Subject matter aside, the author of the article uses the term URL a few times but doesn't seem to know what it means. Curious for an "internet historian".
Left Alive And Unchanged: The Heaven’s Gate Website
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Re: Left Alive And Unchanged: The Heaven’s Gate Website
#62Subject matter aside, the author of the article uses the term URL a few times but doesn't seem to know what it means. Curious for an "internet historian".
He also repeatedly states the events of 1997 happened 35 years ago. Heh.
Re: Left Alive And Unchanged: The Heaven’s Gate Website
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
Surely you're aware of Jonestown, which was a much larger such event?
No? Again, I'm non-US.
Jonestown was significant internationally - nearly a thousand people died by suicide and murder, many of them children. It didn’t take place in the US (Jonestown is in Guyana), although the cult originated there.
Re: Left Alive And Unchanged: The Heaven’s Gate Website
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
No? Again, I'm non-US.
Also read about Waco, if you’re into this sort of thing: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waco_siege
Pedantic Central Texan: the cult compound and subsequent siege weren’t actually in Waco - that’s the nearest city with television stations and an airport. If you’re not Southern Baptist, feel free to make a joke about the real cult in Waco being headquartered at the Truett Seminary (Baylor). If you grew up Southern Baptist (like myself), giggle even more about the Vatican on the Brazos.
I learned once I got to college on the East Coast in the late 90s that the rest of the country automatically thought “cult compound siege and fire” instead of “Baylor,” when they heard the name of the nearest big city to where I grew up, so took to describing my hometown as being “about an hour north of Austin” instead of “30 minutes south of Waco”.
Austin was always far, far cooler than Waco, but that always felt a bit pretentious, as my hometown is a lot more like Waco than it is Austin… which is probably why I ended up running off to the East Coast for college.
Re: Left Alive And Unchanged: The Heaven’s Gate Website
#65The article makes it look like the existence of this cult is an extremely widely-known fact and thus it doesn't need much introduction. But I only learned about it after clicking this link. It weirds me out that some people are so amenable to this kind of thing, enough to kill themselves.
In France/Switzerland, there is the Order of the Solar Temple, which seems to be somewhat unique among suicide cults for being repeat offenders: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_the_Solar_Temple
Re: Left Alive And Unchanged: The Heaven’s Gate Website
#66Surprisingly, it looks good on mobile
Re: Left Alive And Unchanged: The Heaven’s Gate Website
#67Title should be clarified to match the article. Not everyone associated with the cult has perished. Several ex-members are alive and some remained close to the cult in a way that's hard to describe, and took on the maintenance of the website. HBO's series, Heaven's Gate: The Cult of Cults, is highly recommended. It is a fascinating, tragic, and ultimately humanizing look at the cult, through the eyes of observers and…
Thanks for this comment. I was initially impressed that the site stated up that long with no human maintenance. Also, now I want to watch that documentary
It wouldn't surprise me too much. My completely embarrassing website from the 90s has been running on the same host and subdomain with zero work done by me to keep it running:
http://boglin.iwarp.com
I think I edited the HTML once since 1999 to add a Google Analytics tag because I was curious if anyone ever visited it.
Re: Left Alive And Unchanged: The Heaven’s Gate Website
#68Those suicides happened about the time Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV Show came out. I was in LA at the time. Buffy billboards everywhere. And then bam - mass suicide. Ever since I’ve always connnected the two.
I wrote a creepy poem about the whole affair, as I was an angsty goth-adjacent teen who didn't like poetry assignments.
Please share! I have plenty of poetry from 20 years ago that’s probably quite cringe and I can’t bring myself to look at it. But yours! I’m intrigued. And maybe it isn’t cringe maybe it’s great.
Re: Left Alive And Unchanged: The Heaven’s Gate Website
#69The article makes it look like the existence of this cult is an extremely widely-known fact and thus it doesn't need much introduction. But I only learned about it after clicking this link. It weirds me out that some people are so amenable to this kind of thing, enough to kill themselves.
In France/Switzerland, there is the Order of the Solar Temple, which seems to be somewhat unique among suicide cults for being repeat offenders: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_the_Solar_Temple
A cult of repeat group suicide sounds like something out of Terry Pratchett's Discworld.
Re: Left Alive And Unchanged: The Heaven’s Gate Website
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
No? Again, I'm non-US.
You may have heard the expression “drank the koolaid” to mean someone has fully embraced an outlandish ideology, or even just fully committed to a cause. At Jonestown, many cult members committed suicide by drinking cyanide-laced koolaid. Koolaid is a sugary, flavored drink powder that is mixed with water. It was a staple for many kids in the 80’s and 90’s.
It was Flavor-Aid. One of my supervisors in the USAF helped with the bodies when they arrived in the US.