Paranoia Fuel/Other Media: Difference between revisions

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Hey, guys. If you read the stuff below, you might [[Go Mad ~~From~~ the Revelation|end up a little insane]] and reach for the nearest source of [[Brain Bleach]] ([[Driven to Suicide|or the gun]]). However, try to remember that none of the things in this list are anywhere near as likely as they seem. Still, it can leave you scarred. [[You Have Been Warned]].

Hey, guys. If you read the stuff below, you might [[Go Mad from the Revelation|end up a little insane]] and reach for the nearest source of [[Brain Bleach]] ([[Driven to Suicide|or the gun]]). However, try to remember that none of the things in this list are anywhere near as likely as they seem. Still, it can leave you scarred. [[You Have Been Warned]].

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** Along the same lines: [[wikipedia:Prions|prions]]. Jesus on a crutch, WHY.

** And ''computer'' viruses, worms, and spyware will make you paranoid even if you aren't at a serious risk. Many security experts [[Elephant in the Living Room|do not like to over-discuss]] the possibility that someone could possibly make a multi-stage worm that attacks from multiple angles, using constantly shifting exploitation methods and counter-counter-methods that can be thought up to make things hard for people who don't want it. [[Oh Crap|Oh wait]], that's not a mere possibility! [[Jerkass|Someone]] [[wikipedia:Conficker|actually did it]]. And even ''that'' isn't [[Paranoia Fuel|as bad as it could be]].

** Also, [[wikipedia:Filoviridae|filoviruses]].

** Incidentally, some retroviruses simply stay in your genes until ''something'' happens that prompts them to start reproducing. Oh, yes, and you might '''never''' have even caught it, because it got passed down from an ancestor--there might even be a few that are present in ''every single human''...

*** It should be added that while they're simply staying there? They're not 'silent'--the genes they introduced into you can and do get transcribed, and can even cause the stress to trigger the retrovirus to start reproducing...or just drive you insane. That paranoia you feel growing might even be due to one of these, we can't be sure.

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* The number of fatal diseases that start out with "flu-like symptoms." Meningitis, rabies, AIDS, the list goes on.

* It's easy to contaminate someone's food and drink with bacteria or a parasitic worm.

* Certain Microbes, there's the now infamous Naegleria fowleri, it's fairly common in warm water, but inflection is extremely rare, however when pathogenic, it invades through the olfactory mucosa and cribriform plate of the nasal tissues, and primary amoebic meningoencephalitis. Infection is extremely rare, but the protist is very common, and can be introduced if you use your nettepot wrong, killing you within the week.

* Cancer. These days, pretty much anything will cause your cells to mutate and grow horrible tumours.

* The [[wikipedia:HeLa|HeLa Cancer Cell Line]] is ''immortal''. Thankfully, HeLa cells won't grow into strong tumors upon being injected into a human body, but one day there ''might'' come a cancer that's capable of doing that. There's already an infectious transmissible cancer that affects ''dogs.''

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* Medical malpractice. One second, you are in the hospital to get your wisdom tooth removed; a minute later, you are death. Doctors can also forget all kinds of instruments into your body after an operation, and you don't even notice! And how about the people that catch some deathly virus while being in the hospital, or the cases of [[Mad Doctor|psychopaths]] working in the health services? Have fun in the hospital.

* An aneurysm could kill you any time. There is no test. There is no way to save you. Don't think you're safe just because you're at a "healthy weight". Weight is far from the most significant risk factor, and you're actually ''less'' likely to survive than someone who weighs more. Enjoy the gym!

* Pregnancy and childbirth. ''[[Finagle's Law|Anything]]'' could go wrong! You could miscarriage for no reason. Your child could be born as an abomination with missing limbs, a rare and possibly incurable illness, deformed organs, born very prematurely and the list goes on. And if you have two or more babies, they could be conjoined and even possibly die in the next few hours. And if you are psychologically and financially unstable to handle the stress of a new family... Congrats on your new baby!

* There's quite a few degenerative diseases that are inborn, but don't show up until you've been lulled into a false sense of security -- you've been in good health, or maybe you've had some mysterious physiological quirk that doesn't seem to mean anything -- for long enough to hit your teenage years, or your twenties, or your thirties or middle age or whenever. You could have a ticking time bomb in your genes and never know it until your body and possibly your mind suddenly start to unravel.

* Just see the Real Life sections on [[Body Horror/Real Life|Body Horror]] and [[And I Must Scream/Real Life|And I must Scream]]. By gods, [[Stephen Hawking|Lou Gehrig's Disease]] and [[wikipedia:Fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva|Fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva]] (two of the said degenerative diseases above) are [[Fate Worse Than Death|Fates Worse Than Cancer]].

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* Anyone who you let use your bathroom could actually be masturbating in there... Yeah.

* Hackers, spyware, keyloggers, stuff like that in general. All it could take is one hole in your security...one visit to a unscrupulous website to bring your account, bank, or anything else of value crashing down...

** Especially prevalent since recent workarounds that add extra security (like the Blizzard Authenticator) ''have'' been worked around. [[Go Mad ~~From~~ the Revelation|NOTHING IS SAFE ANYMORE!]]

** Especially prevalent since recent workarounds that add extra security (like the Blizzard Authenticator) ''have'' been worked around. [[Go Mad from the Revelation|NOTHING IS SAFE ANYMORE!]]

** It's pretty easy to avoid keyloggers and spyware: do your banking/online shopping from a non-Windows system. A Linux live-CD will do. Not completely safe, but a lot better.

** Anonymous tricked hundreds of pedophiles, covering their tracks using the anonymous internet browser Tor, into downloading a fake addon for the browser that recorded all their browsing activity. Imagine if this fake addon was used for evil.

* ''[[The War of the Worlds]]'', the 1938 radio version by [[Orson Welles]]. Many people ''actually thought the U.S. was being invaded by aliens.'' Several similar programs have had the same effect, albeit on a much smaller scale. The consequences have been both more and less fortunate. In an Irish example, a documentary-style drama called ''Fallout'' constructed a what-if story of a nuclear disaster at Sellafield, told through fake news clips. The following morning the radio shows were inundated with calls asking for more information, from people who had thought it was real. Didn't reach a wide enough audience to do any real damage though. Which is a pity, as it was a damn good show.

* ''[[The War of the Worlds (novel)|The War of the Worlds]]'', the 1938 radio version by [[Orson Welles]]. Many people ''actually thought the U.S. was being invaded by aliens.'' Several similar programs have had the same effect, albeit on a much smaller scale. The consequences have been both more and less fortunate. In an Irish example, a documentary-style drama called ''Fallout'' constructed a what-if story of a nuclear disaster at Sellafield, told through fake news clips. The following morning the radio shows were inundated with calls asking for more information, from people who had thought it was real. Didn't reach a wide enough audience to do any real damage though. Which is a pity, as it was a damn good show.

* The assassination of U.S President [[John F. Kennedy]] led to a Paranoia Fuel ''industry''; not only did it result in countless different [[Government Conspiracy]] theories about who ''really'' bumped off Kennedy, but since most of these theories also pretty much ultimately suggest that ''everyone in a position of authority conspired to kill this guy'', it pretty much destroyed any kind of faith that many people could have in any kind of government or authority; sure, they might ''say'' they weren't involved, but then they ''would'' say that, wouldn't they?

** Watergate and the resignation of President [[Richard Nixon]] -- which revealed to the world that yeah, there were people in government who really ''were'' a bunch of venal criminals out to screw the electorate over for their own selfish gains -- really didn't help matters. On the upside, the ones who are like that aren't very good at covering their tracks.

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** Don't forget to worry about the [http://www.rense.com/general56/tsu.htm Canary Islands Mega Tsunami] as well.

** Vesuvius is also due this century.

* Even worse (medically ''and'' mentally) are phobias so deep you don't know why you have them. With most fears, psychology can convince you that, for example, bridges don't collapse very often. However, if you don't know why you are scared, you have to start from the very beginning, and ''everything that will possibly be the thing that you fear will scare you.'' It gets to a point where anything about what you fear can send you into a panic attack, even if it's about, to follow the first example, the most stable bridge in the world.

* The ''Sacculina'' barnacle, as described by Stephen Jay Gould. It first sticks its needle into a crab, which then injects as little as ''one cell'' into the crab's nervous system. This cell then creates a network of tendrils, plus an externa that mimics the crab's own egg container. It then feminises the crab, drains its resources, and reduces it to little more than a cleaner, food supply, and transport system. The kicker? The crab doesn't even realise something's wrong; it honestly believes the externa is its own eggs, cleaning it and even creating currents to help scatter the next generation of ''Sacculina''. Evolution being fundamentally unpredictable, how do we know there isn't a human version?

* ''The Trope Entry itself'' serves as [[Paranoia Fuel]]. It's sure to have inspired phobias in people that didn't have them before.

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** 9/11 conspiracy theories

*** [[South Park|9/11 conspiracy theories being a conspiracy themselves.]]

* Pearl Harbor. Imagine waking up to a beautiful Hawaiian Sunday morning to a random Japanese air strike. Then imagine that the Japanese person standing next to you could be a spy.

** Being a Japanese spy won't do much for you when you're standing in the middle of a bombing strike. It'd be scarier and more paranoia inducing for them. All their friends could turn on them...

* The Cold War. Kids, ask your parents or grandparents what it was like, not knowing if or when you'd hear that siren alerting you that you were going to be nuked. That is, IF you ever heard that siren.

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** They used to have nuclear attack drills in schools, where they'd sound the alarm and you had to hide under your desk in as small a ball as you could. Not only was the alarm completely [[Nightmare Fuel|terrifying]], [[Fridge Logic]] kicked in when you were older, and realized ''hiding under your desk wouldn't do a damn thing''. They often also had evacuation routes, which usually turned into a giant mess even during a drill. Using them in an actual emergency would have been a nightmare.

*** The curling into a ball is to help prevent flash-blindness. Small consolation, yes, but every little bit helps.

* Talking about radio, [http://www.spynumbers.com/ number stations]: Radio stations that only broadcast artificially generated voices reading streams of numbers, words, letters, etc. Some of them are [[Hell Is That Noise|very creepy]]. No government has ever acknowledged transmitting the numbers. In any case they are most likely broadcasting messages to spies.

* PIFTS.exe, anyone? Norton Antivirus is WATCHING you. And logging your keystrokes. And sending them EVERYWHERE.

* Computer spyware and viruses. Especially keyloggers. Someone, somewhere, can see every keystroke you make. Every password, every IM, every email, every search for porn, every single thing you type.

* The most likely ''person'' to kill or rape or abuse you is someone you know. Enjoy the family reunion.

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQSSL8iVWJU Hannibal Means]. As [[The Soup]] pointed out, he comes off as a serial killer.

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* Pedophiles and rapists specifically, on that note. Anyone can be one, and the more "successful" don't lurk around playgrounds or the Internet: [[Pedophile Priest|they get work in places that put them in places of trust]] [[Hot for Student|with access to children]], or they [[Parental Incest|have their own]] or abuse relatives. Same for rapists - the "successful" ones aren't the ones getting arrested, anyone can be one, and you usually won't know until it's too late. To say nothing about how horrifyingly low the actual arrest and conviction rate for rape is.

** Inversely, [[Paedo Hunt]] and the [[False Rape Accusation]]. Someone accuses you of one of the most horrible crimes in existence. Congratulations, you're still seen as a [[Complete Monster]] even though the allegations are untrue, and since actual creeps lie about not being such, all of your protests will be pointless.

* Using hypnosis to seek out "lost" memories can just as easily lead to birth of false memories. If you think you were abused as a child and seek help from a hypnotherapist, it's just as possible that the memories that emerge during the "treatment" are entirely or partially figments of your imagination. And ''you can't tell them apart from real memories!'' [[This Is Sparta|In. Any. Way.]] Now think that you are a parent of a grown up child, who, for no discernible reason you can think of, is suddenly convinced that you abused them as a child. In the 1980's and 90's this was a disturbingly common scenario, and it still hasn't entirely disappeared. It's an incredibly horrible situation for all parties involved.

* [[wikipedia:Undercover marketing|Undercover]] [http://www.cracked.com/article_16434_p2.html marketing]. The idea that some random person-- anyone, really-- could be hired to do normal social interaction ''and'' try to sell you something... eeergh.

** During [[William Gibson]]'s ''Pattern Recognition'', the protagonist meets a cute girl who is paid to chat up men at bars, then order a certain drink. Now the guy has an association between that drink and the cute girl. They may have also mentioned how ''the girl herself'' ended up paranoid.

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**** The mistake was made in a public hospital, where the qualifications for the staff and the lack of care are usually mediocre.

* Car crashes. Far, far more likely than plane crashes, or most other ways to die young, frankly. How many dead people out there thought they'd be back home in ten minutes? One moment's inattention in the fading light, a few feet of metal between you and the grille of a truck...

* 80% of violent crimes are committed by somebody the victim knows.

* Many natural disasters, like [[wikipedia:Rogue wave|rogue waves]] and [[wikipedia:Sinkhole|sinkholes]], can occur with little to no advance warning if the right conditions are met.

* Sociopaths - people with no conscience or empathy who are nonetheless able to fake these qualities, with no qualms about hurting or killing you if it serves their purpose. Approx. 1-3% of the population. Highlighted [http://books.google.com/books?id=PyOjlz_2SG0C=en&ei=BqgeTLHJGsXdnAeaiv36DQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDQQ6AEwAA here]

** This leads to fridge horror, too--sociopaths are more likely to be successful in life since they're they have no moral qualms about doing what they need to get ahead in life. It's very possible the most powerful people in the world are sociopaths.

* The concept that objects might have souls we don't know of. Maybe your toaster hates you, maybe you hurt the feelings of that jacket you never wear.

* Bugs. They are everywhere. You can swallow them in your sleep, they surely were in your food before you even bought it, they walk over your things and over the food in supermarkets. Can you be sure where that fly that is over your mug now have been before? It could be everywhere, from feces to corpses. Have a nice meal.

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*** The problem with Cogito Ergo Sum is how can you be sure you ''truly'' think? It may well seem to ''you'' like you're thinking, but how do you know it's not just a cheap simulation of the process of thought that you can't distinguish from the real thing because you have no frame of reference for what thinking ''really'' is? Being capable of even a simulation of thought could be argued to mean you "exist" on some level... but would it not be on a lesser level than things capable of true thought?

* You know those advertisements where the product is criticized by a random person and they find that person and go to them? You never might know when something like that could happen to you.

* "[[wikipedia:Spontaneous human combustion|Spontaneous human combustion.]]" JUST spontaneous human combustion. And remembering they were simply minding their own business when they burned down to ash for no reason. And the same could happen to [[Go Mad ~~From~~ the Revelation|YOU!]]

* "[[wikipedia:Spontaneous human combustion|Spontaneous human combustion.]]" JUST spontaneous human combustion. And remembering they were simply minding their own business when they burned down to ash for no reason. And the same could happen to [[Go Mad from the Revelation|YOU!]]

* ''"If you've just tuned in..."''

* That poor guy. He's got a cast on his arm, and of course he's having trouble loading that big heavy box into his car. And he's pretty cute, too! You offer to help. That guy is Ted Bundy, and he's got you now.

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[[Category:~~Paranoia Fuel~~]]

[[Category:Other]]

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