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Originally Posted by Junkenstein
Oh that still could work. Listening to Maron's podcast has made my "people are slaves and i'm dissatisfied and angry" factor up to 11.
If you want to see it under that angle, religion, atheism, politics or even sports are all ways to give people a safe way to have mind-numbing and re-assuring rituals. I think that, for a lot of people, even the KATG community has that edge to it. That's why the whole "cult" thing that came out when Mike did the branding was funny but not so far from the truth. Some listeners feel void and broken, betrayed by usual groups, and they find a shelter in the KATG community, they find somebody that tells them ways to think and confront day to day issues.
It's weird, but if you strip the issue to bare bones, KATG has aspects of an organized religion with leaders (two), evil (Dane Cook and smug assholes), rituals (the meetups), prayers and catchphrases. Even clothing.
I think that the show gives the same type of satisfaction to some that praying and saying "god hates whatever" gives to others.
It's borderline impossible to be absolutely off of any form of mass ritual. It's something that drives you to depression, even if you think that you have an iron will.
Tough one. BTW, babies arent innocent.
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Thats a good example. To that extent, I also don't think that mass groups or hive minds or whatever you want to call them are inherently evil. On some level they all get you to accept something while denying something else. Sports for example get you to accept one team and rival another. Where i have a problem is, something like sports is contained. Lets say I like the steelers and someone else likes the eagles, we can disagree on that point but his/her liking of the eagles holds no bearing on me liking the steelers or on anything else in my life. Furthermore, the owners of each team would rather we not get rid of one or the other, otherwise they would no longer have that rivalry to market. The difference in Mega Church mentality or the tea party mentality is that, though that rivalry exists, it seeks to fundamentally alter not only another persons belief system, but to gain control of aspects outside of that belief system and force everyone else to conform to their particular "hive". I think a lot of these groups are headed by a small group of individuals that have a specific purpose in mind and the followers are to blind to see that in some cases they are being manipulated to go against what is often their own self interest.