Nobody BELIEVES in zombies. There is no "you know, these zombies, the government and the media don't talk about it, but..." (at least the living-dead ones, I don't know the actuality of voodoo zombies in haitian urban legends). These are pure entertainment. Just like vampires nowadays, that's why I mentionned them. There are no more vampiric accusations, villages digging corpses out of tombs to re-kill them ritualistically, or even rumours about the greedy businesman whose family got ill since his death.

It all went into pure consciously fictional territory, even the bermuda triangle and spiritism. There are some survivances (ghosts, gods, etc), but there is no New Thing. Novelty scifi/fantasy collective semi-psychoses. :-(

That's what I miss.

______________


Oh, chemtrails. We have chemtrails. These are hilarious and new-ish, but... not very strongly shared either. Compared to the ufo/bermuda levels of popular beliefs...

It is just what "they" want you to believe, it just goes to show how efficient the indoctrination program set in place by MJ-12 has been.

Be vigilant!

There's some information lurking around that the real Bavarian Illuminati created by Adam Weishaupt in 1776 actually was a secret society that tried to infiltrate others and in that way spread illuminating ideas of freedom and equality. Now if their sole purpose (real purpose) was to infiltrate for the sake of it (gossip value?) that would have been hilarious.

We usually assume people aim towards goals like money, power, love, happiness or understanding the mysterious of the universe but in the end we just want be curious and laugh.

Chemtrails are awesome but they are so stuck, I don't know. There's no elusive goal of the supposed government covering them up. Part of the charm to lack a goal but still, it's not reaching its full potential without it or it's missing something else entirely.

Idunno, I watch morning news on the primary state channel. The news are only somewhat offensive and the talk hosts are cute. However, recently, the channel started showing "documentaries" after the news segment, and these are bullshit flavored bullshit. The last one I accidentally saw (I had to pick up my ballot at the warden's booth) was about the scientifically proven and worldwide-acknowledged power of Orthodox Christian exorcism to cure absolutely any illness or [perceived] social problem. Previously featured were UFOs, Bigfoot, and a whole string of chemtrail-style Soviet conspiracies.

If you are looking for strange and unexplained phenomena that is still occurring, you can start with the Fortean Times. They have a generally skeptical approach to cataloguing the unusual. I used to administer their email discussion forum, and can tell you there is still plenty of strangeness out there. For example, cryptozoology remains a hot topic.

That seems to be an interesting website, on many levels (skeptical yet sensationnalist, a narrative tone that creates a sense of mystery to debunk it ?), so I'll check it in a while. But still, I see it more akin to specialized websites (occultist or zetetician), so, still different from these mainstream, collective social trends i had in mind.

Chemtrails had a mainstream aspect - for a short while they were an informal public discussion. But, thinking of it, even if they are nicely ufo-ish (and nicely "ooh that cloud is totally not like last year's cloud" insane), all the versions I had heard were 9/11-ishly "internal". They were conspiracy theories about the government using/testing chemicals on its unsuspecting population, in order to something. In that sense, it's not too different from other trendy political conspiracy theories, even if it nicely plays on visual interpretation of the environment.

What we seem to have lost is the radical exteriority of the causes. The mysteries pointing at something other, outside. Humans became the subject of their own mysteries, in popular views. It's strangely similar to the end of terrae incognitae : there are no dragons "outside", no "undiscovered tribes", no plinian races. It makes sense for science to turn into sociology (even anthropology has ceased to be a science of the exotic other in the traditional sense), but I'm surprised that popular beliefs, with all the fields they have at hand (space and whatnot) also turn their paranoia to humans.

It's like there's some "we've seen it all" in collective belief, and no more magic attributed to outside.

I don't know. I'm not sure I pinpoint it right.

I understand what you are saying, and I think our highly interconnected nature these days subverts these older social phenomena from taking root. UFOs and Loch Ness monster sitings were predicated on their remoteness and the inability to bring forensic dissection to bear, which is no longer the case. In the same way urban legends are promulgated, disseminated, and debunked in a far quicker cycle than when they persisted in the purely oral network.

I also lay blame at our frenetic addiction to novelty, as others have mooted in this thread. We strip-mine culture and history and creativity at an untenable pace. This is coupled again with our interconnectedness, so that we are inundated with everyone's half-baked efforts and throw-away creations. Why invest decades in an effort now when it is going to be plundered and rendered passe in a matter of weeks? Only the hermetic or the obsessive has the required passion to do this anymore, and so such things become their purview, apart from the mainstream.

I guess they just had their own Monty Phython's Camelot scene:

- Let's fly to Earth!
- To Earth! To Earth!
- ...
- mmm, on second thought, let's not go there. It is a silly place...

Just felt like giving an update on my previous post. I think you could say that "I Am Legend" the Will Smith film is a kind of zombie apocalypse story where the zombies (if you can call them that, because in the original novel they were vampires) have a leader that serves as an antagonist to Will Smiths character for most of the running time. You barely pick up on this fact because the production company forced the decision to re-write and re-shoot the ending. Unfortunately the idiot focus test group viewers didn't like the unique and intelligent ending to the film where, just as in the book, it turns out the protagonist is actually the mass murdering monster in the eyes of the new zombie/vampire society he thought were just mindless animals. In the re-write it is no longer clear that the zombies/vampires are organised and sapient beings and their agenda is never revealed which means the title of the film no longer makes sense and the story is almost completely void of character conflict. The new ending is absolutely terrible, forced and undoes everything that was awesome about the source material.

Other than that though, I can not think of a work of art that features solely zombies as the main or only antagonistic element to the story. Straight up zombie shooter games without a progressing story arc do not really count because there would be no point discussing something that isn't even there. The zombie apocalypse is a disaster in which human conflicts can prop up and be explored via story telling. The zombie apocalypse is not a monster story where the zombies are out to get the protagonist.

I think it ended when the first rover landed on Mars and found nothing of alien origin. Like Pyramid or something.

And also our Voyager (or something) has left the solar system - without finding anything alien.

There are talks about sending a marine rover to Europa to look for water / liquid based alien form - if exist.

Seti also haven't returned anything.

There is a reason why people these days mostly looked back at earth - but I'll keep that to myself.

What part of "ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE" DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND!?

I think it ended after the big letdown that the conclusion to the X-Files was.

Ha, this reminds back in the mid 90's, when The Discovery channel and TLC would show alien documentaries late at night. I would stay up and watch them....then I would be scared of every sound in the house, fearing the greys would probe me. I was like, 11 at the time.

OT: What we need is less reality shows like chasing bigfoot, less poofy hair guy and more shows akin to X-files, Sightings and shows starring Jonathan Frakes.

No it ended when two different countries programed the same Mars lander, one using feet and inches, the other metric causing the goddamn thing to go into the planet like a dart. :P

And yes that really happened. While I'd like to blame the U.S. for our ignorant refusal to embrace the metric system I think some responsibility lies with everyone else in not recognizing that we will forever ignorantly refuse to embrace the metric system. :P