Comments on: Dread Cthulhu Leads His Cult to Milestone Year

By: Donald Petersen

Donald Petersen — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 22:26:00 +0000

When I first moved to Hollywood (on Orchid, just behind the Chinese Theater), my phone number was 467-4xxx. It tickled me no end that up into the 1990s, they were giving out phone numbers that matched the HOllywood exchange. I’d use my best MovieTone Newsreel voice on my answering machine’s outgoing message: “Hello! You’ve reached HOllywood-seven-four-[somethingsomethingsomething]!”

Come to think of it, I suspect most of my friends thought I was trying to sound like the MovieFone guy.

By: Vengefultacos

Vengefultacos — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 13:03:00 +0000

How can a baby misdial a call? I mean, maybe they wanted to babble at his girlfriend. Or maybe they were hungry, heard she had large boobs, and were ordering takeout.

By: James Kimbell

James Kimbell — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 11:02:00 +0000

”misdialed calls from babies”

Today she’d tack on a “.tumblr.com” to that and become famous.

By: GagHalfrunt

GagHalfrunt — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 10:17:00 +0000

Thanks.

By: zuludaddy

zuludaddy — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 04:25:00 +0000

Hebbo!

By: Midwest Mom

Midwest Mom — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 04:12:00 +0000

Louanne was making eyes at John Sweeney (BBC reporter and author of book “The Church of Fear”, which exposes the horrific behavior of the Cult of Scientology) on his twitter account today.

It’s easy to see that Louanne has a huge crush on the literati hottie, Sweeney. Poor John – Louanne puts a literal spin to the term “cult following”.

By: Synthia Elizabeth Fagen

Synthia Elizabeth Fagen — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 03:51:00 +0000

Quit calling it an article. It’s a paid advertisement.

By: Genre Slur

Genre Slur — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 03:39:00 +0000

Wow. John Carpenter needs to redux a conflation of They Live and In the mouth of Madness, triggered by this here article.

By: Robert Eckert

Robert Eckert — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 02:57:00 +0000

They do compare, exactly, to a gang of murderers.

By: Robert Eckert

Robert Eckert — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 02:48:00 +0000

Big Sister is watching YOU!

By: Awesomer

Awesomer — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 01:58:00 +0000

Yep, and it says “Scientology Center of Israel.”

By: Jason Gilbert

Jason Gilbert — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 01:48:00 +0000

You also can’t really make out any faces in any of the crowd photos. Like maybe they were cut and pasted there.

Also, how do I get ahold of the local Cthulhu cult in Vancouver?

By: GagHalfrunt

GagHalfrunt — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 01:06:00 +0000

In the original Photoshop of David Miscavige, is the motto on the Scientology logos written in Hebrew?

By: envirotex

envirotex — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 00:34:00 +0000

Hebbo. How difficult is it to join?

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 00:26:00 +0000

UCSF’s exchange was 666 for years. And my monthly Kaiser premium this year is $666. I guess we know who’s running the health care industry.

By: Donald Petersen

Donald Petersen — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 23:51:00 +0000

Some eight years ago, my soon-to-be-wife’s phone number was 666-6669. You’d think she would have received many crank calls from more-or-less evil people, but I only remember one: a message on her answering machine with the usual recorded voice followed by a pretty ordinary-sounding guy: “You have received a collect call from:” “Satan.” “Will you accept the charges?”

She still got rid of the number because she actually did get a hell of a lot of misdialed calls from babies. You’d hear them cooing and babbling on the other end. Seemed like they’d just knock over the receiver and pound on the 6 key for a while.

By: Sunny Sands

Sunny Sands — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 23:45:00 +0000

Or photoshopped in.

By: Dogsop Smith

Dogsop Smith — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 23:08:00 +0000

Accepting legal ads is not the same thing as allowing ads designed to look like editorial content which is what sponsored content is. Doesn’t matter whether it is a Scientology ad in The Atlantic or the crappy watch ads which show up as sponsored content in my Boing Boing RSS feed.

By: Mark_Frauenfelder

Mark_Frauenfelder — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 20:59:00 +0000

It sounds like you are saying that if you were in charge of The Atlantic, you would draw the line in a different place than other people would. Or would you accept any legal ad?

By: Cormacolinde

Cormacolinde — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 19:54:00 +0000

I picture someone in a house filled with occult research paraphernalia saying that chatting via a video conference on his computer, and then the eyes of the refined gentleman in the painting on the wall suddenly BLINK TWICE.

By: Ian Wood

Ian Wood — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 19:13:00 +0000

I’m in Chrome, too, and I see it all properly freaky Unicodey. (MacOS 10.6.8, Chrome 24.0.1312.52, if that has anything to do with it).

Apparently Zalgo just has to continue waiting behind the wall if you don’t have the right browser? I guess it’s hard for ancient evil to keep up with all the new-fangled tech these days.

EDIT: OK, not properly freaky Unicodey. It’s mostly the same, but there are some of the square boxes in there as well (penguinchris, above, has the proper rendering).

Huh. So most of the evil comes through, but not all of it.

By: zuludaddy

zuludaddy — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 19:12:00 +0000

Please show me where I’d advocated censorship. The point I was making regarding look and feel was that the scientology folks were clearly trying to blur the line between advertising and editorial content, trading on (and treading on) The Atlantic’s stature, history, good name and goodwill. The privately owned magazine does not have a responsibility to accept advertisements from anyone willing to fork over the cash…

By: mysterymoil

mysterymoil — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 18:39:00 +0000

2,300 people go missing every day in America. I blame The Great Old One’s too robust appetite.

By: TheOven

TheOven — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 18:39:00 +0000

That made no sense at all – then I realised it wasn’t about The Ancient Ones, but scientology. Phew.

Besides, I think I like this David Miscarriage guy.

By: Rick Mycroft

Rick Mycroft — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 18:14:00 +0000

Photo-analysis of Scientology events can be entertaining. They’ve gotten better since the Photoshopped “Man With No Head” incident, but they routinely seem to pack far more people into a given space than is possible when checked against satellite images.

By: Rick Mycroft

Rick Mycroft — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 18:08:00 +0000

For years Scientology was shutting down any e-meter sales on eBay by abusing their merchant account. Give them an inch…

By: johnbiggs

johnbiggs — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 18:03:00 +0000

What a beautiful photo! I’m not a supporter of the dread lord but to each his own!

By: UnderachievingSheep

UnderachievingSheep — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 18:03:00 +0000

Censor? I stopped reading right there because you seem to have no grasp of what censorship means. Hint: a privately owned publication doesn’t owe anyone the right of publication. Only governments/ the State can censor. On the other hand, publications, at least serious ones with a long history, have editorial standards that prevent any loon from paying space to rant about their theory du jour.

By: removabledante

removabledante — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 18:00:00 +0000

Who draws the line then? Who do you decide to censor? I don’t personally agree with their views, but I don’t think they exactly compare to a group of murderers. Also, I don’t believe The Atlantic’s intent was to mislead. As a regular reader I always see sponsored content from various companies being promoted. This one just happened to draw more controversy and media attention. The one thing I enjoy about The Atlantic is the intelligent open discourse that it promotes (the censored commenting system in this case is at fault in my opinion).

By: C W

C W — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 17:57:00 +0000

That their Editorial department has nothing to do with stories running as articles is not in their favor.