Ten years later, it's still weird

[debgeisler]

I was scanning boingboing.net, which notes that next week is the 10th anniversary of the Heaven's Gate cult's group suicide, as they searched for enlightenment and a ride on a space ship flying behind comet Hale-Bopp.

You can still see the Heaven's Gate web site from 1997 (state of the art for its time, baby).

And there's a fairly dispassioned account of who the Heaven's Gate cult was on the Religious Movements web site.

I remember hearing about the suicide...and the self-mutilations the men went through (self castatration can't be pleasant)...and the fact that they were a web development company...and looking askance for a few weeks at all of the other web developers I knew.

And now, there's a green comet on the way. Could be dangerous. Lock up your web developers.

Comments

[madfilkentist]

From my "True Believers," 1997:

There's a rising tide of New Age thought, and some people learn too late

That it's hell that they've walked into, when they think it's Heaven's Gate...

"New Age" isn't quite fair, but it fit the parody I was writing.