I used to enjoy conspiracy theories, because I thought it would be cool if they were true.
Things like cryptids, aliens, etc...
But now all the conspiracy groups are filled with stupid right-wing science deniers.
this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2025
1132 points (97.3% liked)
Curated Tumblr
4595 readers
220 users here now
For preserving the least toxic and most culturally relevant Tumblr heritage posts.
The best transcribed post each week will be pinned and receive a random bitmap of a trophy superimposed with the author's username and a personalized message. Here are some OCR tools to assist you in your endeavors:
-
FOSS Android Recs per u/m_f@discuss.online: 1 , 2
Don't be mean. I promise to do my best to judge that fairly.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Same. I have always loved it as a fictional genre, and as a fun sort of "what if" form of escapism for life in general. We've pretty much taken all the mystery out of the world, so that kind of stuff filled that void for me for a long time. But then it turned into a pipeline to recruit people into right-wing paranoia, and now I can't really enjoy it anymore.
this is definitely a vibe. no more cooky dale gribble types anymore, only weird race supremacist and shit nowadays.
but i will say that this,
We've pretty much taken all the mystery out of the world
is patently untrue. if you’re the kind of person to say there’s no more mystery to the world it’s more likely than not that you would’ve said the same thing hundreds of years ago too.
modern people get very preoccupied with the idea of the sum of all human knowledge. the reality is a lot more patchwork than it seems.
for example, most people would fail a basic physics exam. yet this knowledge is fundamental to the vast majority of discoveries made over the past centuries.
not even to mention how we overestimate the knowledge infrastructure we have in the modern period. information is not nearly as free or accessible as most would like to believe, but this is a separate can of worms.
just because “we” know something doesn’t mean we know something. there is still an absolute abundance of mystery in this world; it is a narrative lie fed to you that “everything has basically already been discovered.”
even in contexts that it seems obvious that the topic has been so well trodden as to be “solved”, like global exploration; it’s a myth “there’s nothing left to discover,” in any context. we haven’t even begun to map the vast majority of this planet. what’s under the seas, under the crust? we don’t know for sure.
exploration, math, physics, engineering, computation, the humanities, etc. don’t let anyone convince you that you were “born too late” to do these things. you live in the most golden age to learn, in fact. it isn’t a tragedy, common knowledge, it’s the most beautiful success of the human race. never before has the average person been so well-endowed to explore and discover.
all it takes is having an engineer’s mindset, to be curious. unfortunately being curious is a lot like being a good person. it sounds great and most people claim it as a personal trait, but the reality is that being curious or being a good person are skills that take actual work and effort to hone. just claiming to be curious or a good person doesn’t cut it, reality demands her actors be method.
I wasn't being literal about there being nothing left unknown in the whole universe. Just that we've (at least in the west) culturally outgrown stuff like ghost stories and other supernatural folklore, and that the X-Files type of conspiracy theory entertainment took its place, and it's hard to enjoy now because that space has been taken over by a bunch of paranoid lunatics.
My initial reaction was what the other person said, but as I was reading theirs I kinda shifted view.
Taking the mystery out of the world doesn't mean we've answered all the questions, it just means our expectation has shifted and we assume that all the dark corners have been explored.
Villages in the most remote parts of the world have Disney T-shirts.
There's no troll under the bridge.
Our stories of the unknown increasingly feature people as the monster.
It's not bad, and there's still wonder in learning about the world around us, it's just a different perspective where the default is a lot more skeptical and assumes there's an answer, even if it's not currently known.
Even conspiracy theories have shifted tone to being more disbelief in rational things than belief in irrational things.
load more comments
(1 replies)
As someone who casually enjoys 40K, it has a tendency to attract some of the most rancid people. OSR has this problem too sometimes, but its not nearly as bad as 40k. And the general RC hobby. Part of the reason i don't fly fpv drones as much as I'd like too, can't stand the chuds at the airfield I've never met a more unhappy group of people, and they don't even fly anything there either!
Weightlifters seem to hove about similar parts make up very kind people who just want others to succeed and people who listen to Joe rogan and Jordan Peterson.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Blacksmithing/bladesmithing.
I spent must of my youth fascinated by knives, still am, and this got me into classical metal working. By the time I was 18 I had built a pretty decent working forge in my mom's backyard.
Shortly after 9/11 I took a week long class in bladesmithing in Arkansas. Outside of Blade Forums and the occasional knife show, I'd never really interacted with other knife people. Not a whole lot going on in my large northern city.
The way those bastards talked openly about anyone that wasn't white or Christian turned my stomach. I pretty much kept to myself, it hung out with the one chill hippy from Oregon, or the eternally gob-struck British blacksmiths apprentice (You sell GUNS in a GROCERY STORE?!)
I learned a lot on that trip. Nowadays I don't bring up my knife hobby because I sure as shit don't want to be mistaken for one of those ignorant cretins.
load more comments
(3 replies)
Try being a Warhammer 40k enjoyer. Some people forget that humanity are STILL BAD GUYS in 40k.
Warhammer 40k. I like to paint little green guys and then move them around a battlefield.
A good half of the poeple in this hobby are almost entirely irredeemable
load more comments
(4 replies)
Does programming count as a hobby? I waste my free time on it... There's this funny stereotype, of a queer programmer with long, quirky socks, and maybe even a fursona. Despite being a small percentage, such types are often overrepresented online. It used to bother me a little.
Nowadays I'm so, so glad when someone I'm talking to is part of that group. It usually means I don't need to worry about them being weirdly sexist, like women don't suffer enough in STEM already, or insisting that we need to keep politics out of tech (i.e. they want their politics to rule, unquestioned).
(Need something more tangible? Look no further than uncle bob (skip to the bottom). I've seen his books in classrooms, in the office, and let's not speak of online mentions. Imagine how many know him, but have no idea how screwed up he is.)
Silly feelings on my part? Perhaps. One less thing to worry about, though.
load more comments
(7 replies)
Linux and crypto users. Sometimes, people just use monero for it's technical merits....
Linux community is exact opposite no? Like conservatives had to make their own distro at some point because "there are too many trans people on github"
load more comments
(2 replies)
I'm telling you, this is gonna be privacy's big year.
load more comments
(4 replies)
Hydroponics as well I guess. My DIY automated grow room with a water pump, grow lights, heater and plant shaker (for pollination) always has people think I'm growing weed but I just want chillies and tomatoes.
Offroading.
Like, I just want to spend too much money breaking my truck to go play in the mud or camping in the middle of nowhere on the weekend, not throw massive alcohol fueled frat parties in the desert and annihilate the environment in my jacked-up, curb princess of a Ram covered in a thousand miniature suns and "~~Don't tread on me~~ Please tread on me, daddy" stickers
load more comments
(2 replies)
I'm a white, Christian, male firearms enthusiast from Texas.
That's a tough combination when I'm also extremely leftist.
load more comments
(18 replies)
What's funny is that while Vikings are mostly remembered for their warrior culture, their success as a diaspora came more from their merchant and sailing culture. THEY were the 'immigrants.'
load more comments
(3 replies)
Try being a classicist... it's rough out here. Can't really say I love Greece and Rome without sounding insane.
load more comments
(2 replies)
I can't wear my King of the Hill shirts anymore because I don't want people to think I'm a trumpster.
I enjoy Powerlifting, Fishing, and Carpentry. I don't have any friends from those hobbies.
Oh ya.. Gym goers are notoriously right wing.. It is annoying.
Even in Europe (where I am from), most gym goers are people who would have voted for Trump. I think it might be due to the fact they are generally younger? I don't know. I do know that it is annoying trying to befriend someone and then you find out they are right wing. God damn.
Might be for the fact that gym heads spend way too much time in the gym listening to Joe Rogan or some other moron’s podcast.
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(2 replies)
I do home canning and a fair deal of baking. There's a lot of trad bullshit around this that makes me just go "I'm canning cause I love me some candied jalapeños, not because my husband demands I do"
load more comments
(6 replies)
Yeah I'm not here for this. I just felt this massive wave of fatigue wash over me as I read it.
Like it or not you're going to run into weirdos in just about every hobby. All preemptively judging people does is teach people to keep to themselves. We're already building up a society of loners where people struggle to connect to each other with various other causes(loss of third places for example). We don't really need something like this pushing people further apart, especially when that ultimately drives peoples empathy for each other down too.
Yeah, I have a fondness for Norse history but mostly from a sustainability perspective. The people who settled Iceland were incredibly efficient with their resources and I think we could learn a lot from the turf houses they built... But I am about as far left as a person can get. I want open boarders, worker co-ops, the abolishment of billionaires, free college / healthcare, and a slow and steady attempt to pursue communist goals.
Old school games enjoyer: “Games used to be awesome… modern games are garbage”
🚨
Morrowind is better than Skyrim
😎
I particularly enjoy the telvanni lore
🚨
load more comments
(8 replies)
Amateur Radio.
The first video I found on Baofeng Radio guides is on a youtube channel run by some right winger that sounds like a SovCit, who makes "jokes" about people who wear mask and have this "gay humor".
Like bruh
(I mean, I guess it makes sense. Right-wing "anarchists" are skeptical of "government control" and are the type of people to want to use radios instead of smartphones. Buts its ironic that encryption is illegal... But I assume they probably just ignore the "no encryption" rule anyways since they are a SovCit.)
load more comments
(2 replies)
I am interested in survivalism but it seems like most survivalists are a bunch of god-fearing crazy racist motherfuckers.
load more comments
(35 replies)
I read an interesting article about 40K Space Marines last year, the problem with them is that some people just don't get satire no matter how glaringly obvious it is
load more comments
(81 replies)
Nazi punks fuck off. This is not a good example. Every metal enjoyer I know is progressive. It's one of the few communities that is still mostly sane and decent.
load more comments
(7 replies)