ideologies and qanon conspiracies, and how it all got exacerbated in the pandemic, and I'm just like, I knew it, I could feel the vibes were weird years ago, I remember finding spiritual IG extremely freaking weird and borderline culty and I had noticed how much anti-science and anti-pharma so many people on those communities are, and how much they preach this alternate reality and conspiracy theory mindset

I am so so glad I hopped out of that train years ago haha I like plant identification and finding out what's edible in the wild but that's it, I'm sticking to that

I was actually just listening to a podcast about this! It's interesting to see how that kind of conspiracy stuff can spiral. it's such a shame cuz so much of ppl's doubt in the system is rooted in bad experiences and inherent failures, but they rly go off the deep end and it gets so negative and dangerous

which podcast Elliott? I love stuff like this -- i find it super fascinating

the podcast is called Maintenance Phase, titled "the wellness to QAnon pipeline"

oh cool I'm gonna have to check this out. I've listened to a few episodes on Maintenance Phase but haven't heard that one yet. Have you listened to any of You're Wrong About? They do awesome takes on stuff like this, too

yeah that's how i found it! i had to listen to one for a class last semester and ive been into it since, love stuff like that

yeah I think it's sort of terrifying how easy the slope is, because for example you'll be on IG browsing through the recommended tab, and maybe you like a couple of those reposted from Tumblr posts about depression or anxiety or with other hashtags related to mental health, and then when you refresh the page you see all those wellness pages with affirmations and stuff about self-love and how you're different from the world and all show up, and if you like those you'll start seeing then witchy stuff telling you to use rose quartz for depression and citrine for cancer, and indigo children and empath talk and other similar topics, from then on if you keep on liking those contents it just gets weirder and weirder into this whole rabbit hole that just feels like it gets way more detached from reality the more you find those people. Also I've talked about it before on Neopets about my experience on the Witch side of Tumblr and how bizarre it all was. It really felt like an echo chamber then, same anti-science and anti-medicine mentality, so this is not new, the new part is the QAnon stuff. It's actually sort of really weird and creepy how easy it is to run into alt-right mentalities, IDK what it says about the state of the internet but it is really pervasive how you see echoes of conspiracies and bigotry everywhere

my friend is a pharmacist and used to go to these public speaking seminar things and there was one guy in the class who was one of these wackos and was a 'fruitarian', he insisted big pharma was a huge evil scam and therefore my friend was a terrible person and that he could heal his own body by only consuming high vibration fruits and some veg (not all veg, some of them lower ur vibration u know - you like potatoes? u might as well do fucking meth) and meditating in the sun in order to absorb the universe's healing energies. she showed me his facebook page and it was a total wormhole of conspiracy nonsense. i'm pretty sure he was also a flat earther? apparently his teeth were terrible anyways.

like i am a vegan who likes yoga and stuff but i do not want to be associated with those people lol

OMG that actually reminds me of this whole debacle that was going on in IG a couple of years back about the whole thing of what raises or lowers your vibrations, which already is a buckwild discussion to have, but like, there were entire subtweet-like posts at each other discussing whether watching a horror movie or eating candy or "having a self-defeatist mentality" or other stuff would cause you to lower your vibrations or not

Also, I just ran into this video https://href.li/?https://vm.tiktok.com/ZM825Cscy/ on tumblr and I feel it's so relevant to the discussion, also because the woman's video the guy is discussing is exactly the sort of post I remember seeing a lot on tumblr and later on on IG, and yeah it's pretty much a recruitment tactic

Ugggghhhhhh buckwild tho

Its 1 of the things that like, i h8 that its happening cause i feel powerless against it

oh yeah I think it's terrifying

might i interest you in some high-energy cyrstals to detoxify the fluoride from your system? please check out my online nutraceutical store. now accepting bitcoin and other crypto.

I should give that podcast a listen.

I dipped a toe in witchblr and yanked it out pretty quick because there was SO much vagueposting about people "doing" "magic" "wrong" that it freaked me out, but I got a look into the white supremacist + terf stuff. I was a little surprised bc I associate those hate movements with Christianized cultures, but I guess it makes sense that an American/Euro-centric community based on like - a very individualistic "alternative" spiritual practice would attract a lot of white people, considering how hostile white+Christianity is to nonwhite/non-Christian cultures

also: I saw this on twitter earlier -

"Been thinking a lot about an interview I did with Barbara Ehrenreich a few years ago where she told me that we had to invent the concept of "wellness" because to speak about health and disease was to speak about class" & how we have an emphasis on "wellness"/preventative healthcare as a personal responsibility, which means people who are actually old, sick, poor, etc. have 'failed.' which reminded me of how I saw some people react when smokers were eligible early to get the covid vax, vs. the outrage those people DON'T have for people who still can't access the vaccine for like. profit reasons.

(I feel like the character limit on here is way too high, I have no incentive to stop rambling now)

anyway, haha, I'm scared :|

ah, i've been coming to this same realisation at this point i think i consider myself agnostic pagan with very atheist-leaning tendencies. like i kinda just go through the motions (such as celebrating the sabbats) bc it's something that makes me feel good, but with the full awareness that it's quite likely none of this stuff is real

might i also add that the whole 'law of attraction'/'low-vibration' bs massively fucked with my ocd and made it way worse bc people would say "well if you focus on this thing you're so afraid of, it's more likely to happen - so just stop thinking about it!!". which is so dumb bc obsessions are defined by not being able to stop thinking about the scary thing, so like,,,,really not helpful.

and yeah, watching a lot of people i know who consider themselves spiritual, just absolutely spiraling into conspiracy land with all the covid stuff has been super disturbing and draining. all the anti-science/anti-medicine stuff really is Something

you speak in jokes but this is legit how those people sell their stuff, IDK about the crypto though because it has been years since I've dipped my toes into those communities and crypto was still for just buying drugs on Silk Road back then

omg actually now you made me remember the whole debacle way back in 2014 witchblr about viking paganism worship and its association with Nazi and white supremacy mentalities, because yeah, there were quite A LOT of those blogs who were both... Also, I remember how much hatred the overall community had towards anything related to hoodoo or voodoo or any afro- and native based religiosity and occult craft, the whole debacle was disguised under this whole "you shouldn't do dark magic!! How dare you do anything that's not positive and instagrammable! Cursing is bad!! Rule of three (a very much New Age Celtic paganism thing) is going to get you!!" argument but you could see the racism from a mile away... Coming to think of it, perhaps some of the alt right seeds were always there.

Also yeah a lot of the whole wellness movement is just a way to shift blame away from a lot of systemic failures onto the person, which really really rubs me off wrong. IDK how much the people advertising it are just blind followers of the topic and never stopped to think for more than two second about the consequences of their words, or are they somewhat conscious of what they're implying and are doing it for ulterior reasons. Even when I was searching for yoga classes on youtube, which is something I do to deal with my knee pain, I sometimes run into instructors that preach just a bit too much about stuff like that.

Also yeah the character limit here is really letting me be the most rambly version of myself lol

I mean, I did try some paganism and witchcraft back in the early 2010s, partly coming from the fact that I fell out of Roman Catholicism because of a lot of things, partly coming from some other events that were happening then that I felt like needed a supernatural solution, and partly because of my curiosity for stuff like herbalism and historic stuff related to food, and part out of pure curiosity. I ended up falling out of it because go figure, part of the reason I fell out of one religion is my issue with having any faith and being very skeptical in general, and since paganism is much more individually focused (or at least the New Age paganism that appears in the internet), you sort of have to carry your own faith, which is really hard to do honestly. And then I tried again when I first entered uni because I just wanted to test the water once again, to see if it was me or other factors in my life that had made me fall out the last time... And yeah go figure, I fell out once again.

I mean, I still try to remember the sabbaths because it's kind of fun and a way to keep track of the year, and some of the stuff I learned under the premise of witchcraft are still helpful because they were actually stuff that are helpful in general, like "energy grounding exercises" are just regulated breathing exercises with extra steps, and "guided meditations to focus the mind" are just guided meditations with glamor, which are very helpful for controlling anxiety, or even many spells I recognize they're more of a psychological suggestion to calm the mind or whatever than actual spells (I actually sort of still really like the idea of writing my thoughts about something that angers me and burning it, because I feel like writing is not enough, I need that anger release hahaha). Also I recognize the fact that witchcraft is a way to feel like you're in control of your world, and yeah it is helpful when you feel like everything is up in the air to try to take it by the reigns, or at least think you're doing so, and I never liked how christianism tells you to just "give yourself up to god," I felt like it was never a helpful suggestion for someone who is already struggling... But either way those are all psychological self-regulating skills and tricks, and in fact they sort of lose their power once you realize that (although the meditation and breathing exercises are still things I use when my anxiety is high or my mind is in chaos because they are still helpful).

But yeah the whole affirmations and positive thinking mentality are super harmful, because it's basically an argument to blame your own self (instead of the craft) for failures, and I mean if it wasn't for the fact I had already dealt with imposed self-blame way back when I interacted with my crazy ex-Neofriend years ago, I'd have spiraled into self-hatred. It's just a terrible mentality to preach, and like Wallace said, it's a very pernicious mentality with seedy implications.

And yeah it's freaking weird and concerning to see people spiral so easily into those mentalities, something something when there are economic and social instabilities people are prone to joining cults I guess. Which is concerning.