Skeptic Project

Most of the Internet doesn't think like them. If they did, Vigilant Citizen would have 604 million likes on Facebook, but they've only got 15K. You're just projecting your feelings on to others, most people think this shit is nuts, if they've even heard of it, and most haven't.

Most people don't care about nonsense garbage sites, and thus they don't waste time making debunking sites. Stupid proliferates online, and few even care to get down in the trenches with these people. Likewise, it may in part be confirmation bias. You just remember seeing all the trash sites, and thus you confirm your feelings.

CTers will frequently go out of their way to spread their nonsense to sites that have nothing to do with CTs, and they frequently comment on news sites to spread their conspiratorial crap. Yahoo news seems to be a favorite site for them to do this. There's another forum I post on that's based around an old game series, but there's one guy there who'll sometimes go on conspiratorial, racist rants and usually links to WorldNutDaily. Thankfully, most of the other boarders ignore him, although mods (like me) will tell him to STFU if he's being racist. Sometimes CTers will organize spamming campaigns. You can see examples here of people on TZM trying to plan online spamming campaigns. Here's a few threads:

http://conspiracies.skepticproject.com/forums/topic/tzm-reaching-critical-mass-via-justin-bieber<br /> http://conspiracies.skepticproject.com/forums/topic/project-youtube-assualt<br /> http://conspiracies.skepticproject.com/forums/topic/zeitards-new-activist-technique<br /> http://conspiracies.skepticproject.com/forums/topic/zeitards-brilliant-idea-for-spreading-awareness

The popularity of the "sheeple" meme is correlated with the unpopularity of CTers; in other words, conspiracy nuts are only that vehement about pointing out how asleep the regular guy is because almost nobody takes their shit seriously.

One of my former friends now runs a blog about the "lies" behind big pharma, climate change and banking and pretty much everyone in my social circle laughs at that kind of nonsense.

edit: Just went to check the popularity of CTs in MENSA, the newsgroup seems to be more skeptical with 7 threads in b.a.skeptic and two (also critical of woo-woo) in b.esoterik.

The webforum does have a few weird threads about astrology, one with a few guys objecting to homeopathy-critics and one describing The Secret as correct application of quantum physics.

Overall about what you should expect in a regular forum.

I don't think they're beyond help. I thought a skeptic might see it more like, "There are a lot of young CTers with impressionable minds who need to be introduced to critical thinking

I have seen people who were very deep down the "rabbit hole" become skeptics with the right information

I don't think they're beyond help. I thought a skeptic might see it more like, "There are a lot of young CTers with impressionable minds who need to be introduced to critical thinking

Well, the conviction that you know secrets the rest of the world does not can provide you with a strong sense of power or status, taking that away will usually be pretty hard. One should try to offer the truth as a help, after all, CTs don't increase your fitness for life in any real way, not slap them in the face with it. If you want to help, that is.

Of course it's just making fun of them, but that's impossible to many heavy CTs, instead it's "They're just rubbing it in our faces!" It's only creepy if you actually believe anything regarding it, to most people it's just a joke.

They probably think that this is real evidence that Chaney is an alien:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_KCXLGR6gNyE/SvOfzXJfypI/AAAAAAAAAGY/pYtGusJxtHM/s1600-h/dick-cheney-reptilian-cathy-obrien.jpg</p>

Anyway, I'm starting to see how stupid a lot of this stuff is...still questioning things, though.

But what about things like this:

http://www.lovethetruth.com/nwo/worship_dragon.htm</p>

Are they all guilty of what that article accuses them or are they just mixing it up with the ILY sign

I saw a documentary about a school which basically put the kids in a massive self help group therapy session. The point being that at one point they did that hand sign and said it was actually a sign of respect and love and they all had to show their fellow students some love and respect by showing them the hand sign. I'm not sure where that origin comes from but the point is these things grow and soon everyone is doing it and whatever the original meaning doesn't even matter anymore. Whether the original meaning was bad or good, it only matters why people do it nowadays.

Questionmark, it also needs to be said that most of the time the people you look to for this stuff use pictures of people that probably aren't even doing that hand sign anyway, its just a snapshot of a point in time where their hands happen to fall like that. Look at the one labeled "John Kerry campaigning in October of 2004" for example, his hands aren't even in that shape at all!! He just has his hands in the air!! If what Kerry is doing there is what is classed as a Satanic hand symbol then practically everyone does this multiple times a day, you may even be doing it right now!

They also talk about the Anton LaVey and the Church of Satan, yet its clear they really have no idea what the Church of Satan was. This wiki introduction puts it quite nicely:

Anton Szandor LaVey[1] (April 11, 1930 – October 29, 1997), born Howard Stanton Levey, was the founder of the Church of Satan as well as a writer, occultist, and musician. He was the author of The Satanic Bible and the founder of LaVeyan Satanism, a synthesized system of his understanding of human nature and the insights of philosophers who advocated materialism and individualism, for which he claimed no supernatural, metaphysical, or theistic inspiration.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_LaVey</p>

On the Church of Satan page is says:

According to Peter H. Gilmore, "Satanism begins with atheism. We begin with the universe and say, 'It’s indifferent. There’s no God, there’s no Devil. No one cares!'"[3]

...

Beliefs

The Church of Satan does not worship or support a belief in the Devil or other supernatural entities. "My real feeling is that anybody who believes in supernatural entities on some level is insane. Whether they believe in The Devil or God, they are abdicating reason," said Peter Gilmore.[3] Gilmore defines the word Satan: "Satan is a model or a mode of behavior. Satan in Hebrew means 'adversary' or 'opposer'; one who questions."[3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_Satan</p>

Still confused? The Church of Satan wasn't actually about worshipping Satan.

How can they get something so wrong Questionmark?

Then they promote the Bohemian Grove stuff by Alex Jones who claimed that the Owl was a demon representing Moloch/Molech yet Moloch was never represented as an Owl and I could find no references saying the character was represented as one apart from people quoting Alex Jones.

Why do these people have to lie and hype up these things to make their case? Why isn't the simplest explanation good enough for you? I told you to go through your past family pictures and TRY and look at them as if you were looking at these pictures. You WILL find people doing similar hand signs, but they aren't hand signs at all, or they are making gestures like they one you show here, which just means "rocking out", it doesn't mean your little cousin worships Satan it just means he wants to be cool.

I'm about to go to bed...but I thought i'd reply really quickly. I sort of thought it was probably just a "rock on" hand signal...but I guess I wasn't sure.

Don't have time for a full reply just yet...but if you want to see something that really riled up CTists, here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmUrbL_KZEs

I admit, I don't see the masonic symbols that are supposedly there, though. It is a bit creepy how so many people bowed their heads with him...but I guess they took it as a joke. I think (and hope) it was just that. He made an ass of himself.

About that last video with Jack Black, he was advertising a game he did the voice in called "brutal legend" its even on his shirt. In the game he's a rock roadie that gets sucked into a heavy metal style hellish world and has to fight demons with the power of rock music and that axe he was carrying in the video. Jack Black is simply trying to plug his game, go look up the game and it will seem to make more sense.

The tom and jerry one however is a little freaky, i'd like to see that whole episode, but keep in mind just cause the producers believe some thing and put it in tom and jerry doesn't make it true.

Also about the hand sign thing ed mentioned earlier the hand with the to outer fingers pointing forward is an amalgamation of 2 other sigh language words. I could be incorrect but its something like the words "love" and "you". You will notice when people do this sign they are pointing at some one or a group. Polititions often do it to the crowd and its not evil because that's the official meaning. So if you see Obama doing that to the crown with both hands he's say "Love Ya All" with his hands basically. Keep in mind the satanic meaning has one hand doing that upward with the other doing something else (i forgot). If you gonna get all picky with hand signals you can't just find stuff that sorta fits.

It just seems a little dark for tom and jerry, I also agree with you to a point, we really don't know what the creators intentions were, I was just saying in general "Assuming" its not a joke like you say that still doesn't mean its true. I would be reluctant to pass judgment on it unless I saw the whole episode.

I didn't find the Tom and Jerry one creepy at all, its not the original Tom and Jerry its the new series and they had these kinds of stories such as this. I know because I wasted a lot of time when I was younger watching lots of TV... According to this clip they worship the president of Hollywood... not weird except for what the CT's claim is the Illuminati symbol in the pyramid. So are Disney saying that the president of hollywood is a supernatural demon that leads the Illuminati? Would the scene be at all worth quoting if it didn't have that symbol? Maybe Disney's writers thought the pyramid thing looked cool and like a good symbol to use for the plot, maybe it was CT inspired because they know people think its a secret society symbol, what if the writer was a CT and wanted to put in some of his own beliefs into the cartoon. Certainly makes more sence than... wait... what is it CT's claim this meant to be about? The idea that makes the most sence to be is that its making fun of the idea that hollywood has a powerful demon running everything, the pyramid symbol is irrelevant.

The only creepy bit about it is the CTers that looped the end over and over.

Again it is just a stupid cartoon; so who gives a fying freak.

QuestionMark, notice the title of the youtube video "Proof the Illuminati exists". That is what these people consider proof, as Joe says, its just "a stupid cartoon".

Also, notice the reason for the pyramid. It was some Egyptian god, yet CTers claim it is devil worship. So which is it? How is devil worship linked to the Egyptions? They just vomit out a bunch of nonsensical unrelated nonsense and try desperately to link it together to form some fantasy.