Real-Life Weirdness

[dcarson]

And since crocodile sex is based on incubation temperature you can get both sexes to develop a breeding population.

[L.J.Steele]

TikTok Titanic Truthers... https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/16/b...formation.html

And I thought I was well-read on the Titantic

I had heard of the Olympic replacement theory, but I missed the theory that the wreck was a “hit job” ordered by the financier J.P. Morgan — whose real name was John Pierpont Sr. — to eliminate opponents of the Federal Reserve.

Or that:
The Washington Post raised the possibility that the tragedy stemmed from the “ancient malice” of a mummified Egyptian priestess, who cursed an editor after he dared to tell her story to fellow Titanic passengers. Others have tried, unconvincingly, to pin the high death toll on Winston Churchill, a German submarine, sabotage-minded Catholic shipbuilders or decks that could be electromagnetically sealed to prevent passengers below from escaping. The Freemasons were accused of orchestrating a cover-up.

[L.J.Steele]

And in other news...

Harvard Med School morgue sold donated bodies on the black market

https://www.wbur.org/news/2023/06/15...man-body-theft

Sad as the news is, it could easily be a plot seed.

[Irish Wolf]

Originally Posted by L.J.Steele

And in other news...

Harvard Med School morgue sold donated bodies on the black market

https://www.wbur.org/news/2023/06/15...man-body-theft

Sad as the news is, it could easily be a plot seed.

Igor's getting lazy.

[L.J.Steele]

Originally Posted by Irish Wolf

Igor's getting lazy.

A modern Igor in a snappy 3 piece suit constantly wheeling and dealing for black market body parts would be an interesting twist.

[Luke Bunyip]

Originally Posted by L.J.Steele

A modern Igor in a snappy 3 piece suit constantly wheeling and dealing for black market body parts would be an interesting twist.

Thank you... let me look after that idea for you, Neddy.
<Sound of running footsteps slowly fading off into the distance>

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by L.J.Steele

TikTok Titanic Truthers...

Paywall'd, unfortunately. Of course, I'm certain it's just a coincidence that you posted this only days before a submersible filled with millionaires (and a billionaire) exploring the Titanic went missing...

[L.J.Steele]

Originally Posted by Luke Bunyip

Thank you... let me look after that idea for you, Neddy.
<Sound of running footsteps slowly fading off into the distance>

Happy to be of service...

[L.J.Steele]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Paywall'd, unfortunately. Of course, I'm certain it's just a coincidence that you posted this only days before a submersible filled with millionaires (and a billionaire) exploring the Titanic went missing...

Yeah, TikTok Titanic Truthers must be going nuts.

Let me hit the highlights...
The finer details of what happened to the RMS Titanic differ depending on who is telling the story.

The iceberg that collided with the luxury liner was spotted at 11:40 p.m., according to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, or 11:35 p.m., which is what an exhibition about the ship in New York claims. The Royal Museums Greenwich in Britain says the doomed vessel cost 1,503 people their lives, while the Smithsonian in the United States claims that 1,522 passengers and crew died.

Historians have attributed the variance to factors like imperfect ticketing lists and rushed head counts transmitted using weak signals. The broad strokes, however, are not in question. All credible experts agree that on April 15, 1912, less than a week into its maiden voyage, the Titanic ended up at the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean.

More than a century later, on TikTok, a far different version has been circulating. In a post that garnered more than 11 million views before it was removed earlier this year, one user wrote: “the titanic never sank!!!”

On the short-form video app, long-established facts about the crash are being newly litigated as musty rumors merge with fresh misinformation and manipulated content — a demonstration of TikTok’s potent ability to seed historical revisionism about even the most deeply studied cases.

One 32-second post opens with a dramatic black-and-white drawing of the Titanic, its stern straining above waves studded with people, set to a spooky synthesizer tune. A man in a hoodie and a backward baseball cap, crudely green-screened into the frame, makes a familiar argument (accompanied by an emoji of a screaming face): “The Titanic NEVER actually sank.” Looking into the camera, he repeats the so-called and exhaustively disproved “swap” theory — that the ruins on the seabed belong to the Titanic’s older and decrepit sister ship, the Olympic, scuttled in an attempt at insurance fraud.

Another video presents a conspiracy theory that the wreck was a “hit job” ordered by the financier J.P. Morgan — whose real name was John Pierpont Sr. — to eliminate opponents of the Federal Reserve.

* * *

TikTok is just the latest recycling bin for false narratives about the Titanic, which began circulating almost as soon as the ship had sunk.

A month after the wreck, The Washington Post raised the possibility that the tragedy stemmed from the “ancient malice” of a mummified Egyptian priestess, who cursed an editor after he dared to tell her story to fellow Titanic passengers. Others have tried, unconvincingly, to pin the high death toll on Winston Churchill, a German submarine, sabotage-minded Catholic shipbuilders or decks that could be electromagnetically sealed to prevent passengers below from escaping. The Freemasons were accused of orchestrating a cover-up.

Such conspiracy theories are a fount of deep and familiar exasperation for Mr. Haas, fueled by years of weary disbelief that tall tales about an extensively documented disaster can continue to find audiences through books, so-called documentaries and now, a video app.

“The sad part is that many of the people following this sort of thing are teenagers, and they are woefully unwilling to do digging,” he said.

* * *
Mr. Morgan, whose White Star Line owned the Titanic, figures prominently in Titanic lore. TikTok videos repeat decades-old claims that the millionaire backed out of a planned trip on the Titanic minutes or hours before it set sail because he intended to use the ship to assassinate powerful enemies onboard who opposed his efforts to create a centralized banking system. (In some tellings, TikTok creators have recast the villains as the wealthy Rothschild family or even the Catholic order of the Jesuits.)

Experts point out that the historical record and common sense do not support such assertions. Evidence suggests that Mr. Morgan failed to make his date with the Titanic because he was dealing with an unexpected situation involving his European art collection. The businessman would also have had to ensure that the Titanic would strike an iceberg with catastrophic force, and that his opponents were not among the more than 700 people who survived the crash.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by L.J.Steele

Experts point out that the historical record and common sense do not support such assertions. Evidence suggests that Mr. Morgan failed to make his date with the Titanic because he was dealing with an unexpected situation involving his European art collection. The businessman would also have had to ensure that the Titanic would strike an iceberg with catastrophic force, and that his opponents were not among the more than 700 people who survived the crash.

I mean, it wouldn't be that hard to manufacture "an unexpected situation involving his European art collection," and the obvious ways to handle the ship needing to sink and the targets needing to not escape would be to sabotage the ship (purposefully hit an iceberg, and if that fails to sink it use some explosives - or just have some explosives set up to go off when it hits an iceberg) and murder the targets beforehand, letting the sinking ship hide their bodies and the fact the thing sunk handle the whole "why they never made it to their destination" bit; all the talk about being unsinkable could even be to help explain why influential people (who I assume the targets would need to be, for them to put up a notable resistance to creation of a world bank) didn't get to the lifeboats until too late (they didn't think it would sink). I'm not saying I believe the conspiracy theories - hubris and incompetence seem more likely than complex plots and malice - but the article insisting such theories can't be right because they don't match the official story (that J.P. missed the launch because he was busy handling something else, that the ship sunk because it hit an iceberg in a manner that overwhelmed its resistance to sinking from just that, and that those who lived and those who died were largely up to chance) seems pretty tonedeaf - the whole idea behind any conspiracy theory is that the official story isn't true.

And, of course, the idea of the Titanic disaster being a hit job is excellent fodder for games (being insurance fraud is a bit less interesting, but also usable - of course, it should be possible to have both be in play). A lot of conspiracy theories are.