SubGenius Recovery and Support Network
Posted by: zeuszor ()
Date: December 21, 2013 08:07AM

EXPOSING THE CULT OF "BOB" DOBBS

[stopbob.tripod.com]

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Re: SubGenius Recovery and Support Network
Posted by: kiwimac ()
Date: April 25, 2014 07:52PM

Why would such a thing be needed for a humourous religion? Or am I missing the joke?

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Re: SubGenius Recovery and Support Network
Posted by: shakti ()
Date: April 26, 2014 04:57AM

That stopbob site is bogus. Personally, I think there is something very off with the "Church". However, one of the key tenets of the church is to bury criticism of it within mountains of disinformation! You'll read an amazing "expose" of the Subgenii, then find out it was written by one of the key members. Go digging around about them and mostly you'll find jokes.

And, yes, I realize it is supposed to be a "joke", but I think there is more to it than that. I don't find the joke that funny... and I say that as someone with a fairly dark view of organized religion and very open to parodies of that nature. But I don't find these guys "funny". I find them disturbing. I can get "disturbing" from any number of REAL organized religions, why I need it from a parody religion is beyond me.

The church seems to be a descendant of the Discordian Society, whose own founder Kerry Thornley has described it as "not a complicated joke disguised as a new religion nor a new religion disguised as a complicated joke but a front for the CIA assassination bureau..." Considering that Thornley did LSD with Lee Harvey Oswald and wrote a book about Oswald BEFORE the JFK assassination, we are looking at some odd characters from the get-go.

If the Subgenii find this thread, expect it to be spammed with all kinds of "jokes" and disinformation. Because they are just oh-so-"funny" like that...

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Re: SubGenius Recovery and Support Network
Posted by: Franc28 ()
Date: May 02, 2014 10:43AM

I have been following this forum for years, but I've never had any reason to post. I really like all the qualified people speaking up on all sorts of cults. However, as a Subgenius, I do feel like I am mildly qualified to post on this thread.

Shakti is basically right. For most people, the Church of the Subgenius is disturbing, a cult, or a joke. But as Rev. Stang, current leader of the church, often says, "F--- them if they can't take a joke." You need to be able to read the doctrines with the Yeti's eyes of discernment before it makes any sense. Pinks like you cannot do that, and that's fine, you're not expected to.

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Re: SubGenius Recovery and Support Network
Posted by: shakti ()
Date: May 03, 2014 12:10AM

And within one post, I'm proven right....

"If the Subgenii find this thread, expect it to be spammed with all kinds of "jokes" and disinformation. Because they are just oh-so-"funny" like that..."

" You need to be able to read the doctrines with the Yeti's eyes of discernment before it makes any sense. Pinks like you cannot do that, and that's fine, you're not expected to."

Going around calling people "pinks" doesn't exactly clear away the notion of the Subgenii as "disturbing". It's getting old... 1982 is calling.

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Re: SubGenius Recovery and Support Network
Posted by: Franc28 ()
Date: May 03, 2014 05:17AM

Well that just goes to show how little you understand of Subgenius vocabulary, or of cult mechanisms (loading the language). "Pink" means anyone who does not have the Subgenius personality type. It's got nothing to do with American culture in 1982.

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Re: SubGenius Recovery and Support Network
Posted by: corboy ()
Date: May 04, 2014 05:53AM

From the Straight Dope Message board

[www.straightdope.com]

Quote

A Staff Report from the Straight Dope Science Advisory Board

What's the deal with the Church of the Subgenius?

Dear Straight Dope:

I consider myself pretty hip. I'm fairly in tune with my generation of fellow twenty-somethings. I know the difference between Beck and Montovani. So why is it that, when everytime I run into one of these "Church of the SubGenius" sites on the web, I have absolutely no clue as to what the hell its getting at? What's the deal with these kooks? I can fathom the put-up of sci-fi doomsday cults, but the overall tenor of weirdness just boggles me. You've managed to debunk Dungeons and Dragons for us. Now how about putting these specimens under the microscope?

bergevb@bsk.com

If you're just running into this kind of stuff on the web, you haven't been paying attention. Ever watch "Pee-Wee's Playhouse?" Take a look at his bulletin board usually right before he hops on his bicycle at the end of the show. You'll see a black and white picture of a grinning, pipe smoking man, That's Bob. Watch "Rugrats?" Catch the repeated references such as "as Bob is my witless" or "children are a gift from a Bob." It's much more prevalent than you may think.

If the church doesn't have a real leader, it at least has a logo, and that logo is the face of "Bob." His full name is J. R. "Bob" Dobbs; the "J.R." was dropped later because, as the church said, they didn't want to get in any trouble with Larry Hagman. And it has a mission; the pursuit of "slack." Slack is difficult to define. In a way it's like what Louie Armstrong said about jazz, if you have to ask what it is, you'll never know. It can be interpreted in the same way as the term "slacker," but to the Subgenius it's more of a way of getting through life without being brought down by the "normals."

The Church is full of doomsday prophecies, endless rants, and shameless appeals for your money. And it's all pretty much a joke.

The Subgenius foundation was actually begun back in 1979 by a Dallas filmmaker named Douglas St. Clair Smith, who now goes under the name Ivan Stang. He, along with Philo Drummond (possibly also a pseudonym) put together the first pamphlet announcing the Church and then published the "bible" of SubGeniuses "The Book of the Subgenius." Stang had always been interested in fringe and weirdo groups, a lot of which he lists in his book "High Weirdness by Mail." Although it's unclear as to whether this is what he had in mind at the time, eventually, the Church began to become a clearinghouse for a lot of these groups. Thus, the rather unspecific theology of Subgeiuses; that one must merely be "abnormal" to be a member.

Philosophically, the church owes it's origin to the Discordian movement of the late 60's and 70's. The first pamphlet of the Church ("The World ends tomorrow and You may Die!") reads a lot like the "bible" of Discordianism, "The Principia Discordia." In fact, as Stang wrote in an e-mail to this author, "The only difference I've been able to see between Discordians and SubGeniuses, is that SubGeniuses get laid."

Sadly, though, there are some who believe that Stang has gone around the bend and has started really believing his own joke. To be fair, he does state that he really didn't ever believe that the Church would ever have gotten as big as it has. He figured on a shelf life of a couple of years and it would have all been over. But these things do have a way of taking on a life of their own.

— Euty

more discussion here

[boards.straightdope.com]

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