Mine was probably when I relapsed towards religion at age 15-16 and joined my mom’s conservative megachurch, naïvely thinking I can convince them to be less bigoted and more “christ-like” as well as accept science
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I was convinced a was a Werewolf with psychic powers. Also that the hollow earth is real, because that’s where the mole people aliens come from. And I also thought the Big Bang Theory was funny.
which version of the hollow earth are we talking? if you mean a giant hollow shell, then yeh i’m not sure how well supported that is.
if you mean the honeycomb earth idea, where there could be myriad of huge deep caverns. then i’m kinda open to that possibility.
(not that my geoscience knowledge extends beyond highschool geography and the odd wikipedia article - so would welcome an opportunity to discuss with someone adept.)
I believed there was a big hole in the north pole where the magnetic field comes out
may i ask why you believed that and why you stopped believing?
what piece of knowledge changed things for you?
surely you already knew all the reasons why that sounds pretty fantastical, even back then?
Well, what snapped me out was when I ran an experiment that proved how strong the placebo effect could be, which caused me to reflect on my beliefs and realize that literally all the Werewolf wizard powers I thought I had could be explained by the placebo effect. Naturally, I concluded that I couldnt trust anything my senses told me and spent a few days trying to figure out how to deal with the possibility of being a brain in a jar.
And of course, right after I’d rebuilt my entire conception of reality from first principles, that’s when I found out that some of the memories I had of things I was most proud of and defined myself by were provably false. So, as you would expect from me considering my calm and careful reaction to the placebo effect, I then decided that all my memories couldn’t be trusted.
So, can’t trust my senses, cant trust my memories. That’s pretty much all the things I can use to define myself. So, based on the lack of valid evidence I concluded that I do not exist.
And that’s how I stopped being a flat-earther wizard werewolf. Thankfully eventually I came around to agreeing with Descartes on the whole “I think, therefore I am” thing. After I climbed out of the psychological hole I dug over the next six months, I recovered with only a severely crippling fear of advertisements.
Maybe stay away from acid 😂
I was that nerdy kid that would tell anyone at every possible opportunity that thier iPhone was locked down garbage and they should switch to Android. Now I find any kind of vocal brand loyalty incredibly cringe as it just reminds me how I used to be when I was 14.
Iphones do kind of suck though.
Yeah I had to switch recently and I hate it.
Sent from my iPhone
I went through a pretty big libertarian phase way back in my late teens.
Not the ‘deregulate everything’ type, but rather more of a ‘everyone’s place in society is governed by the choices they make’ social-darwinist sort of angle.
Once I got out and experienced real life more (and learned about all the little nuances behind everything) I realized just how wrong I was.
Nowadays I’m a big leftist/socialist
seems like i’m mostly telling people in this thread not to feel bad about their prior cringe…
i really didn’t follow this closely AT ALL. but i feel like back in the day libertarian ideas were much more left of center than they are now. to my inexpert perception, it feels like libertarianism (and alot of other things) have been co-opted by conservatism over the years.
For the record the word Libertarian has a different meaning in the US to that used in the rest of the world.
Maybe it’s just me, but libertarians have always been a weird bunch, because there are some large gaps between those who fall under its banner. I’ve seen anarchist commune types as well as the ‘government better watch out because I’m the only owner of THIS land’ prickly sorts at the same event. It’s not so much that the ideals of libertarian thought have been taken into conservative realms, but that the sorts of libertarians who could align with the ‘conservative’ drive to make the government small and speak up loudly are now getting their moment in the spotlight.
Annoying atheist who tried to argue with religious people with Facts and Logic.
Same. At some point I became friends with pretty religious people who were also some of the most intelligent and nice people I had met. My beliefs that religious people are just dumb people who cannot understand the complexity of the real world kinda fell apart then.
I returned back to my pre-teen opinion, still an atheist but with compassion for other people’s beliefs. No need to constantly force my opinion into it or needlessly be a dick because we disagree. I’ve had many interesting discussions since then with very religious people. I still don’t fully get it, and to me it still reeks of indoctrination, but I’ve accepted that it’s fine to disagree.
Did you become religious again or just a less annoying atheist?
The latter
Not Op but atheist who accepts that some people would actually be unhappy without religion.
Honestly sometimes I wish I could brainwash myself that effectively.
Joining the “not op” train since I have a different answer than the others: I was peak annoying/edgy “debate bro” atheist and I ultimately became religious again but for a different religion.
Can elaborate if you want, I just don’t want to risk going on an unprovoked tangent lol.
tangent away mate
Not OP, but also an annoying adolescent atheist. After actually giving it some thought, I realized I was contextualizing the concept all wrong. Just because most people seem to contextualize God as a Santa Claus figure (bearded man who lives above us and judges our conduct, with fitting consequences) didn’t mean I had to accept that context.
There have been many very intelligent people across history who had many interesting things to say about deity. Few of them were using the Santa Claus model.
Not OP, but coming from the same place: less annoying (I hope!) atheist.
oh lol. been there done that. finally learnt it’s never worth your time to try and change someone’s beliefs.
When I was like 12, I thought chain wallets were the shit. Unfortunately my parents wouldn’t let me have one. I ended up hooking a bunch of Disney keychains together and wore that as my chain wallet. This was often worn with my favorite sleeveless neon green shirt and my lucky black and white checkered shorts.
When I was 14-15 I wanted a wallet chain, but they were banned at my school. I made one of of safety pins that looped down past my knees. Somehow my linked safety pins were ok…
Of all the things for a school to ban, why wallet chains?
They were considered to be a weapon.
I had a chain watch because I thought they were cool. It was a cheap, but probably better quality than it needed to be ( the chain broke quickly), it was from hot topic. Also it was an attack on titan chain watch
All of that actually sounds really cool to me. Especially the diy chain.
Homestuck phase 😬
I like to think I was in the middle of the cringeometer for that fandom but who knows.My anime days.
This was back before anime really took off in the US, so most people had no idea what it was. This was before the term “weeaboo” was invented, but I’d have been called one if it had been.
Marxist Leninist.
Peaked in highschool lol
Was?
It becomes a cringe adult phase when you get older.
Nochmal bitte
Sprich…
Angelsächsisch…
@op looking back, what was the specific cringe aspect of what you described in your story?
that you’d hope for this seemingly impossible outcome, of being a positive force in an established group with a clear bigoted direction?
or that you feel foolish for relapsing into believing religious topics again?
or something else?
It’s a bit of both really
All of my teenage years were cringe but at some point I changed my clothing style to be more like that one dude in class who took drugs, sprayed graffiti and was always in trouble. Because he once said to me I could draw pretty good.
My cringe only grew more powerful as I aged. King of cringe my whole life.
Unfortunately I was blind sided by blue conservatives jerking themselves off over what trump will do to people they dislike. I have since lost my crown.
blue conservatives
I think you’re still in your cringe teenage phase
Coming into a thread that has nothing to do with politics and using it to soapbox your political superiority is still kinda cringe, ngl.
Props to the commitment
Wearing lots of very thick-ribbed corduroy.
very thick-ribbed
For her pleasure. ;)
exactly
I wore over the top outfits. Suit jackets, headbands, waistcoats, bright red skinny jeans, leather biker jackets, fedoras, big glasses with fake lenses, studded belts, etc etc in all sorts of combos.
The fedora and waistcoat over a white dress shirt as casualwear is what I’m most ashamed of. I don’t know what in the hell I was thinking. I must have looked like a total dickhead around my normally dressed peers.
This was a phase that probably lasted no more than a year when I was about 18-19. I wish someone had told me that I looked ridiculous lmao
I love it. Don’t be ashamed, you were telling the world you were open to trying new things and being adventurous. Finding your own style rather than following the mainstream is sexy. I used to be that way and slowly confirmed and now I’m trying to get back to my younger self, where I cared less about what others thought.
There was this kid my friends referred to as “top hat kid” cuz he wore a top hat and trench coat. Yours seems less cringe than that.
I didn’t wear a trenchcoat. If I told you what I did instead, I’d probably doxx myself. It was cringe.
Been there. I’m still religious, I just hide it now.
