Honestly, I didn't see this result coming, but it's fairly reasonable given the way mass panics tend to be informed by larger cultural fears. As we read about the advent of surveillance...
Honestly, I didn't see this result coming, but it's fairly reasonable given the way mass panics tend to be informed by larger cultural fears. As we read about the advent of surveillance capitalism, it's no surprise that a panic might form around perceived drones ostensibly watching us for unknown reasons. Perhaps related is the "Havana syndrome", where American and Canadian diplomats in Cuba reported medical complaints associated with some sort of sonic disturbance or attack. It's certainly possible it was a deliberate counterintelligence action against American/Canadians abroad in Cuba but...the investigations have been far from conclusive and I don't think we can rule out a more benign explanation that was perhaps exaggerated by the perceived sinister explanations.
In the past, we've seen similar phenomena with red scares (and their logical extremes: wars, cold wars, massacres of suspected communists), Satanic panics, and so on. I find particularly interesting the way cultural anxieties are reflected in paranoid delusions. The New York Times, Aeon, and the New Yorker have all published stories about the "Truman Show Delusion" wherein suffers believe they are subjects of a reality show. The excerpt below comes from the New Yorker article:
Between 1995 and 2004, the International Study on Psychotic Symptoms, a survey of eleven hundred patients from seven countries, found that the mind supplies the contours of delusions, and culture fills in the details. Grandiose schizophrenics from largely Christian countries often claim to be prophets or gods, but sufferers in Pakistan, a Muslim country, rarely do. In Shanghai, paranoid people report being pricked by poisoned needles; in Taipei, they are possessed by spirits. Shifts in technology have caused the content of delusions to change over the years: in the nineteen-forties, the Japanese controlled American minds with radio waves; in the fifties, the Soviets accomplished this with satellites; in the seventies, the C.I.A. implanted computer chips into people’s brains.
See also the surreal experience of Nasubi, a Japanese comedian who became a star by living in a hotel room for 15 months as a camera filmed his every action. He did not know that the footage was being broadcast live and that he had become a huge celebrity. "'I suffered mentally every day,' the comedian said later. 'I felt as if I was trapped between sanity and madness.'" [The Guardian]. See the horrifying reveal here.
Tons of interesting links here! Thank you for sharing. The story of Nasubi made me ill, and I couldn't bring myself to watch the reveal. This is a shot in the dark, but do you have any book...
Tons of interesting links here! Thank you for sharing. The story of Nasubi made me ill, and I couldn't bring myself to watch the reveal.
This is a shot in the dark, but do you have any book recommendations for these widespread panics, either in general or for specific ones? I'd love to read a book-length dive into this topic.
Glad I could be of help! As for books, I unfortunately don't have any that I can personally vouch for, but Joel Gold, a psychiatrist cited in a number of the Truman Show Delusion articles, went on...
Glad I could be of help!
As for books, I unfortunately don't have any that I can personally vouch for, but Joel Gold, a psychiatrist cited in a number of the Truman Show Delusion articles, went on to write a book called "Suspicious Minds: Why We Believe Conspiracy Theories" which explores some similar themes. The New York Times gave it a middling review but the Amazon reviews are positive.
It seems as if at least two ([1], [2]) books were written about the McMartin Preschool satanic panic/child abuse case.
This book about moral panics from the 1972 appears to be a somewhat canonical text on the subject, at least in the UK.
Edit: Come to think of it, there's probably related literature on the rise of UFO sightings/alien abduction claims as mass panic. The Barney & Betty Hill abduction story of 1961 was the first to really blow up and some Wikipedians have evidently put a lot of effort into the subject at large: History of alien abduction claims, Narrative of the abduction phenomenon, and Alien abduction claimants. Those latter two in particular have some background on theories about how a common narrative may have developed and the types of people prone to making these claims.
Honestly, I didn't see this result coming, but it's fairly reasonable given the way mass panics tend to be informed by larger cultural fears. As we read about the advent of surveillance capitalism, it's no surprise that a panic might form around perceived drones ostensibly watching us for unknown reasons. Perhaps related is the "Havana syndrome", where American and Canadian diplomats in Cuba reported medical complaints associated with some sort of sonic disturbance or attack. It's certainly possible it was a deliberate counterintelligence action against American/Canadians abroad in Cuba but...the investigations have been far from conclusive and I don't think we can rule out a more benign explanation that was perhaps exaggerated by the perceived sinister explanations.
In the past, we've seen similar phenomena with red scares (and their logical extremes: wars, cold wars, massacres of suspected communists), Satanic panics, and so on. I find particularly interesting the way cultural anxieties are reflected in paranoid delusions. The New York Times, Aeon, and the New Yorker have all published stories about the "Truman Show Delusion" wherein suffers believe they are subjects of a reality show. The excerpt below comes from the New Yorker article:
See also the surreal experience of Nasubi, a Japanese comedian who became a star by living in a hotel room for 15 months as a camera filmed his every action. He did not know that the footage was being broadcast live and that he had become a huge celebrity. "'I suffered mentally every day,' the comedian said later. 'I felt as if I was trapped between sanity and madness.'" [The Guardian]. See the horrifying reveal here.
Tons of interesting links here! Thank you for sharing. The story of Nasubi made me ill, and I couldn't bring myself to watch the reveal.
This is a shot in the dark, but do you have any book recommendations for these widespread panics, either in general or for specific ones? I'd love to read a book-length dive into this topic.
Glad I could be of help!
As for books, I unfortunately don't have any that I can personally vouch for, but Joel Gold, a psychiatrist cited in a number of the Truman Show Delusion articles, went on to write a book called "Suspicious Minds: Why We Believe Conspiracy Theories" which explores some similar themes. The New York Times gave it a middling review but the Amazon reviews are positive.
It seems as if at least two ([1], [2]) books were written about the McMartin Preschool satanic panic/child abuse case.
This book about moral panics from the 1972 appears to be a somewhat canonical text on the subject, at least in the UK.
Generally speaking, a good place to start might just be some Wiki articles: Moral panic (which has an extensive "Further reading" section at the bottom), Mass psychogenic illness, Sick building syndrome, Deviancy amplification spiral, and Day-care sex abuse hysteria (the McMartin case was one of several) all explore variants/facets of moral panic.
Edit: Come to think of it, there's probably related literature on the rise of UFO sightings/alien abduction claims as mass panic. The Barney & Betty Hill abduction story of 1961 was the first to really blow up and some Wikipedians have evidently put a lot of effort into the subject at large: History of alien abduction claims, Narrative of the abduction phenomenon, and Alien abduction claimants. Those latter two in particular have some background on theories about how a common narrative may have developed and the types of people prone to making these claims.
This is what I thought of when I read the article: it sounded very much like the UFO scare of the 1950s & 1960s.
The drone sightings were posted on Tildes earlier this month.