What Lies Below: Part 44
Exploring the Depths of the Conspiracy Iceberg
Hello, and welcome back! I am your guide; just a traveler in odd places who kept stumbling upon the Conspiracy Iceberg. It’s a meme that pops up in conspiracy/paranormal discussion areas now and then: an enormous list of increasing bizarre topics. “What Lies Below” is my journey to ruin my brain and search history as I do a bite-sized write-up of every topic, 13 at a time. Most of this is from my own general knowledge, some is from cursory look-ups if I draw a blank.
CLUB 21 — I am fairly confident this is meant to be ‘Club 27’, the name attached to the assortment of famous people(usually, but not always, musicians) who have died at that age. Hendrix, Joplin, and Morrison all dying relatively close together is what started the thing off — but people like Cobain and Winehouse have since “joined” and kept it relevant. There are, of course, conspiracies about why this happens — everything from ritual sacrifice to curses.
If there IS something called “Club 21” that I don’t know about, please tell me about it!
THE “MOON OF MEMPHIS” — A UFO sighting in Memphis in 1964. There isn’t much about this online, no photos or anything like that which I’ve been able to dig up. What online presence it does have appears to be some links to books and a REALLY long-winded website post or two. In short, it is interpreted as a religious event as opposed to aliens — the UFO being some sort of alien or divine signal. It seems that the believers connect it to the Fatima phenomenon of many years prior, and think it was meant to also tie in with a Second Coming. Feel free to go digging if you think you can decipher more of it!
PENISES ARE INVERTED VAGINAS — It is entirely possible this was some sort of strange theory at one time, but there’s no way to search this kind of thing without just finding an endless ocean of hysterical rants by TERFs and Nazis(but I repeat myself, hah hah) that are far more incomprehensible than anything on this Iceberg. No thank you! Maybe if I make this into a book! Next!
LANSING MAN — As they were digging in turn of the century Kansas, workers found human remains. While there seemed to be multiple people’s remains there, the find is collectively called the “Lansing Man”. The thing about this is that the bones were found in a layer that should place them at tens of thousands of years old — possibly stretching back to before we thought any human life was in North America. Later carbon dating put them at a considerably more recent age, though that’s not always universally accepted. This is also one of those things where the initial “oh thats weird” part of the story gets around a lot and people just internalize and accept it, but the boring “later on it was adjusted” part gets left out. So then it ~seems~ like a big mystery even though all the information was always out there.
SERBIANS TURNED TO STONE — This is probably regarding “Devil’s Town” or “Davolja Varos” in southern Serbia. It’s a rock formation created by rare geological phenomenon and is a genuine marvel of nature. As is often the case with these sorts of places, it comes with some legend and folklore attached. If you choose to believe the tales, these were the guests of an attempted wedding between siblings. God was still in a more direct-intervention mood back then and therefore turned the guests into stone.
ELVEN HOLOCAUST — So, there are certain schools of thought which suggest that faeries/elves/etc are all real in one sense or another — or at least were at some point. Sometimes this is genuinely mystical in origin, sometimes a little bit of alien stuff gets mixed in. Regardless, these races are always considered to be very very ancient and often intermingled with humans to some extent. Obviously, they are key elements in a lot of history and the origin of a lot of legends, and generally considered to be fairly rare today. The reason for this, as far as the niche theory goes, is largely due to a Christian-led slaughter that lasted upward of a millennia. Things like the witch trials, legends of vampires, royal intrigue, perhaps the Inquisition, and so on were all essentially fronts being used to wipe out the elves - with “elves” meaning basically any sort of magical or supernatural being.
This is not a very widespread belief; even a lot of “faeries are real” people aren’t super into it. Still, there are books and adherents. Honestly, I’m all for it. It’s nice to see an “ancient secret bloodline” conspiracy that doesn’t go in the usual direction. Elves: please contact me, I do not belong in this grey awful world. They are loud and crude, they have spat out the joy of curiosity and discovery. Please rescue. Thanks.
GATEKEEPERS REMORSE — This one is a little hard to easily categorize. It’s a reading list of 30 books or so that appears here and there online. The books cover a wide range of esoteric topics: UFOs, the occult, mind control, conspiracies, time travel, etc. Most of them are from a good many years ago. The authors range in style and expertise, consisting of everyone from Charles Fort to Jung to “Anonymous”.
The Gatekeepers in question are generally considered people who, one way or another, served as agents of the new world order/illuminati/reptilians/cabal/etc to misdirect or program or control people. The implication is that this list is showing the real truth. I’ve seen conjecture that these authors were all ‘gatekeepers’ to some extent and these books were their way of slipping the truth out there, or that the originator of the list is the one feeling remorse, or that it’s just a good-sounding name. Can’t help you there. It is quite a collection of unusual and interesting books, though. Some are available online; they can get a little dense or stuffy but are worth a look! Maybe once the Iceberg is done, I should torture myself by reading them all and doing reviews?
FACEBOOK CONTENT MODERATOR SUICIDES — In recent years, a number of articles have come out detailing what it’s like for Facebook’s moderation team(who are often not Facebook employees, technically, but work for another firm contracted for the task). There are a lot of them, but they still face an overwhelming amount of work and pressure. What really hits them, though, is the amount of extremely graphic and disturbing material they see as part of their job. This, in addition to the pressure put on them, leads the moderators into a lot of mental health trouble as they try to cope with the constant deluge of explicit and harrowing content they see every day.
Whether this has led to suicides or not isn’t “confirmed” officially, but there are persistent and believable rumors about it all over the internet.
MIMETIC DESIRE/SCAPEGOAT THEORY — A way of thinking originating with a French fellow named Girard. The idea behind Mimetic Desire is that we do not always(or perhaps never) desire a thing because of our own inherent desire, but rather because we are duplicating the desire seen elsewhere. For example, you don’t want the new video game because you genuinely want to play it — but more because it’s the hot popular game everyone else says they want to play.
The Scapegoat Theory comes into play when these Mimetic Desires cause a bunch of people to be put into conflict over a thing that they can’t all have: a limited resource, a single job, even a particular person they all want to romance. The solution winds up being finding a scapegoat, who may or may not be guilty of anything, but is punished and thus creates an illusion of innocence for everyone else. This doesn’t really solve anything, though, and leads to continued issues. Kind of sounds like how capitalism maintains itself and then resolves the inherent blowback!
MICROPENIS WORSHIP — This is based on art and records which show that, at least at certain times in history, smaller equipment was seen as preferable. I think it’s more just a reflection on how different body types have fallen in and out of favor at different times but maybe people worshiped little doodles at some point! Not going to spend too much time Googling this one, sorry! Next!
ATLANTA BLACKOUT 2017 — In 2017, Atlanta’s airport had a complete blackout which caused a whole lot of headaches. It was right before the holidays and wound up stranding tens of thousands of people. Folks were a little confused, as there is the assumption that something as big and vital as a major airport isn’t just going to go completely dark for an extended period under anything but the most extreme circumstances. The official explanation given was that an electrical fire below the airport caused it all, which I don’t know enough about airport electrical wiring to deem believable or not.
Lots of folks weren’t convinced, though, and a lot of conjecture swirled for a while. Most of the buzz I heard was suspicion of some sort of ‘EMP’ style test or attack, as a lot of the conspiracy community harbor a belief that that specific sort of thing is one of the most likely “crash of civilization” scenarios.
ROMAN METAPHYSICS — “Metaphysics” nowadays tends to conjure thoughts of New Agers and Facebook moms sharing memes about “vibrations” and “energy work”, but people like the Greeks and Romans of old treated it far more like a genuine science and philosophy to be studied. Not too much to say here, really? It’s still generally the same stuff, just hit from a different angle by people like Aristotle. More a scholarly thing than a weird conspiracy.
BETHESDA CREATED BITCOIN — Bitcoin attracts a lot of theories due to its nature, especially about its origins. While “Satoshi Nakamoto” is the creator — we don’t really know who that is. This particular theory, which states Game Developing giant Bethesda created Bitcoin for unknown reasons, is…uh, mostly seen as a goof. It appeared on some old Bitcoin forum and I’m pretty sure it was meant to be a troll, but here we are. The stated case is a little all over the place, mostly based on the dates of Bitcoin and various Bethesda games releasing, Bethesda’s founder having a tech background(who’d have guessed?) and so on.
That’s it for Tier 8! We start with the 9th of 20 tiers next time, and it feels like this Iceberg has finally gotten properly esoteric and weird. See you soon, and if you are an elf(or vampire or fae or alien or something adjacent) and want to do an interview, I’ll do it.