this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2023
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273
Right to repair’s unlikely new adversary: Scientologists (arstechnica.com)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 126 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

As to why a Scientology-owned group would care about such a matter, 404 Media suggested that it could have to do with Scientology E-meters, or electropsychometers. The Church of Scientology describes the machines as an "electronic instrument that measures mental state and change of state in individuals and assists the precision and speed of auditing" and that only a Scientology minister or training minister should use. 404 Media noted that some people collect the devices and, oddly enough, you can find E-Meters sold on eBay.

"My hunch is that the Scientologists think granting the hacking community permission to dig into their E-Meter software will expose the whole operation as snake oil. The request is like so many other anti-Right to Repair arguments: Manufacturers are afraid that access to repair materials will expose some of their other dirty secrets," Chamberlain said.

[–] [email protected] 61 points 1 year ago (6 children)

But isn’t their whole operation snake oil? Aliens crashing into a volcano and possessing humans is pretty dumb.

[–] [email protected] 46 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That wasn't always public knowledge. It was a thing you only learned about later on when you were more indoctrinated. Then undercover reporters found out and South Park made it very public.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It was mostly publicized via Usenet by Arnaldo Lerma, Dennis Erlich, Karin Spaink, David Touretzky, and other activists and ex-Scientologists starting in the early 1990s. The South Park episode didn't come out until over ten years later in 2005.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

Gotta give them points for snake oil creativity though. Their nonsense is much more entertaining than hearing "invisible sky wizard did it" as the answer to every question for millennia.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Wait, their thing is alien volcano ghosts?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yes, a long time ago an evil alien enslaved people and crashed into a volcano on Earth where they became ghosts and possessed the primitive humans living there. South Park has a good explanation of this lunacy

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I've always wondered if the "THIS IS REAL SCIENTOLOGIST BELIEF" ticker was something planned early on, or if there was a moment of taking the whole thing in and someone went "This is fuckin' South Park. Everyone is going to think we're being extreme. We need to clarify."

[–] mindbleach 1 points 1 year ago

I think it was a callback to "All About Mormons," but I might be misremembering.

One example of clear last-minute sincerity was the two-parter with - and this is a real South Park episode - the manatees that write Family Guy and the prophet Mohammed. The black screen reading "Comedy Central has refused to broadcast of image of Mohammed on their network" was their, uh, compromise, when Comedy Central refused to broadcast the episode as delivered.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=BU2EUfinwHo

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Correct, but they want to keep plausible deniability.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Yeah. But in a world where JFK is coming back or something, a volcano cult isn't like stand-out crazy anymore.