The Tinfoil Hat Thread...

RobinStarwing · 05-11-2016, 07:35 PM

So, in my travels over the lovely thing we call the Internet...I found this.

Source: Wikipedia Entry

Quote:

The phantom time hypothesis is a historical conspiracy theory advanced by Heribert Illig (born 1947).

First published in 1991, the hypothesis proposes a conspiracy by the Holy Roman Emperor Otto III, Pope Sylvester II, and possibly the Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII, to fabricate the Anno Domini dating system retrospectively, so that it placed them at the special year of AD 1000, and to rewrite history.[1] Illig believed that this was achieved through the alteration, misrepresentation, and forgery of documentary and physical evidence.[2] According to this scenario, the entire Carolingian period, including the figure of Charlemagne, would be a fabrication, with a "phantom time" of close to three centuries (AD 614 to 911) added to the Early Middle Ages.

Yep, there is a whole 'Hypothesis' (*facepalms*) where an entire nearly 3 centuries NEVER existed. It was all made up!

I can't even BEGIN to ponder the Mental Kama Self-Sutra required to reach the creation of this idea. Hoping someone here can explain and recount some of the crazy conspiracy theories they have come across.

Aerozord · 05-11-2016, 08:36 PM

There are people that believe fossils were placed in the ground by God to "test us".

I used to work with a guy that talked about how the government invented and released LSD into the hippy movement through secret agents because it was a threat to the government.

Or the customer that said the Earth just makes oil. As in, if you wait long enough places where we drilled for oil refill themselves.

I work retail, you cant shock me on the insanity people believe.

Solid Snake · 05-12-2016, 01:21 AM

The phantom time hypothesis, aside from being insanely delusional as a conspiracy theory, is also offensively Eurocentric. It basically tries to explain away the Dark Ages as never happening, because surely Europe never had a moment in its history where its culture had stagnated and its socioeconomic status lagged behind the rest of the world, right? (Never mind the fact that even that generalization of European history is overbroad; the Dark Ages weren't nearly as 'Dark' as often portrayed under Renaissance-era assumptions that glorified the restoration of 'lost' Greco-Roman knowledge and principles, and not all of Europe was stagnant during the time period, just certain portions of western Europe that became dominant in the Colonial Era and have since delighted in attempts to rewrite history with their own cultures at the center of the universe.)

...Anyway, it's offensively Eurocentric because there are plenty of sources outside of the Holy Roman Empire and the Papacy that account fully for the time period that elapsed; we can rely on Arabic history, Chinese history, Persian history, Japanese history, Korean history, Scandinavian (Viking) history, Rus history, Indian history...and even Byzantine history is pretty prolific in the time period, so it's ludicrous to imagine the Byzantine Emperor engaged in the conspiracy. I mean, when all the other historical accounts have X number of years encompassing events it's hard to imagine a gap existing just because western Europe was pretty conventionally stagnant at the time.

It's even more ludicrous to imagine the Byzantine and Holy Roman Emperors agreeing to such a conspiracy, because Catholic and Orthodox leaders of the church in that era reveled in their disagreements and conflicts. If the Holy Roman Emperor articulated the conspiracy the Byzantine Emperor would delight in utilizing the evidence to discredit Catholicism, and vice-versa.

Beyond that, there's the simple fact that many people in Europe in the era, even the most well educated and/or wealthy and/or aristocratic individuals, were devoutly religious and lying to everyone about the year in order to approximate the new millennium would be the kind of sin that'd get you in trouble. I mean, I'll put it to you this way; if you believe that Jesus was really the son of God and He's going to come back to rule the Earth, in all likelihood within the span of your lifetime (as many Christians in the Dark Ages were convinced was likely), you're not going to be like "Let's hoodwink everyone into believing it's the year 1000 AD because it has sentimental value!" because Jesus is going to show up and be like "You dipshits, I wasn't dead for a thousand years. It was six hundred someodd years and you guys are fucked up." (I'm paraphrasing Jesus here. He wouldn't be quite that crass.) Of all the sins, making up shit about Jesus is a pretty bad sin, and was particularly considered so back in those days, when taking the Lord's name in vain was actually seen as worse by many Christians than like...actual crimes.

It's a fun theory for bigoted assholes, though.

RobinStarwing · 05-12-2016, 07:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Solid Snake

Holy Wall of Text Batman!

You still need to pull an amazing feat of Mental Kama Sutra with your own mind to state this as a 'hypothesis'. The only two things that explain how this was achieved is either delusions of grandeur...or being drunk off your ass.

Solid Snake · 05-12-2016, 09:48 AM

Man, are we reaching a point in the history of civilized discourse where four freaking paragraphs is considered a Wall of Text?
...Because, at least I could understand the Wall of Text allegations several years back when they applied to Snakeposts that were like, pages upon pages long in MSWord before I copied them here.

But I feel like social media devices like Twitter are ruining our ability to communicate properly insofar as in recent years the bar for 'Walls of Text' has become progressively lower. Pretty soon someone will type more than three sentences in response to a question and the reaction will be: "Woah! Wall of Text!"

But no, you shouldn't underestimate the involvement of Eurocentric bigotry, as scholars have essentially concluded that Illig was probably a Eurocentric bigot.

RobinStarwing · 05-12-2016, 10:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Solid Snake

Man, are we reaching a point in the history of civilized discourse where four freaking paragraphs is considered a Wall of Text?
...Because, at least I could understand the Wall of Text allegations several years back when they applied to Snakeposts that were like, pages upon pages long in MSWord before I copied them here.

But I feel like social media devices like Twitter are ruining our ability to communicate properly insofar as in recent years the bar for 'Walls of Text' has become progressively lower. Pretty soon someone will type more than three sentences in response to a question and the reaction will be: "Woah! Wall of Text!"

But no, you shouldn't underestimate the involvement of Eurocentric bigotry, as scholars have essentially concluded that Illig was probably a Eurocentric bigot.

Nah, it was more wanting to condense it in the silliest way possible.

So drinking and bigotry...glad to know they go so well together.

rpgdemon · 05-12-2016, 08:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RobinStarwing

(and more likely since the guy who created this 'idea' is German) being drunk off your ass.

Hey Snake remember when you said that thing about how you never saw any hate directed towards Germans/there totally hasn't been a ton of world war propoganda still spewed about them?

Robin: It's not the 40s. What you said isn't acceptable anymore, and one could argue never was.

RobinStarwing · 05-12-2016, 09:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rpgdemon

Hey Snake remember when you said that thing about how you never saw any hate directed towards Germans/there totally hasn't been a ton of world war propoganda still spewed about them?

Robin: It's not the 40s. What you said isn't acceptable anymore, and one could argue never was.

Edited. I was actually meaning it as a joke but I did change it up. Been to Germany and it is a lovely country with some lovely people.

Also, when I did break it down to a Wall of Text RPG, it was because it was taking up quite a bit of space in the quote box. It was actually rather educational to read both what Snake said and what he linked (also hilarious for the exchange at the end).

Solid Snake · 05-12-2016, 11:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rpgdemon

Hey Snake remember when you said that thing about how you never saw any hate directed towards Germans/there totally hasn't been a ton of world war propoganda still spewed about them?

Robin: It's not the 40s. What you said isn't acceptable anymore, and one could argue never was.

I still maintain that any sort of racial bias or bigotry against Germans isn't a big deal because western European Caucasians in general are extremely blessed with mountains upon mountains of privilege, and what little baggage they have to deal with as a result of World War II is largely a self-inflicted wound that they only have their ancestors to blame for.

I mean it'd be like being pissed off about awful generalizations everyone in Europe makes about Americans, only America is an insanely wealthy nation that dominates the world economically and militaristically and, to make matters worse, generalizations about Americans are self-inflicted insofar as our tourists have a well deserved reputation of being self-entitled, narrow-minded assholes wherever we go.

Compared to like, the actual bigotry with terrifying real-world consequences people of Asian or African or Arabian or Persian or Latin American heritage face, the assumption that Germans drink too much beer (and their beer is delicious, I'd be hella drunk all the time if I could drink it every day) has next to no real-world impact.

And if you think that Donald Drumpf is upset about any Germanic association with the name 'Drumpf', he's not, because there's more than enough German-Americans in America and we don't have any history of discriminating against people of Germanic descent on any systemic level outside of those two separate decades where we were at war with Germany. Hell, my grandmother had a similarly 'silly' sounding German last name before she married my grandfather, and members of her family weren't in any substantive way oppressed for it -- and the fact that they all simply passed as 'white' in America in that time period meant they faced no real discrimination even during WWII, where most the men in her family served in the US armed forces.

Drumpf isn't offended by his Germanic heritage, nor is calling him 'Drumpf' an attempt to shame him for being ethnically German, he just gets a huge status boost out of the adopted name of 'Trump' and calling him 'Drumpf' undermines his branding and calls into attention his real, less than entirely successful or luxurious true self. The goal is to separate the facts of the man from his fictional attempts at an autobiographical narrative, and it's further substantiated by Trump's stalwart demands that other people, like Jon Stewart, use their own true last names.

But this is all off-topic.

rpgdemon · 05-13-2016, 04:33 PM

It's certainly not a systemic problem of racism against Germans, but ugly stereotypes based on xenophobicly categorizing the "other" nationality encourage other uglier stereotypes. It publicizes and encourages an incorrect way of thinking about the world. If everyone agrees with and laughs along to the "tame" German jokes, the racist sees that it is acceptable to make sweeping generalizations based on nationality. It validates their point of view. They apply this way of thinking to other groups, and say things like, "You’re not going to support me, because I don’t want your money," and "You want to control your own politician" to a group because they're Jewish (Donald Trump). It's a regressive thing that happens all the time, and makes me uncomfortable to associate with a progressive movement. That's all my point was, back then, though it wasn't enunciated anywhere near as clearly.

But also to say that it's a "self-inflicted wound" is incredibly noncompassionate to the German citizens who suffered at the hands of the Nazis during the holocaust. In fact, I'd say a lot of Germany didn't inflict it on themselves, and instead had it inflicted upon them.

Still, super off topic. Probably a good idea to start a new thread if you want to continue talking about this.

Also, I appreciate the change of joke, Robin. I'm not trying to single you out as the racist in the above example, that should hopefully clearly be Trump.

Edit: Also also: Just to be super clear, I'm not the least bit German (Or even have any Germanic ancestry) as far as I know. I'm not saying this because I think it's a personal insult, just a thing that does not belong in the current millennium.

05-11-2016, 08:36 PM	#2
Aerozord So we are clear Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Former murder capital of the world Posts: 13,824	There are people that believe fossils were placed in the ground by God to "test us". I used to work with a guy that talked about how the government invented and released LSD into the hippy movement through secret agents because it was a threat to the government. Or the customer that said the Earth just makes oil. As in, if you wait long enough places where we drilled for oil refill themselves. I work retail, you cant shock me on the insanity people believe. __________________ "don't hate me for being a heterosexual white guy disparaging slacktivism, hate me for all those murders I've done."

05-12-2016, 01:21 AM	#3
Solid Snake Erotic Esquire Join Date: Nov 2003 Posts: 5,563	The phantom time hypothesis, aside from being insanely delusional as a conspiracy theory, is also offensively Eurocentric. It basically tries to explain away the Dark Ages as never happening, because surely Europe never had a moment in its history where its culture had stagnated and its socioeconomic status lagged behind the rest of the world, right? (Never mind the fact that even that generalization of European history is overbroad; the Dark Ages weren't nearly as 'Dark' as often portrayed under Renaissance-era assumptions that glorified the restoration of 'lost' Greco-Roman knowledge and principles, and not all of Europe was stagnant during the time period, just certain portions of western Europe that became dominant in the Colonial Era and have since delighted in attempts to rewrite history with their own cultures at the center of the universe.) ...Anyway, it's offensively Eurocentric because there are plenty of sources outside of the Holy Roman Empire and the Papacy that account fully for the time period that elapsed; we can rely on Arabic history, Chinese history, Persian history, Japanese history, Korean history, Scandinavian (Viking) history, Rus history, Indian history...and even Byzantine history is pretty prolific in the time period, so it's ludicrous to imagine the Byzantine Emperor engaged in the conspiracy. I mean, when all the other historical accounts have X number of years encompassing events it's hard to imagine a gap existing just because western Europe was pretty conventionally stagnant at the time. It's even more ludicrous to imagine the Byzantine and Holy Roman Emperors agreeing to such a conspiracy, because Catholic and Orthodox leaders of the church in that era reveled in their disagreements and conflicts. If the Holy Roman Emperor articulated the conspiracy the Byzantine Emperor would delight in utilizing the evidence to discredit Catholicism, and vice-versa. Beyond that, there's the simple fact that many people in Europe in the era, even the most well educated and/or wealthy and/or aristocratic individuals, were devoutly religious and lying to everyone about the year in order to approximate the new millennium would be the kind of sin that'd get you in trouble. I mean, I'll put it to you this way; if you believe that Jesus was really the son of God and He's going to come back to rule the Earth, in all likelihood within the span of your lifetime (as many Christians in the Dark Ages were convinced was likely), you're not going to be like "Let's hoodwink everyone into believing it's the year 1000 AD because it has sentimental value!" because Jesus is going to show up and be like "You dipshits, I wasn't dead for a thousand years. It was six hundred someodd years and you guys are fucked up." (I'm paraphrasing Jesus here. He wouldn't be quite that crass.) Of all the sins, making up shit about Jesus is a pretty bad sin, and was particularly considered so back in those days, when taking the Lord's name in vain was actually seen as worse by many Christians than like...actual crimes. It's a fun theory for bigoted assholes, though. __________________ *WARNING:* Snek's all up in this thread. Be prepared to read massive walls of text.

05-12-2016, 09:48 AM	#5
Solid Snake Erotic Esquire Join Date: Nov 2003 Posts: 5,563	Man, are we reaching a point in the history of civilized discourse where four freaking paragraphs is considered a Wall of Text? ...Because, at least I could understand the Wall of Text allegations several years back when they applied to Snakeposts that were like, *pages upon pages long* in MSWord before I copied them here. But I feel like social media devices like Twitter are ruining our ability to communicate properly insofar as in recent years the bar for 'Walls of Text' has become progressively lower. Pretty soon someone will type more than three sentences in response to a question and the reaction will be: "Woah! Wall of Text!" But no, you shouldn't underestimate the involvement of Eurocentric bigotry, as scholars have essentially concluded that Illig was probably a Eurocentric bigot. __________________ *WARNING:* Snek's all up in this thread. Be prepared to read massive walls of text.

05-13-2016, 04:33 PM	#10
rpgdemon Not a Taco Join Date: May 2005 Posts: 3,313	It's certainly not a systemic problem of racism against Germans, but ugly stereotypes based on xenophobicly categorizing the "other" nationality encourage other uglier stereotypes. It publicizes and encourages an incorrect way of thinking about the world. If everyone agrees with and laughs along to the "tame" German jokes, the racist sees that it is acceptable to make sweeping generalizations based on nationality. It validates their point of view. They apply this way of thinking to other groups, and say things like, "You’re not going to support me, because I don’t want your money," and "You want to control your own politician" to a group because they're Jewish (Donald Trump). It's a regressive thing that happens all the time, and makes me uncomfortable to associate with a progressive movement. That's all my point was, back then, though it wasn't enunciated anywhere near as clearly. But also to say that it's a "self-inflicted wound" is incredibly noncompassionate to the German citizens who suffered at the hands of the Nazis during the holocaust. In fact, I'd say a lot of Germany didn't inflict it on themselves, and instead had it inflicted upon them. Still, super off topic. Probably a good idea to start a new thread if you want to continue talking about this. Also, I appreciate the change of joke, Robin. I'm not trying to single you out as the racist in the above example, that should hopefully clearly be Trump. Edit: Also also: Just to be super clear, I'm not the least bit German (Or even have any Germanic ancestry) as far as I know. I'm not saying this because I think it's a personal insult, just a thing that does not belong in the current millennium. __________________ I did a lot of posting on here as a teenager, and I was pretty awful. Even after I learned, grew up, and came to be on the right side of a lot of important issues, I was still angry, abrasive, and generally increased the amount of hate in the world, in pretty unacceptable ways. On the off chance that someone is taking a trip down memory lane looking through those old threads, I wanted to devote my signature to say directly to you, I'm sorry. Thank you for letting me be better, NPF. Last edited by rpgdemon; 05-13-2016 at 04:36 PM.