I will never understand why New Agers use crystals all the time

Alduin

Can't you use something else to symbolize mystical power? Like orbs, jars or ornate East Asian swords?

Alduin

also stop using atlantis because it's fictional by plato's own admission, do your own world-building for a change ffs

Salix Babylonika

what is a "new ager"

Anonus

Alduin

Jane said:

what is a "new ager"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Age

Salix Babylonika

so "like 30 things"

anyway idk I've known many Wiccans and none of them ever spoke about Atlantis.

are Wiccans new agers?

I like new age music, does that mean that I am a new ager.

Alduin

From what I've heard Wiccans aren't considered a New Age group. 

And nah.

Alduin

I'm mostly referring to indigo children and stuff here

Toolsie

I honestly thought that this would be about crystal meth

I am disappoint

Salix Babylonika

one of the first threads on any forum I ever participated in was an UnexplainedMysteries thread with a guy saying he was AN INDIGO SHCILD

One-Winged Eagle

New Agers use crystals because New Agers are gullible.

The only crystals used in Daoist practice are the ones we eat. Salt, sometimes, but also cinnabar for immortality pills.

Note: DO NOT EAT CINNABAR

Alduin

Isaac Newton tried the same thing!

One-Winged Eagle

Gullible as fuck.

Klinotaxis

dude have you seen crystals? they're sickkk

Vriska

because they're CLODS.

lee4hmz

Some people use pyramids, because pyramids are ~mysterious~

lee4hmz

(there's no such thing as mysterious)

Fossilmaiden

lee4hmz said:

(there's no such thing as mysterious)

I unno, quantum physics is pretty mysterious.

Tachyon

new agers like quantum physics, too

well, of a sort

Odradek

lee4hmz said:

(there's no such thing as mysterious)

That's wrong.

Odradek

There is also no such thing as tall, short, stinky, fresh, and cold.

I laugh at your adjectives new agers, I live in a magical world of nouns and verbs.

Odradek

Pretty fucked up that people believe in crystal healing, pyramid power, and memetics in the year of our lord 2016

Tachyon

of course there's such thing as mysterious

i don't think anyone here was planning on defending memetics, though

Odradek

Just saiyan, some pseudosciences go more unchallenged than others.

Klinotaxis

speaking of which and also crystals, sheldrake's books are actually interesting, for a bit. partly because crystallography is an important topic you don't learn outside of speciality

Tachyon

^^ fair

i guess i'd say the difference is crystal healing and pyramid power make empirically testable claims about physics which are easily disproven

memetics is a bad model, but it's modelling something outside the parameters of hard science, if you're not interested in psychology or semiotics the problems with that model might not be apparent

Tachyon

i learned about Sheldrake from 999

Tachyon

crystal healing, pyramid power, memetics

young tach believed in 2 out of 3

Obā-san

memes are the memes of the soul

Odradek

I might be being a killjoy again

Tachyon

Vriska said:

because they're CLODS.

anyway this was the winning post, for anyone keeping score

Crystal

Tachyon said:

i learned about Sheldrake from 999

For me it was thinking pseudoscience was nifty, at however many years young, and then again from 999. Never did get to reading any of Sheldrake's books though.

Tachyon

for some reason crystal powers never attracted kid tach, that i can remember

might just have been the context i first encountered them in, i tended to be very credible of anything i read, so if my first encounter with the mystical properties of crystals was in a sceptical source, that would have coloured my perception of them

Odradek

Anyway Indigo Children were mentioned, time to post this

Alduin

Klinotaxis said:

dude have you seen crystals? they're sickkk

yeah but new agers using them makes them look like jrpg villains

Alduin

idea: a new age cult that attempts to emulate WRPG villains

Alduin

lee4hmz said:

Some people use pyramids, because pyramids are ~mysterious~

don't forget that aliens/atlanteans built the original pyramids

because duh brown people are too stupid to build shit like that

Obā-san

all mysticism is highly redolent of jrpg villains tho tbh

Alduin

Yeah. I think they have a common link in 60s-70s SFF novels.

Section42L

Baldanders said:

I might be being a killjoy again

Nah, I was bugged by Lee's comment too.

Klinotaxis

Acererak said:

Klinotaxis said:

dude have you seen crystals? they're sickkk

yeah but new agers using them makes them look like jrpg villains

jrpg villains are, in general, sickkk

Bee

Man, I forgot how much of a ludicrous disconnect Indigo Prophecy had between your performance in the fucking unending QTEs and what actually happens.

"GREAT!"

*Lucas gets the shit beaten out of him*

"GREAT!"

*Lucas gets dragged helplessly along the building*

"GREAT!"

*Lucas gets thrown into unpleasant metal shit*

Even then, a four-minute quicktime is absurd.  I'd ask what the hell they were thinking, but that seems a relevant question for the whole game.

Odradek

Well the game started out as a cat and mouse adventure game where you play both the cat and the mouse, and try to balance things out.

And then someone decided it would be a good idea to have zombie boner internet lice AI alien aztecs show up

Obā-san

to be fair to whoever that person is, that sounds like a great idea for any given story

Odradek

Today is Tomorrow said:

to be fair to whoever that person is, that sounds like a great idea for any given story

It was. People were wowed by the beginning stages and then felt betrayed as the game got increasingly dumb.

The developers like to say that they didn't have enough time to properly tell the story they wanted to tell, but I feel like this is bullshit because

1: The game is overlong and has too much padding as it is

2. There is no possible way to connect the "A" point of "A guy stabs another guy in a men's restroom for seemingly no reason" to the "B" point of "because the mayan aliens are using him to fight the war against the zombie internet" that isn't silly

Bee

It probably would've been amazing if they weren't so far up their own ass about it.

And came up with a play mechanic more interesting than four minutes of Simon Says.

Odradek

There is a good version of Indigo Prophecy, it's called D4

Odradek

Bee said:

It probably would've been amazing if they weren't so far up their own ass about it.

And came up with a play mechanic more interesting than four minutes of Simon Says.

Let's be honest here:

The gaming community considers everything that wasn't already present in Doom "up its own ass"

Obā-san

it seems to me that video games can have more that can go wrong than any other medium, because of the whole user interaction component

and then you have the cultural issue where

Baldanders said:

Bee said:

It probably would've been amazing if they weren't so far up their own ass about it.

And came up with a play mechanic more interesting than four minutes of Simon Says.

Let's be honest here:

The gaming community considers everything that wasn't already present in Doom "up its own ass"

lee4hmz

lee4hmz said:

(there's no such thing as mysterious)

This was a joke that went over everyone's heads. Sorry about that. :(

Bee

Baldanders said:

Bee said:

It probably would've been amazing if they weren't so far up their own ass about it.

And came up with a play mechanic more interesting than four minutes of Simon Says.

Let's be honest here:

The gaming community considers everything that wasn't already present in Doom "up its own ass"

To be fair, I totally respect the guy's aim of making an interactive film and willingness to break from standard game mechanics.  Shaking things up is a good thing.

He just replaced them with mechanics so inadequate and pointless that the game probably would've been better off as plain cutscenes, and the film you were supposed to interact with would have been up its own ass whether or not it was interactive.  It takes itself so completely, earnestly seriously.

And for what it's worth, that was fine for the first half of the game when it was creepy paranormal.  But when it got bugfuck insane paranormal and is still stubbornly convinced it's srs bsns it just falls apart.  Once you add fight scenes with internet zombie goasts set to DDR gameplay you kind of lose your ability to be taken seriously.