Throughout history weird cults have occasionally formed.
The eastern mystery cults of the late B.C. era, the Muenster rebellion, Quakers, Shakers, dozens of cults in the Great Awakening, the Oneida, the pre-scientology UFO cults of the mid-20th century, Scientology, Jonestown, The Family, Unification Church, Rajneeshpuram, Children of God, Heaven's Gate... the juggalos? Who knows.
It happens all the time and each time the cult grows very quickly until it becomes an organism large enough that people hear of and reject it before they can be exposed to the infectious hook. Every cult has a few things to say where any reasonable person will say "huh, you have a point."
The speed of that growth phase is critical. By the mid-70s the American public knew to not listen to the guys in orange robes at the airport and the Hare Krishna plateaued.
We are still in the growth phase on the new internet meta-cult. The population as a whole is not ready to say "oh, I know there are kooks on the internet who will lie to me and I know how to recognize them."
A memetic infection is inevitably going to be worse with an internet to spread it. It's not clear when this one might fizzle because the available set of hosts is billions instead of thousands for the first time ever.
So yes. It's worse. It will probably be the most infectious cult spread since the origins of Christianity and Islam, and unlike those two it has nothing positive to offer. Without the internet it would just be a few hundred people in a compound, but now? We won't know how far it can get until it's over.
And a few decades later we'll have another, and another. It's enough to make you wonder if we've found the Great Filter.
The eastern mystery cults of the late B.C. era, the Muenster rebellion, Quakers, Shakers, dozens of cults in the Great Awakening, the Oneida, the pre-scientology UFO cults of the mid-20th century, Scientology, Jonestown, The Family, Unification Church, Rajneeshpuram, Children of God, Heaven's Gate... the juggalos? Who knows.
It happens all the time and each time the cult grows very quickly until it becomes an organism large enough that people hear of and reject it before they can be exposed to the infectious hook. Every cult has a few things to say where any reasonable person will say "huh, you have a point."
The speed of that growth phase is critical. By the mid-70s the American public knew to not listen to the guys in orange robes at the airport and the Hare Krishna plateaued.
We are still in the growth phase on the new internet meta-cult. The population as a whole is not ready to say "oh, I know there are kooks on the internet who will lie to me and I know how to recognize them."
A memetic infection is inevitably going to be worse with an internet to spread it. It's not clear when this one might fizzle because the available set of hosts is billions instead of thousands for the first time ever.
So yes. It's worse. It will probably be the most infectious cult spread since the origins of Christianity and Islam, and unlike those two it has nothing positive to offer. Without the internet it would just be a few hundred people in a compound, but now? We won't know how far it can get until it's over.
And a few decades later we'll have another, and another. It's enough to make you wonder if we've found the Great Filter.