... the universe is unfolding exactly the way it was supposed to.

Wow, the depth of that statement is truly incredible. Should I call you Master or would you prefer another title?

LOL! Now you're just patronizing me! Just call me "SincerelySincere".

Yes Grasshopper......Master is fine.

My god, the Philistine gleefully proclaims complete and utter banalities as if they were astounding. I don't accept the telos wrapped up in "supposed." Essentially things are unfolding in a way that we cannot even be aware of except at varying degrees of removal, so how can we posit a force which guides them, (prime mover, or supposer)?

Now, things ARE somewhat different than before, and it's not just the rate at which information travels that has changed. We have increasingly constituted our selves as reflections of media images obtained from television, newspapers, magazines, and now the internet, which means we are decreasingly constituted based on the "real" world and divorced from our bodies and those around us. We're looking at the world through a lens that's shaped by the media, but the media is simply competing for popularity, and they'll say anything. We, the people, have set the agenda of Fox News, not the Republican Party. Fish school together into these "brainwashed" states without the imposing nets of Bilderbergers and so on. It's a collective assertion of ego, typified by Nationalists like Hitler--who really should not be credited with such great evil. He didn't force people to hate jews, they'd hated them for hundreds of years with extreme venom. He took advantage of it! It doesn't take much ingenuity to cook up media campaigns that just confirm everything everybody wants to believe, and that was really the driving force behind Nazism.

Social Media, in particular, is the greatest boon for the Bilderberg types imaginable. Why? It seems as if "the people" are finally able to grab the microphone and explain how everything is wrong. That is true, but that message does not often appeal. When you ramp up the flexibility and pace of media, put it in the hands of anyone, that is a recipe for disaster.

For example, you might believe that the Internet rose up to defend itself from SOPA with the blackouts last year, and that this event was a great victory for "the people." That may confirm everything you want to believe, so therefore it is reason to become immediately suspicious. Who really did the heavy lifting in transmitting the message of the blackout? Google! A big corporation was able to keep its bottom line safe while disguising a power play as some kind of beneficent grassroots uprising. This is the same thing as Occupy and the Tea Party. The entire Arab Spring was sparked by a video of a man burning himself that went viral. What made it go viral? Certainly thousands of men and women burn themselves each day, even on video, but this man's self-immolation was special enough to spark a series of revolutions. The appealing narrative which framed the video was the reason for the uprising, not the man himself. It's propaganda that doesn't look like propaganda. Don't believe it? Look at the front page of Reddit each day, and look for corporate advertisements. No, not in the ad-boxes, dummy, in the content people are voting up. It's easy to design a meme.

Cool story bro! Needs more dragons and shit though....

“Increasingly, human beings constitute themselves based on beautiful images provided by our dear friends in the media. These images have been focus grouped, scientifically tweaked, and engineered from the ground up to become more and more alluring than the next image. It’s just capitalism! ‘Ol Papa Tom gets the cheapest possible ingredients and designs a pizza that tastes like pure ambrosia, truly food for the gods. But these gods are so full on this paradoxical emptiness they have ballooned into giant pink freaks of nature. Then, Papa Tom hires on some liars to go on television and tell you they use only the best ingredients. You have walled yourselves inside this fortresses city to block out everything but these beautiful images!”

The crowd trembled, their fat jiggling. A white-haired old woman, dressed all in white wailed. “Save us! Save us! Oh, Lord we have sinned.”

Johnny raised his palms. “No! You have not sinned! You have been seduced by beauty, and you, my dear, should know quite well that beauty is a wonderful thing.”

“It is?” She blushed.

Johnny hugged the woman and smiled. “Yes. And you won’t believe the food people eat outside these ugly pink walls. Incredible!” As he said this, he swept a hand across the crowd, indicating the visible wave of fear. Johnny’s eyes grew wide, almost insane. He lifted the walking stick at his side, an intricate fractal thing of clear plastic topped with a spiraling pine cone of diamond ferns glittering in the sunlight, flowing spider threads leading into a wireframe model of a tree trunk, glowing subtly as each filament filled with light like fiber optic cable, terminating at what looked like a small rubber pad only a sixteenth of an inch thick.

The woman fell on her knees, hands in the air. “How can I leave this godforsaken place? I’ve been here for years, and I’m old, so old. My god! MY GOD!” She blubbered into her hands violently, and the back of her arms bounced like the ass of a booty dancer. Kneeling beside her, Johnny whispered something secret into her ear that seemed to calm her for a moment.

“When I am upset I often take comfort in the words of Jesus. You know what he said? If the camel wants to pass through the eye of the needle, she’s going to have to leave all her baggage behind.”

Her fit of crying became cathartic laughter. She had been healed, but the crowd murmured apprehensively. They backed away from the scene slowly, terrified, as if they had been caught jerking a dog. A whizzing projectile struck Johnny directly in the face, then in the neck, then in the chest, then in the abdomen, and then in the crotch. The blood spattered woman tore her shirt in agony by the bits of his body, gnashing her teeth and beating her breasts, screaming “Jesus! This man was Jesus! Why’d you have to go and kill him, God dammit!”

She clung to the fractal staff, while trails of blackish blood worked their way through its interstices as if forming some unknowable but intentional shape. Service robots coldly dumped Johnny’s body into the sewer systems, where the obese woman knew he would be incorporated into KS. Now that it was not merely a symbol, eating the body of Christ completely lost its appeal. She had to leave.

......... and theeeen?

Don't leave us hangin', bro! Wrap this up!

I thought it was Papa Johns.

Well, it was not intended to refer to you; however, that does not mean it can't. That is the intentional fallacy. However, simply because you say you didn't proclaim banalities as if they were astounding, that does not make it so. That is the bare assertion fallacy.

You are a tool, thinking yourself very cool.

Yeah, this sounds possible, for sure. I'd say the potential for human fucked-upness/conspiracy has probably always been there, but I suspect that the advancements in tech/pharma/science/etc have actually caused some new dirty strategies to emerge.

edit: Also I am disappointed that this post isn't about some wide reaching illuminati conspiracy Billy Joel is involved in. I mean, look at the guy:

http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/images/billy_joel.jpg

Well just look at monsanto, NSA supercomputers, drones, Anonymous, Reddit - the list goes on and on. Tech is the new battleground.

Nothing new under the sun?

Man's oppression of man has always been around (unfortunately). But the massive technology that has been developed to kill, control, oppress, and subdue, is, unfortunately, new on the horizon in mankind's blood thirst to conquer his fellowman.

I wish we would all quit playing King of the Mountain.

Historically, there haven't been a lot of things to check that bloodthirst. One of them, at least in a few cases, would be the conscience of the everyday man who has been ordered to do something vile. People still do, and not often will someone refuse orders, but they at least sometimes will.

This is something that bothers me about the concept of drones. Though there are still people being ordered to press buttons from afar, they really do distance someone a lot further from their actions than they've ever been, and there are fewer opportunities for decent people to say no.

Drones being used on U.S soil is a nightmare scenario to me.

Definitely agree on the "distancing" buffer zone and how it insulates the killing.

Also Milgram Effect.

Drones being used on U.S soil is a nightmare scenario to me.

If we look at the man behind the curtain, there are a lot of nightmare scenarios waiting to happen. Agenda 21 population control comes to mind, FEMA camps, militarization of police, bio-warfare, etc. The kind of nightmares you can't wake up from...

So much that I can't really wrap my head around all of it, and the evil runs so deep that I kind of can't tell what's really a threat and what's just r/conspiracy being themselves. Kind of feel like I was thrown into the deep end of the pool but don't know how to swim, really.

good point, dont listen to the other assholes

It's a good point if you're still in high school. If you're an adult, and presumably one who at least graduated high school, this is "sky is blue" stuff. I genuinely don't know how he considers this some sort of insight or revelation.

The elite and powerful have always been corrupt? You don't say! The Internet has been an amazing tool for spreading information? You don't say!

bamshoulddie is a douchebag? You don't say!

I think that tone is a little harsh to take. A lot of people are just now waking up to the cold reality that some of us have known all our lives. We should be welcoming every mind we can, bolstering our ranks with the truth. Not condescending like a bunch of assholes. That makes us no better than the elite. Edit: I just read the rest of your comments. This subreddit is not a club house for the "super informed", and your attitude and obvious ego issues need to be checked at the door.

Do you think I might have hurt his feelings? Gosh, thanks for opening my eyes to that. I'll have to compose an apology.

Better yet, write me up a reply like I give half a shit.

Why are you being like this? Even if you're right, and this realisation is almost-literally baby stuff, it's better that people realise it than not. Doesn't much matter when they do so long as they do, right?

Put in another way, for the first time in history, the general population is now aware that the people who have been leading ARE a bunch of cunning, degenerate psychopaths for the most part, and need to be removed in order for society to function properly. That is why the cunning, degenerate psychopaths want to now squash your freedom on the internet: they didn't really plan on you finding out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4AyOk9P4wU

To be honest I think the Founding Fathers of America had figured this out over 200 years ago.

Right, but I thinkt he meant psychopaths like Jay Rockefeller who wished the internet were never invented.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ct9xzXUQLuY

The movable type printing press was the equivalent of the internet back then. It was then quickley used for the purpose of disinfo.

Put in another way, for the first time...

...since there were only three TV networks.

for the first time in history

Pretty much no. Even if we ignore the countless revolutions that have happened in countless societies - you generally don't revolt unless you think the folks in charge suck and you can do better - for nearly as long as people have been writing, there have been accounts of discontent with those in power, philosophical musings about power and the elite and the masses, and so on. Greek philosophers, Roman writers, historical journals. And those are just the written records. Do you really think the people slaving to build the pyramids didn't think, "Man, the Pharaoh is a fucking asshole for making us do this shit. What a lunatic! He's a psycho. We'd be better off without him?"

I'm just following what Zbiggy said, he seems like a wise fellow.

And normal people learn this when they are 15, if not sooner.

So what's your excuse for stumbling onto a self-evident reality everyone else learns in school so late in life? Were you the slow kid in your class? Are you an alcoholic? Has your mental illness impaired your cognitive ability?

I'm genuinely curious. What took you so long?

Discussion: It's always been this fucked up, the internet just gives us the window to see it.

Considering the internet is nothing more than a seemingly never-ending series of echo-chambers where literally everybody is an expert on everything, the answer is largely 'false'.

I say largely 'false' because your original post and subsequent follow-ups are so vague and purposefully obscure that drawing any solid conclusions on them would be a fool's errand, there really isn't anything to 'discuss'.

However, to expand a little on my earlier point about echo-chambers; the internet will show you whatever your preconceived notions will demand of it and little else.

I don't agree with bamshoulddie's tone but he's right this post and wider thread are simply vacuous and the result is yet another circle-jerk on the internet - who'da thunk it?

Is it possible TPTB are regretting the internet? EDIT: Up for debate.

We had a power cut recently....no internet. WOH!!! Internet....you scary!!

Why do I keep coming back to this subreddit? It makes me want to not live in human society anymore. (EDIT: I know this is old but I wanted to clarify that it's not the subreddit or the people of the subreddit but just conspiracies that make me not want to live in human society anymore)

What about this is not legit?

I'd wager his dismay is not because he doesn't think it's legit, but that it's embarrassing that what we presume is an adult would even ask such idiotic, self-evident questions and present them as if they are some eye-opening, thought-provoking revelation. This is the kind of stuff stoned 14-year-olds talk about, thinking they've just solved the riddle of the world.

same here , the more I know about people the less I want to be part of it

Why don't you do like I do, and make plans for yourself somewhere where you can live as a free man.

what would give you the idea that I don't?

The fact that you left out a positive response to the problem you vocalized :)

perhaps you misjudged :)

You do not seem to to read history books. History is full of conspiracies and people, even the dumbest ones, suspecting said conspiracies that much later on were surprisingly confirmed. Only the near past is controlled, because it still influences the present and the future. And you do not want too much awake people that question the status quo, right? They controlled public opinion by controlling the news papers, later on they controlled radio and television and now they are about to control the internet. You had the priviledge to live in a time were they lost for a short time the control over the information distribution process. It will be fixed soon and it is inevitable, because you fucked up in informing enough people when you had the chance to.

Don't mind the people trying to put you down. You raise a very interesting observation. Regardless if it's true or not, if was obvious or not, the fact that you arrived at this conclusion serves at least one person right; and that is important and worthy in it's own rite.

This is precisely why we (the 99%) need to ensure we keep the internet and why TPTB want to turn it into "Cable TV 2.0".

Are you saying Billy Joel did 9/11???

(I didn't read the thing.)

Those in power have always been fucked up - because it's a sort of "which one came first, the egg or the chicken" thing - as in, are sociopathic criminals attracted to positions of authority or does it make them? Regardless, make no mistakes, we live in an unprecedented time. Yes, people have always been fucked up, but never before have we lived under the eye of such a globally, financially, and militarily powerful foe with such centralized power.

Part of me wonders if the existence of the human ego and self-awareness (and the fact that we, as a species, can fight against our own natures through free will) means we will always have those that "breathe together" aka conspire and collude to bring about their secret self-aggrandizing agendas.

Perhaps this is part of the motivation of the majority of mystical traditions insisting on the dissolution of the human ego...

The matrix lol

People of Christian religion will tell you manipulation of men has been happening since the Garden of Eden. The world has always been set up to be on fire by Satan himself.

I'd definitely agree with this. I think as early as there has been power there has been corruption, control and evil.

Basically, yes: Gays, atheism, anti-war, anti-corporate movements were always out there, but successfully contained. Especially in the mass-TV post WWII America. Otherwise all those men coming home from war would want a lot more freedom than America would allow. We are waking up from mass hypnosis.

Don't forget that we are supposedly in a state of transition right now, astrologically speaking, from Pisces to Aquarius, which only happens every 2000 years or something. Not an expert on occult matters so don't downvote me into oblivion please.

Is it possible that the world has ALWAYS been as fucked up as it is today with lies, conspiracies, cover ups, secret wars, etc

How is this even a question? Yes, there has been corruption, lies by those in power, wars fought for false purposes, and so on for all of recorded history.

Is it possible since we have the internet today with constant up to the second information that we are now able to learn about things we never had before as well as see the world's fucked-upness in REAL TIME?

Gosh, I don't know. I guess it's possible that having a global network that allows people to get instant news, instant information, and instant discussion from thousands of media sources and millions of people at any given time might allow people to learn things they'd have had a hard time learning before. It seems far-fetched, but I guess it's plausible.

...

Again, how is this even a question?

So, my theory is, what's going on is nothing new, it's always been this way. The only difference is we now know more about it.

Are you 15, by any chance?

You know, responding to a post in the most condescending tone possible tends to have a negative effect on people. Why did you even need to assert this point if you agreed with this guy? Manners, dude. Just because you can be an asshole doesn't mean you should.

Now imagine if this condescending guy is a school teacher? No wonder kids don't ask questions or add to discussions in class. Not suggesting you are a kid OP, just thinking about how ridiculous this railing has been...

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And the cycle continues... Our overly critical friend up here must have had one of those teachers at seem point.

You pretty much already said all of this further up in the thread. Do you have brain damage that causes short term memory loss? Or or you such a poor troll that you can't come up with anything else?

[deleted]

1/10 too stupid to engage again...

Oh, were you offended? I remember my first time.