Leon Festinger, When Prophecy Fails, 1956
ZUPF'S BACK!! apparently i've been asleep at the switch, he's been back for a few months. zupf re-emerged on the youtube scene with one of my favorite subjects, DARLA NAPORA.
i think about DARLA often. the events after DARLA'S death are truly beyond comprehension. from C MARABITO'S desperate yet ever popular ladder theory to DONNA REYNOLDS' shameful eulogy to GREG NAPORA burying his wife with the cremated remains of her murderer and all with the blessing of her family, the events read like a rod serling meets william s burroughs novel. surreal and mind bending are an understatement. vintage says it best, "you can't make this stuff up!"
the hardest piece of this macabre puzzle to understand are GREG'S actions. i almost never speculate on the details of these attacks but GREG left me with a bitter SCOTT PETERSON like taste in my mouth. (why the nutters went to such lengths to fabricate the ladder theory with this fodder at their fingertips is a mystery in itself) his behavior is so far outside of the norm that i keep circling back to the possibility that he was directly involved – until now. i have been reading a book about disinformation and it has helped shed some light on GREG'S mystifying behavior.
take the case of UFO nutter, Marian Keech. KEECH claimed to receive messages from aliens warning her that the earth would be destroyed by flood. The aliens gave instructions for an evacuation plan for KEECH and her followers at midnight on December 21, 1954. KEECH and her followers (who had quit their jobs, left their spouses and sold their possessions) gathered for their outer space exodus at the preordained time. the space ship never arrived and the end time came and went without incident. at 4:45 am KEECH informed her followers that she received a new message: the aliens have spared the earth.
and now the story of the UFO cult gets interesting.
after KEECH announced to the cult members that the aliens decided to spare the earth, only one of KEECH'S followers got up and left. the remaining members were described as jubilant and the remaining members became even more committed to the cause. they began to proselytize in an attempt to convert others.
social psychologist Leon Festinger infiltrated the UFO cult and wrote a book about it. according to Festinger, it is psychologically painful to be confronted with information that contradicts our beliefs. it would have been too embarrassing for KEECH'S followers to admit they were wrong, so they set out to convince others to join their cult. if they succeeded at convincing others, they would not only avoid embarrassment, the conversion of others would constitute more evidence of their nutty UFO beliefs.
the lengths that humans will go to avoid admitting they are wrong are greater than i ever imagined possible.
craven recommends zupf, dogsbite.org and unSpun
ever wonder why we call them PIT NUTTERS?
read this and this and this and this.
