i'm gonna have to say Q because i feel like scientology is more calculated + intentional and they have so much money and power that it honestly doesn't entirely surprise me that they're able to recruit so many people if that makes sense? they have organized systemic efforts to draw people in and keep them there + not to mention being "technically" a religion. so while i think scientology is evil and exploitive i feel bad for people who get sucked in because they are often the most vulnerable and impressionable. and scientology makes calculated moves in order to prevent their members from leaving (denounce ur family, become financially dependent upon the church etc) hopefully that made sense
Q on the other hand... it's not an organized effort (as far as i know), it's just people being gullible and believing things like that! they have no tiered system, no gated communities for their members, no ways to control a persons entire life and mind. they just prey upon gullible people using false information alone. i articulated this to my friends by saying "it's so concerning to see older people sharing qanon shit considering they probably believe there is a hacker known as 4chan." to believe in Q you have to consciously not fact check things. it's not like scientology because technically if you believe in Q you CAN leave at any time! the only thing preventing them from leaving is their own ignorance and unwillingness to learn.
i'm super passionate about this subject because like i've told you i'm a teenager who frequents tiktok so i've seen a lot of these theories (mostly pizzagate) be spread with no regard for actual information. it's so disheartening to see people my age sharing those "secret codes" without taking the 2 minutes to google it and see that it originated from actual neo-nazis. that's why i think it's so embarrassing especially to see people buy into qanon. because they CHOOSE not to research and rely entirely on warped information!
What a great question for a Monday morning. I see this as "is it more embarrassing to piss or shit yourself in public", while both are incredibly embarrassing one defiantly effects more people with the smell it creates i.e. Scientology. The power structure behind Scientology is rather well organised to the point where they have a lot of "lobby" groups against various social structures and health services i.e. mental health services, which I tend to see as being very harmful. It would seem from how the power shifted inside the Scientology system after L. Ron died it was a group of folks "hyper normalising" their beliefs even though the truth had been shown to them about the whole being made up by a power hungry sci-fi author who had ripped off various eastern spiritualities and tried to pass them off as his own ideas.
QAnon on the other hand (after watch and reading it's rise on 4chan) seems to be a group that uses small bits of real world evidence (Jeffery Epstein's power base and his eventual death for example) and then extrapolate from there creating a world view based on that small evidence that anyone associated with the situation had to know what was going on and is defiantly involved, therefore going legitimacy to the larger "world control" hypothesis. The reason QAnon is like pissing yourself is it generally spreads faster and more people notice it quicker.
Just a quick thing after you mentioned in another comment wether there is any cross over amongst the conspiracies. After clicking possibly too many links on internet pages I discovered a link between Scientology, The Nation of Islam and various far right ethno-state groups. I found this link very interesting because of the foundation story one of the Nation of Islam's leaders put forward about Yakub the big head scientist, now that was a deep hole to delve into.
Probably QAnon. Its more dangerous at this current moment because as wild as Scientology is, it presents itself as a money laundering scheme for Mission Impossible movies which I generally enjoy.
QAnon are currently leaning into the worst aspects of paranoia, enabling people to promote fear and anger. Pretty fucked up given how impressionable the South are - heck they still believe in their southern strategy and are likely petitioning for Night ag the Museum 4 where Robert E Lee’s statue comes back to life and leads some revolution in a cornfield.
Aside from being a cult, Scientology just really wants you to be in awe of Xenu’s galactic sized dick.
I guess I'd rather marry a scientologist – at least scientology is "fun" (aliens, volcanoes, general sci-fi wackiness) whereas QAnon doesn't even have the entertainingly goofy aspects of LRH's absurd religion. Q is just depressing to me. As someone else commented (and I completely agree with this): QAnon is more dangerous since it's supported by a world leader and is therefore tragically relevant. I find most religions to have some level of cringe to them, but I will give them the benefit of the doubt on occasion since they have the ability to inform people's actions for the better. By contrast, QAnon has no redeemable value and just occurs to me as a bleak symbol of America's worst, most impenetrable idiots. Keep up the awesome work, David, and thanks for this thread!
As an American, I'm certain that no one who is an active Scientologist could ever be elected into political office, that is clearly not the case with QAnon, so on that basis alone, I consider QAnon to be more dangerous. Scientology, much like a vampire, can only ruin your life if you allow it in. At this point, there have been more than enough documentaries, books and television shows showing the dangers of joining Scientology that I can only feel bad for the children who get sucked in when their parents end up joining. You've been warned more than enough times that emperor not only has no clothes but he will drain you financially and when he can't get any more money out of you, he will conscript you into eternal servitude. QAnon is actively dangerous because it is being spouted off as fact by the Cheeto in Chief and therefore, has to show up on the nightly news and even with journalists who do their due diligence and attempt to explain that QAnon is a baseless conspiracy theory, that does nothing to sway his followers who, of course, believe that the media is part of it. Critical thinking is not widely taught in The US, in big part because the Religious Right can't stand it and there is no fighting them. That there is a big overlap between Evangelicals (who I can easily blame for at least 85% of America's problems) and QAnon believers is no accident, as long as you are painting the Left as corrupt, they will believe anything you throw at them. My only consolation is that QAnon will now have to deal with the Beyhive and no way are they prepared for that.
To really boil it down, is it more embarrassing to follow cults on baseless human conspiracies or baseless supernatural mythology? On one had, a human conspiracy is *physically possible* under our current understanding of the laws of reality, while a supernatural cult requires belief in aliens and cosmic forces *in addition to* a human conspiracy, so on the face of it, QAnon is more plausible. However, my gut reaction is that QAnon is more embarrassing, which is very odd to say given the bizarre conviction of Scientology. I suppose the reason is, when you enter the world of religion (or pseudo-religion), supernatural forces are an established feature, so it's absurdity is partly camouflaged. A common defense of Scientology is to point out the illogical belief systems of other religions. So the fact that a large percentage of the population believes in some form of religion makes it more palatable (which is why it is so INSIDIOUS). QAnon, Flat-Earthers, and other conspiracy theory groups have no such escape hatch.
Like I said, this is just my gut reaction, and I may even change my mind after some reflection. In the meantime, check out this incredible piece on how conspiracy theories can debunked using machine learning to analyze their structure. Fascinating stuff!
For what it's, I'd happily support any creative measure you took to go more into the weeds about conspiracy theories. The behavioural psychology behind what people believe in (crazy or otherwise) is so fascinating.
I'd rather marry a Scientologist. I'm an atheist and I don't care what fairy tale people believe in. To me, Xenu isn't any weirder than the Holy Trinity.
QAnon is far more dangerous, like how they reinterpret and fabricate facts on the go.
I generally struggle to understand how people who have all the knowledge in the world in their pocket choose to go back to stone age believes, may this be creationism/religion, flat earth, 5G, QAnon.
Scientology's ability to catch and manipulate people has been fine tuned for a couple generations, Qanon believers just needed someone to create an elaborate fiction to make their racism okay. It's the difference between being killed by a tiger and being killed peeing on a transformer.
David, I think it's actually quite an easy answer; Q Anon is far more embarrassing. Simply put all religions have some sort of allegorical stories that most people don't actually believe to be true (i.e. Adam & Eve) so Scientology is no exception. I would also say that Scientologists tend to try not to harm others with their beliefs whereas Q Anon doesn't seem to give a shit what damage they are doing. I think Scientology is odd sure, but I'm much more willing to let people do whatever they want privately if they don't try force their bullshit beliefs on others
fundamentally individualistic world view is definitely a predisposing factor to getting sucked in by Qanon. throw in christianity. having read jordan peterson and having the privilege of growing up blind to the existence of oppression of any form. i know people like this and you cant discuss social issues because they keep bringing it back to the individual and moral choices. so the health response act was about taking away people's individual rights. blind to what society needs because society is just a collection of individuals and if everyone made the right choices blah blah. so they need an individual evil figure like bill gates to focus their fear on. they fear the UN too but only because bill owns it! i have to stop getting into conversations with the ones i know because it is doing my head in.
another +1 for QAnon. many others have added the reasons I agree with below, but boils down to immediate-danger-rating for me, and QAnon ranks higher in that (at the moment)
I think QAnon is more embarrasing purely because Scientology seems about as far fetched as other religions when you get down to it and people spend their lives and all their money in those too. But to blame real problems on real people existing every day and believe that everything comes from a ring of pedophiles running the earth is a genuinely harmful way of thinking, and because many of these people are in positions of power (including the president of the United States 🤮) these messages can lead to a much larger portion of people believing in a dangerous conspiracy theory than those who believe in an (equally nutty) religion. Furthermore, these messages coming from people like Tr*mp can and does give people who believe in QAnon a justification for doing so and for doing things like trying to shoot up pizza places. All in all I think because it's publicly coming from such figures that a huge portion of the country takes their every word as gospel, it's more dangerous to a larger number of people.
The base line is that most people find Scientology a bit of a laugh, you watch the doco’s, snicker at the ideology, download Battlefield earth and the truely wonder if Tom Cruise does send every Scientologist a Christmas card. QAnon, unfortunately is in the heady infancy stage where people who desperately want to link conspiracy theory’s together, meet and get high off each other’s sweat as they rapidly tap their keyboards. QAnon is available to everyone, one misstep on YouTube and there is your algorithm gone! Scientology was never for everyone, and they didn’t want just anyone either.
oof okay this one is difficult bear with me
i'm gonna have to say Q because i feel like scientology is more calculated + intentional and they have so much money and power that it honestly doesn't entirely surprise me that they're able to recruit so many people if that makes sense? they have organized systemic efforts to draw people in and keep them there + not to mention being "technically" a religion. so while i think scientology is evil and exploitive i feel bad for people who get sucked in because they are often the most vulnerable and impressionable. and scientology makes calculated moves in order to prevent their members from leaving (denounce ur family, become financially dependent upon the church etc) hopefully that made sense
Q on the other hand... it's not an organized effort (as far as i know), it's just people being gullible and believing things like that! they have no tiered system, no gated communities for their members, no ways to control a persons entire life and mind. they just prey upon gullible people using false information alone. i articulated this to my friends by saying "it's so concerning to see older people sharing qanon shit considering they probably believe there is a hacker known as 4chan." to believe in Q you have to consciously not fact check things. it's not like scientology because technically if you believe in Q you CAN leave at any time! the only thing preventing them from leaving is their own ignorance and unwillingness to learn.
i'm super passionate about this subject because like i've told you i'm a teenager who frequents tiktok so i've seen a lot of these theories (mostly pizzagate) be spread with no regard for actual information. it's so disheartening to see people my age sharing those "secret codes" without taking the 2 minutes to google it and see that it originated from actual neo-nazis. that's why i think it's so embarrassing especially to see people buy into qanon. because they CHOOSE not to research and rely entirely on warped information!
anyways hopefully that was coherent at all !!!
What a great question for a Monday morning. I see this as "is it more embarrassing to piss or shit yourself in public", while both are incredibly embarrassing one defiantly effects more people with the smell it creates i.e. Scientology. The power structure behind Scientology is rather well organised to the point where they have a lot of "lobby" groups against various social structures and health services i.e. mental health services, which I tend to see as being very harmful. It would seem from how the power shifted inside the Scientology system after L. Ron died it was a group of folks "hyper normalising" their beliefs even though the truth had been shown to them about the whole being made up by a power hungry sci-fi author who had ripped off various eastern spiritualities and tried to pass them off as his own ideas.
QAnon on the other hand (after watch and reading it's rise on 4chan) seems to be a group that uses small bits of real world evidence (Jeffery Epstein's power base and his eventual death for example) and then extrapolate from there creating a world view based on that small evidence that anyone associated with the situation had to know what was going on and is defiantly involved, therefore going legitimacy to the larger "world control" hypothesis. The reason QAnon is like pissing yourself is it generally spreads faster and more people notice it quicker.
Just a quick thing after you mentioned in another comment wether there is any cross over amongst the conspiracies. After clicking possibly too many links on internet pages I discovered a link between Scientology, The Nation of Islam and various far right ethno-state groups. I found this link very interesting because of the foundation story one of the Nation of Islam's leaders put forward about Yakub the big head scientist, now that was a deep hole to delve into.
Probably QAnon. Its more dangerous at this current moment because as wild as Scientology is, it presents itself as a money laundering scheme for Mission Impossible movies which I generally enjoy.
QAnon are currently leaning into the worst aspects of paranoia, enabling people to promote fear and anger. Pretty fucked up given how impressionable the South are - heck they still believe in their southern strategy and are likely petitioning for Night ag the Museum 4 where Robert E Lee’s statue comes back to life and leads some revolution in a cornfield.
Aside from being a cult, Scientology just really wants you to be in awe of Xenu’s galactic sized dick.
I guess I'd rather marry a scientologist – at least scientology is "fun" (aliens, volcanoes, general sci-fi wackiness) whereas QAnon doesn't even have the entertainingly goofy aspects of LRH's absurd religion. Q is just depressing to me. As someone else commented (and I completely agree with this): QAnon is more dangerous since it's supported by a world leader and is therefore tragically relevant. I find most religions to have some level of cringe to them, but I will give them the benefit of the doubt on occasion since they have the ability to inform people's actions for the better. By contrast, QAnon has no redeemable value and just occurs to me as a bleak symbol of America's worst, most impenetrable idiots. Keep up the awesome work, David, and thanks for this thread!
As an American, I'm certain that no one who is an active Scientologist could ever be elected into political office, that is clearly not the case with QAnon, so on that basis alone, I consider QAnon to be more dangerous. Scientology, much like a vampire, can only ruin your life if you allow it in. At this point, there have been more than enough documentaries, books and television shows showing the dangers of joining Scientology that I can only feel bad for the children who get sucked in when their parents end up joining. You've been warned more than enough times that emperor not only has no clothes but he will drain you financially and when he can't get any more money out of you, he will conscript you into eternal servitude. QAnon is actively dangerous because it is being spouted off as fact by the Cheeto in Chief and therefore, has to show up on the nightly news and even with journalists who do their due diligence and attempt to explain that QAnon is a baseless conspiracy theory, that does nothing to sway his followers who, of course, believe that the media is part of it. Critical thinking is not widely taught in The US, in big part because the Religious Right can't stand it and there is no fighting them. That there is a big overlap between Evangelicals (who I can easily blame for at least 85% of America's problems) and QAnon believers is no accident, as long as you are painting the Left as corrupt, they will believe anything you throw at them. My only consolation is that QAnon will now have to deal with the Beyhive and no way are they prepared for that.
To really boil it down, is it more embarrassing to follow cults on baseless human conspiracies or baseless supernatural mythology? On one had, a human conspiracy is *physically possible* under our current understanding of the laws of reality, while a supernatural cult requires belief in aliens and cosmic forces *in addition to* a human conspiracy, so on the face of it, QAnon is more plausible. However, my gut reaction is that QAnon is more embarrassing, which is very odd to say given the bizarre conviction of Scientology. I suppose the reason is, when you enter the world of religion (or pseudo-religion), supernatural forces are an established feature, so it's absurdity is partly camouflaged. A common defense of Scientology is to point out the illogical belief systems of other religions. So the fact that a large percentage of the population believes in some form of religion makes it more palatable (which is why it is so INSIDIOUS). QAnon, Flat-Earthers, and other conspiracy theory groups have no such escape hatch.
Like I said, this is just my gut reaction, and I may even change my mind after some reflection. In the meantime, check out this incredible piece on how conspiracy theories can debunked using machine learning to analyze their structure. Fascinating stuff!
https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/how-conspiracy-theories-emerge-and-fall-apart
+1 for QAnon.
On a side note, this was a really interesting podcast on conspiracy theories from FiveThirtyEight: https://fivethirtyeight.com/videos/the-politics-of-covid-19-conspiracy-theories/.
For what it's, I'd happily support any creative measure you took to go more into the weeds about conspiracy theories. The behavioural psychology behind what people believe in (crazy or otherwise) is so fascinating.
That's a tough one, David...
I'd rather marry a Scientologist. I'm an atheist and I don't care what fairy tale people believe in. To me, Xenu isn't any weirder than the Holy Trinity.
QAnon is far more dangerous, like how they reinterpret and fabricate facts on the go.
I generally struggle to understand how people who have all the knowledge in the world in their pocket choose to go back to stone age believes, may this be creationism/religion, flat earth, 5G, QAnon.
100% Q Anon. Worst fan fiction EVER. Scientology has rules and parameters. I can forgive a Scientologist.
and where does Jordan Peterson fit into this? is he a reptile? or an elite? hes pretty embarrassing.
Scientology's ability to catch and manipulate people has been fine tuned for a couple generations, Qanon believers just needed someone to create an elaborate fiction to make their racism okay. It's the difference between being killed by a tiger and being killed peeing on a transformer.
David, I think it's actually quite an easy answer; Q Anon is far more embarrassing. Simply put all religions have some sort of allegorical stories that most people don't actually believe to be true (i.e. Adam & Eve) so Scientology is no exception. I would also say that Scientologists tend to try not to harm others with their beliefs whereas Q Anon doesn't seem to give a shit what damage they are doing. I think Scientology is odd sure, but I'm much more willing to let people do whatever they want privately if they don't try force their bullshit beliefs on others
fundamentally individualistic world view is definitely a predisposing factor to getting sucked in by Qanon. throw in christianity. having read jordan peterson and having the privilege of growing up blind to the existence of oppression of any form. i know people like this and you cant discuss social issues because they keep bringing it back to the individual and moral choices. so the health response act was about taking away people's individual rights. blind to what society needs because society is just a collection of individuals and if everyone made the right choices blah blah. so they need an individual evil figure like bill gates to focus their fear on. they fear the UN too but only because bill owns it! i have to stop getting into conversations with the ones i know because it is doing my head in.
another +1 for QAnon. many others have added the reasons I agree with below, but boils down to immediate-danger-rating for me, and QAnon ranks higher in that (at the moment)
I think QAnon is more embarrasing purely because Scientology seems about as far fetched as other religions when you get down to it and people spend their lives and all their money in those too. But to blame real problems on real people existing every day and believe that everything comes from a ring of pedophiles running the earth is a genuinely harmful way of thinking, and because many of these people are in positions of power (including the president of the United States 🤮) these messages can lead to a much larger portion of people believing in a dangerous conspiracy theory than those who believe in an (equally nutty) religion. Furthermore, these messages coming from people like Tr*mp can and does give people who believe in QAnon a justification for doing so and for doing things like trying to shoot up pizza places. All in all I think because it's publicly coming from such figures that a huge portion of the country takes their every word as gospel, it's more dangerous to a larger number of people.
Oh yeah, and both are fucking insane
The base line is that most people find Scientology a bit of a laugh, you watch the doco’s, snicker at the ideology, download Battlefield earth and the truely wonder if Tom Cruise does send every Scientologist a Christmas card. QAnon, unfortunately is in the heady infancy stage where people who desperately want to link conspiracy theory’s together, meet and get high off each other’s sweat as they rapidly tap their keyboards. QAnon is available to everyone, one misstep on YouTube and there is your algorithm gone! Scientology was never for everyone, and they didn’t want just anyone either.