?

My usual experience on say, r/AskReddit has been pretty tame during my whole 30 minutes perusing it a couple years ago. The F Plus has pretty obvious selection bias for the sake of comedy, so that's another factor.

I have in fact seen the stereotypical user base on other platforms, like with Twitch and Bluesky, but the bad side of Reddit seems to be comprised of "asshole who thinks arguments can warp reality to their whims" or "asshole who doesn't care about social norms and makes it your problem instead".

The podcast has definitely introduced me to the crazier corners of Reddit, but those are outliers picked because the communities are nuts. They're not random samples of the overall user base.

But I could also be completely wrong and my surface-level meanderings through the site haven't caused the beast to rear its head.

You could point at the know it all casually racist and sexist vibe of the userbase but it probably really doesn't help that they let hate groups congregate there.

[Tipsy Almond]

You could point at the know it all casually racist and sexist vibe of the userbase but it probably really doesn't help that they let hate groups congregate there.

Well, you get that with any significantly large place on the internet. It's pretty much unavoidable, sadly.

I think there's at least some good stuff on Reddit, but like other self-curated platforms, you need to select what you interact with and/or see for it to be usable. Otherwise, you're flooded with the dregs. There's plenty of stuff on Twitch and Bluesky that I have no interest in seeing or interacting with, and the solution to that is to simply not click on those streams/posts.

My understanding of a stereotypical redditor was "bearded, unkempt, fedora, overly ornate speech, cannot take criticism", but I guess it's shifted over the years to just encompass 4Chan now?

I just use reddit for looking at pictures of baked goods and 3D prints, I don't delve too deep into the darker areas.

[EYE OF ZA]

I’m being pedantic and I definitely have spent too much time learning about this garbage but the overlap of this with ancient aliens/UFO religion/new age/starseed/conspiracy absolutely predates Reddit. Monroe’s book that is mentioned is from 1984. That was sort of the point that the first poster was trying to make. This belief isn’t new and it’s not from Reddit and it certainly isn’t connected to all of these other things because of Reddit. It’s connected to those beliefs because all of that shit has always been connected.

The “great” thing about this type of thinking is that it is all rooted in rejecting authority and reality so it all slots together perfectly. It is primarily about what they don’t believe. Reality isn’t real. People in power are all hiding something. The specifics are flexible. Individuals may find themselves drawn in by a specific belief and then expand from say Big Foot to Starseeds to Reptilians to Prison Planet to Antisemitism but this shit and the way it is all squished together predates the internet.

That's fair. I suppose the signature Reddit addition to the conspiracy gloop really is the list of movies that prove prison planet exists.

I kinda wonder in the heads of the posters featured on this episode whether the idea "people are making movies based on religious ideas" occurred to them, or if even the Gnosticism bits are now more like a bullet point under "media featuring prison planet" to them.

I did really like the one poster explaining that vampire depictions are part of the conspiracy but you have to invert the tropes. I'm sure that's a classic bit of conspiratorial thinking, I just hadn't seen it in action in the wild.

[A Meat]

finally got around to this episode and I wasn't expecting to be blindsided by Gurdjieff, that's an entirely different rabbit hole of esoteric nonsense

[Dr. Buttplug]

You could point at the know it all casually racist and sexist vibe of the userbase but it probably really doesn't help that they let hate groups congregate there.

Well, you get that with any significantly large place on the internet. It's pretty much unavoidable, sadly.

I think there's at least some good stuff on Reddit, but like other self-curated platforms, you need to select what you interact with and/or see for it to be usable. Otherwise, you're flooded with the dregs. There's plenty of stuff on Twitch and Bluesky that I have no interest in seeing or interacting with, and the solution to that is to simply not click on those streams/posts.

My understanding of a stereotypical redditor was "bearded, unkempt, fedora, overly ornate speech, cannot take criticism", but I guess it's shifted over the years to just encompass 4Chan now?

I just use reddit for looking at pictures of baked goods and 3D prints, I don't delve too deep into the darker areas.

I mean the problem is that 4channers have been able to spread across the platform and radicalized the fedora wearing neckbaeard userbase unchecked. There was a time when moderation meant getting the nazis out. There are spaces where that shit isn't tolerated like Ballp.it and it used to be that was standard for most of the internet. We should have nuked stormfront from space back in 1996.

[Adam Bozarth]

I was watching a video on the history of absinthe, and loosh came up.

Also known as the ouzo effect, the louche effect is when the sugary water emulsifies in the absinthe to turn the otherwise clear liquids cloudy.

I dunno, It makes it funnier to me that these guys believe their emotional lives are milky booze for 5th dimensional star people.

[Antivehicular]

I've listened to this episode multiple times now and I still have genuinely no fuckin idea what the concept is that they're talking about. Like usually it's not so hard to get a bead on it but... this is really challenging.

One of the things that I really enjoyed about this episode is that I'm not sure the posters know it either. I'm getting a really strong vibe of this just being a melting pot for Vague Anti-Authoritarian Conspiracy Guys who agree on their general points (authority is sucking our energy, conserve your precious bodily fluids, antisemitism because it's always antisemitism with these fuckers) but frequently have no idea what their peers are talking about, until someone mentions animated media and they're all on the same page again.

Anyway, took me way too long to listen to this episode, but: good fun, appreciate all you do, stay safe and release episodes at your own pace, now I know Sausage Party lore and I hate that

[Tipsy Almond]

conserve your precious bodily fluids

Something something Dr. Strangelove...

[[static noise]]

I know Lemon said "this like the new Tropico" towards the start of the episode, but I heard it as "Nootropico" and now I'm mildly terrified for what that would look like. Probably not actually too different from this subreddit.