Introductions, Part VI: Welcome to Our PD Party

[Freeky]

somethings in the water recently around here

recently?.~

A few oldtimers have returned recently. I expect Fred or Malachite to show next.

FRED!  I wonder what she's been up to.

No idea. Weird to think she would be in her 30s now.

she'd be 32, she's same age as me.

[Cramulus]

actually, Fred has been popping in to #discord now and then. She's doing ok, living with her BF in Texas, flipping burgers like a good sacrificial essential worker.

[Freeky]

No. Just a reminder: Tucson reality distortion victims are under NO circumstances to be used for carbon media. Any carbon media.

The results are unstable, and despite stories to the contrary, just because the energy emitted is green in color does NOT mean that it is good for the environment. In fact, the results on the environment after exposure can be seen by visiting Tucson’s Croatian District.

Can’t find it? You might need a fifth dimensional tour guide. If you start seeing the iron pillars spearing down from the sun, you’re at least close by.

too bad that roast beef guy didn't stick around, because all this is just true facts and he could've benefitted from altered's weirdly acccurate knowledge

[Freeky]

actually, Fred has been popping in to #discord now and then. She's doing ok, living with her BF in Texas, flipping burgers like a good sacrificial essential worker.

 hell yeah. i mean, sucks about Texas and being a sacrificial worker, but it's good to hear she's doing okay.

[Nyborj the Priest]

Hi! I'm Robin or Robinj or Niborj or Nybor or something. I live in Scotland and work in videogame AI. Possibly my creations have killed you in an imaginary world.

I got into Discordianism in my teens, got far too obsessive about it and bored my friends senseless. Sorry. Then for a while I was an obnoxious atheist, till I noticed it had become inextricable with various types of awfulness. Recently I've been poking around in not-too-wooey Zenish Taoish stuff again. I love the idea that the self is an illusion and may try and write my thoughts on that out in a way that makes sense some day. I went to a Buddhist temple a couple of times and learned some Zen meditation, which I like and find I have a better day when I remember to do it, but it seems even slightly formal religion isn't for me.

Then I remembered Discordianism with its creativity and humour and freedom, dug out my old Principia, looked for Discordian facebook groups and oh god

And then I found this place with its explicit rule against alt-right wankery (how? do alt-right wankers? identify with Discordianism?) and it seems nice so far.

I make various stuff, which I've posted some of in Bring and Brag. I try to do a lot of things.

Hello!

[Cain]

how? do alt-right wankers? identify with Discordianism?

A heavy combination of "lol I troll u" and ignoring everything else they don't like. Basically this comic writ large:

[Nyborj the Priest]

I'm not keen on the ableist slurs but yep, that.

[Cain]

Neither am I, but it was the pithiest example I can think of.

[Nyborj the Priest]

Neither am I, but it was the pithiest example I can think of.

No no NO, you're supposed to double down and rant about how no-one has a sense of humour these days and if you say anything un-PC you'll be arrested and thrown in jail

[Cramulus]

I got into Discordianism in my teens, got far too obsessive about it and bored my friends senseless. Sorry. Then for a while I was an obnoxious atheist, till I noticed it had become inextricable with various types of awfulness. Recently I've been poking around in not-too-wooey Zenish Taoish stuff again. I love the idea that the self is an illusion and may try and write my thoughts on that out in a way that makes sense some day. I went to a Buddhist temple a couple of times and learned some Zen meditation, which I like and find I have a better day when I remember to do it, but it seems even slightly formal religion isn't for me.

I love how many of us have similar origin stories

I started off christian, then got tao, then got fruitbat discordia, then became an obnoxious atheist, then a chaos mage, then people in this forum snapped me out of all of that, and now in 2020, I'm in an "it's complicated" relationship with reality.

And then I found this place with its explicit rule against alt-right wankery (how? do alt-right wankers? identify with Discordianism?) and it seems nice so far.

my experience is that a lot of discordians, especially those that come in through Robert Anton Wilson, are all about rejecting dualities and not believing what they read.

And that model-agnosticism is great for not getting suckered.. but it can become its own form of dogma. You can get stuck in a trap where you automatically reject anything that seems partisan... or you recognize the issues that your own party has... and that leads to this handwavy "both sides are equally bad" smooth-brain energy.

Like, if you take a casual dip into the Robert Anton Wilson Fans facebook group, you find lots of people who are "free thinkers" that can't (or won't) distinguish between facism and antifascism.

[altered]

I like to remind those types that 50% of Nazi Germany is still an unthinkably horrific genocide. There’s no centrist position for Fascism.

(Of course, just like with biology, chemistry and physics, later on you learn that’s an outright lie to make it easier to understand the correct answers and that the centrist position for fascism is actually neoliberalism, which is why we are where we are today.)

[Cramulus]

I'm probably being overly generous in assuming that the alt-right discordians spun out from model agnosticism

most of them are just jerks who are high on the "you can't tell me what to do" vibe in the Principia

Discordia's always had them - the Legion of Dynamic Discord, it's like entry level discordia. St. Vincent Verthaine called that crowd the "Little Deluded Dupes".


you can also blame 4chan. In 2014, a bunch of Discordians on 4chan infected the group with the meme that Kek is an aspect of Eris, and that chaos magic & memes can be used to destabilize the status quo.

this is what alt-right occult discordia looks like:
https://www.amazon.com/Saint-Obamas-MomJeans/

[LMNO]

Some hear about Discordia, and plot against the Machine™.
Some hear about Discordia, and think about it at great length.
Some hear about Discordia, and decide it means they should get high and doodle.
If it weren't for those spags, Discordia wouldn't be as interesting as it is.

Order appears calming and sensible.
Disorder appears unsettling and unstable.
Doubt appears ignorant.
Certainty appears true.
Aggression appears confident.
Mirth appears uncaring.
Horror appears powerless.
All these are lies.

Uncertainty reveals itself as a narrow footbridge,
but with its heart in Chaos, the path is clear.

Also, hi, new person!

[Nyborj the Priest]

Ugh. I'm glad I got most of my growing up done before social media was a thing. If I'd gone looking for Discordians online and found something like that to feel identity with, yeesh.

And I remember RAW's brand of ultra-agnosticism. He took such an unshakeable, absolute, not-in-the-least-agnostic position on it. There's a sentence something like "At this point, you're either an agnostic or a stone paranoid - there is no middle ground" that stuck with me because it was so weirdly ironic. I read those books at the right time, and they made me curious and open-minded in a way that worked out well, but would have been easy to exploit.

My dad used to say "Don't be too open-minded or your brain will fall out," but I'm more bothered about what someone else could have put in there. (And now he's been turned into an alt-right wanker by the internet, but I digress.)

[minuspace]

Hi new person. I think I’ve been here a while; not sure how I got here though. The first book I ever bought was “Behold a Pale Horse” so at least it kinda makes sense why I find myself here now. If you hang-out long enough, there’s a significant probability of personal transformation.


Exhibit A: (They once were giant wolves)

this is what alt-right occult discordia looks like:
https://www.amazon.com/Saint-Obamas-MomJeans/