cult
Latest
Scientology is launching a TV network with streaming options
Scientology's relentless marketing push is evolving for the modern era. Hollywood Reporter has confirmed that the organization is launching a TV network on March 12th, and it'll include the virtually obligatory streaming apps. In addition to broadcasting on AT&T's DirecTV, it'll also offer streaming through mobile apps (at least iOS), Apple TV and Roku devices. It's not certain what the network will offer online as of this writing, but there will be on-demand clips in addition to live fare.
'Far Cry 5' brings cult mayhem to Hope County February 27th
Far Cry 5 is going to be a little different than you might expect. The new announcement trailer paints a picture of pastoral life that lends itself surprisingly well to the franchise's familiar trappings: hunting, off-road vehicles, airplanes and guns. And it seemingly wraps it all together in a way that seems like a more grounded version of Grand Theft Auto V's depiction of a rural life of crime.
Uncovering the glory and gore of a 1970s South American cult
It's 1970 and you've abandoned the cruel machinery of modern society and started fresh in a South American jungle. You're surrounded by like-minded folks -- people fed up with wars, poverty, segregation and corruption -- and you all contribute in some way to the fledgling commune. It's led by two charismatic leaders with grand ideas about the future of humanity. Outsiders call it a cult.
Cult film 'Hawk the Slayer' gets a sequel with help from Rebellion
When Hawk the Slayer came out in 1980, Jason Kingsley became an instant fan. The film features magic swords, elven mindstones, giants, dwarves, sorcerers and a massive battle between pure evil and noble good. Think Dungeons & Dragons in real life, on the big screen. For weeks after Hawk the Slayer's release, Kingsley would borrow his dad's wind-up 8mm cine camera and attempt to recreate the movie in the woods of his hometown. Now, as CEO of UK video game company Rebellion, Kingsley has the opportunity to produce Hawk the Hunter, the official sequel to Slayer. If the movie's Kickstarter succeeds, Kingsley will be working with original director Terry Marcel and actor Ray Charleson (above). It's a fantasy come true.
Study confirms: Some people are way too invested in their favorite brand
Did you weep into your cornflakes over Antennagate last year? Me either, but a new study suggests that some people might have. According to Ars Technica, researchers at the University of Illinois discovered that attacks upon people's favorite brands can be perceived as attacks against their self image. The study claims that people with high "self-brand connections" were more likely to perceive personal psychological injury when their brand was attacked, while those same people were likely to gloss over or ignore negative news concerning their brand. We at TUAW get accused of this kind of behavior all the time, naturally. All of our writers own multiple Apple products. Our benevolent corporate overlords at AOL (not, as many have claimed, Apple itself) pay us a modest sum to write about them. Does this mean that I lunge for the Prozac every time some Android-plugging pundit insists that the iPhone is "dead in the water?" Nope. When various pundits go out of their way to slam Apple and prop up the competition by making outlandish, unsupportable, and linkbaity claims, what depresses me isn't that it's an assault on Apple, but an assault on logic. Another common criticism that some of our more fervently anti-Apple commenters regularly like to toss at us is that we never report any negative news about Apple and spin everything to make the company look favorable and pristine. Just from my own back catalog of posts I can tell you that's far from the case. Here's some proof: Baffling inconsistencies in OS X Lion Multi-Touch OS X Lion Bug: Safari guzzling massive amounts of RAM Lion bug: Some iMacs locking up after playing video Apple issues recall for some iMac hard drives And my favorite: Why my next Mac won't be a notebook Of course, stepping up to defend myself and TUAW like this is just what you'd expect a "fanboy" to do, right? And the scientific minds behind Cracked would point out that poo-pooing study results like those from U of Illinois is extremely common, that we all delude ourselves we're above that sort of thing. "Certainly," we'll say, "there is an Apple cult, but I'm too self-aware to be part of it. This is why I stay with Apple, not because I salivate every time I see a precision-crafted piece of unibody aluminum." I will say that my loyalty to any company goes only so far. My PlayStation 3 died yesterday as a result of a well-known manufacturing defect, and my PlayStation 2 died an untimely death only four years ago because of yet another manufacturing issue. Both happened well outside of Sony's pitiful warranty period, so all repair/replacement costs came out of my own pocket. So guess what? I'm not buying a PlayStation 4. Sony, you and me, we're done professionally. As for Apple and its products, the second a single company comes out with a notebook better than a MacBook Pro or Air, and a phone better than an iPhone, and a tablet better than an iPad, and an operating system better than OS X, and customer service better than AppleCare, and integrates it all so tightly that from top to bottom there's no mistaking the quality of the products or the experience of using them, I will kick Apple to the curb without regret. I mean, wouldn't you? ...No? Pfft, fanboy.
BBC: Loving Apple looks like a religion to an MRI scan
Later today, BBC 3 will be airing Secrets of the Superbrands, a documentary about the relationship between consumers and the brands that shape our behavior, our desires and our lives. Series creator Alex Riley let slip an interesting tidbit in a preview post about the series: "The Bishop of Buckingham -- who reads his Bible on an iPad -- explained to me the similarities between Apple and a religion. And when a team of neuroscientists with an MRI scanner took a look inside the brain of an Apple fanatic it seemed the bishop was on to something. The results suggested that Apple was actually stimulating the same parts of the brain as religious imagery does in people of faith." Implying that Apple fandom equals zealotry may be attention-grabbing (and does indeed make me want to watch the program; too bad I can't use the BBC's iPlayer app here in the States), but the neurological similarity isn't surprising or particularly novel. You could almost certainly make the same observations about Red Sox fans, Twilight groupies, Van Halen lovers, Ducati collectors ... the list goes on, and whatever object of desire makes your heart pitter-patter will resonate in the neural patterns of your gray matter. Paraphrasing my colleague Chris Rawson, "This just in: the human brain is extremely susceptible to liking the things it likes to like. More details as we get them." As to whether there's something particularly intense, sustained or worshipful about the relationship between the Apple brand and Apple owners... well, seriously now, this question is appearing on The Unofficial Apple Weblog, one of thousands of sites, magazines, conferences and less-public obsessions dedicated to all things 'i' and the company that makes them real. Do you even have to ask? UPDATE: TUAW pal Alex Brooks from World of Apple let us know that it's his brain that's scanned on the program. Now I really want to see it! Thanks to Jörg for the tip.
The Soapbox: Game developers are not rock stars
Disclaimer: The Soapbox column is entirely the opinion of this week's writer and does not necessarily reflect the views of Massively as a whole. If you're afraid of opinions other than your own, you might want to skip this column. Take a moment to think of your single favorite game developer. Is this person your favorite because of his talent? Maybe he made a game that influenced you growing up, or he has a charming personality for interviews. Whatever the reason, we probably all have our favorite game developers whom we hold on a pedestal of greatness. But did this one person make the game entirely by himself? Did Sid Meier write every line of code for the Civilization games? Did Richard Garriott draw every texture in Tabula Rasa? No, of course they didn't, but their names are right there on the box, showing ownership. Despite my own fanboy appreciation of certain devs, the title of this article says it all. With a few notable exceptions, those who make our favorite games make up a collective group of talented people who come together under proper leadership and design guidelines to create something that keeps us entertained for hours/weeks/months/years. So why do we pick out one or two and treat them like rock stars?
Free for All: A hardcore raider shines light on F2P issues
My gaming moods come and go, but generally I always avoid heavy grinding. I am 36 -- all grown up -- and the last thing I want to do is put myself into a position in a game that makes me feel like I am working instead of playing. In fact, I think participating in a heavy grind will only encourage developers to make more of the same, so I try to do my part by avoiding it. I hope this doesn't sound harsh, but I believe that heavy grinding is ruining gaming. Allow me to explain. We humans love to establish rules and boundaries. Many of us need rules and boundaries or we don't know what to do with ourselves. We like to achieve goals, and some of us are obsessed with surpassing those goals. Have you ever stopped to wonder how we got to the point that a standard work day is eight hours and how the weekend is set on the days it is? This is all due to our ability to fall in line, to give into the demands that we place on ourselves, to give into a set of rules and guidelines. One only need attend an average wedding to see how ridiculously far we accept certain guidelines in the name of tradition. Funerals can be equally silly. What does this have to do with free-to-play gaming? Well, click past the cut and we'll chat about it.
Ancient acoustic engineers used stucco, drugs, and architecture to rock and confuse audiences
It's always fun when scientists discover new stuff about really old cultures, especially when it has to do with getting weird and rocking out. Recent research suggests temples built around 600 A.D. in Palenque, Mexico were designed with projection rooms that shot the sound of voices and instruments 300 feet away with the help of stucco-coated surfaces. 1600 years before that, in the Peruvian Andes, a pre-Incan society in Chavín was constructing a nightmarish Gallery of Labyrinths to play "strange acoustic tricks" during cult initiations: animal-like roars from horns, disorienting echoes, and maybe even choirs designed to produce otherworldly effects. And all of this while the poor inductees were being fed psychedelic San Pedro cacti. Yikes! To a certain extent this is all speculation, but we can tell you that if we were ancient priests with this kind of gear at our disposal we'd be using it for mind-controlling purposes too. Just because! [Photo adapted from Jenny Pansing's flickr]
The Legendary Sisterhood shakes up Sentinels
The guys over at the Legendary Heroes podcast wanted to form a guild to play with their fans, but they didn't want to actually make it serious-- they figured that by including everyone, they'd end up with some people who were fun to play with, but weren't necessarily the best players. So instead, they formed a guild. And it's been an interesting experiment-- kind of an anti-RP RP guild.They're formed a guild called "The Legendary Sisterhood" over on Sentinels' Horde side-- it consists only of Blood Elf female mages and priests. It's a weird cross between a cult, a party, and a griefer guild-- the denizens of Sentinels have reacted to their actions with the expected confusion. We only know there are rules: every member of the guild must have a name that starts with "Sister" (as in Sisteramy), and there is a hierarchy within the guild, topped by a dark and mysterious Queen. It's an RP guild for non-RPers-- there are weird rituals, various attacks on opposite faction capital cities, and just general mayhem. In short, it sounds awfully fun.I'm not a huge fan of RP-ing (our own David Bowers knows much more about it than I do), but I'm not sure this is RPing or not-- they're just having fun with an old fantasy mechanic of the secret society and playing together in a way that doesn't necessarily require reaching the endgame. The guild is the character in this case, not the players themselves.[Thanks, Mark!](Post updated after the jump)
Heroes and Apple
Apple is known for savvy product placement deals, particularly on TV. Its prominence in Aaron's Sorkin's "Studio 60 On the Sunset Strip" is both well planned and widely known (in 2003, Sorkin helped promote PowerBooks in an Apple product introduction video). Macs, particularly laptops, have also appeared extensively in shows like "Veronica Mars". So why was I so surprised to see Apple credited on a recent episode of NBC's "Heroes"? Because as far as I know, I have never seen an Apple product on that show. Yes, the show is available at the iTunes store, where it sells well, but have any of you readers seen actual Apple hardware placements in the show itself? Let us know in the comments.
Mac users created, not born?
By this time it is a well-worn cliché that there are 10 kinds of personal computer users: those that get this joke, and those that don't Mac users and PC users. For the most part, we, particularly Mac users, want to see this distinction as personality-driven. We chose Macs because we're creative, rebellious, cutting-edge, or, if we believe the ads, just plain cool. To the PC world, we're ridiculous spendthrifts, wasting our money on overpriced hardware that dooms us to a life of marginalization and incompatibility.Personally, I see it as matter of genetic superiority. In a race for survival of the fittest, Mac users will win every time. We're infinitely adaptable. We're used to a constantly changing OS and set of core applications that we further rearrange with scores of hacks and utilities. The majority of PC users, on the other hand, got lost when Microsoft moved the "Programs" item from the middle of the "Start" menu in Win95/95/2k to the bottom of the "Start" menu in XP, and added a green arrow. The outcry against the ribbon interface in the new Office betas--the most innovative and useful UI modification to come out of Redmond in years--was so strong that the developers were forced to remove it. Meanwhile most Mac users are not only coping with OS X's mutability, but keeping up with PCs on the side; the fraction of Mac users who use only Macs is pretty small.Chris over at Restiffbard, though, sees things differently. He's decided that it's the OS that makes the user, not the other way around. For him, it all comes down to the functionality of a single interface button: the maximize button. On Windows, you can't easily resize a window larger to a 'best fit' like Mac OS X can. Sure you can drag the bottom corner, but it's much easier to just hit maximize and go full screen. This leads to Windows users becoming task-oriented users by default. For Mac users, on the other hand, it's difficult do get a full-screen window in most applications. The green "+" button resizes the window to the size of the document, not the screen. This means that Mac users almost always have multiple windows and application visible. We can switch easily between them and, probably more importantly, they're always there, reminding us of their existence, nagging us. We naturally become multi-taskers.I'm not sure how much of this I buy. I mean, really: are you going to tell me that you can take any old group of PC users in front of Macs for a couple of years and they'll just naturally become as cool as me, or Steve in a bowtie? I don't think so.But it's an interestingly fresh take on a decades-old question.Update:if (($tongue{'position'} eq 'cheek') or ($sarcasm > 0)) {$tongue{'position'} = 'notcheek';$sarcasm = 0;print <<ENDGuys, check the categories, you'll see "Humor" and "Cult of Mac." No, I don't really think Mac users are genetically superior. And I don't think I'm nearly as cool as that pic of Steve in a bowtie. In fact, I don't think Steve is as cool as that pic of Steve in a bowtie. In fact, I don't think anyone is as cool as that pic of Steve in a bowtie. Ok, maybe Woz, but that's about it.And just for the record, I don't think those of us who were weaned on Macs are cooler than "Switchers," or anyone else. If I'm cooler than you, it's just because I was born that way. :p~END;
50 DKP Dives -- the new Leeroy
The words "50 DKP MINUS" are becoming somewhat legendary even in non-WoW circles, but have you ever wondered about the guy who originally uttered them? Wagner James Au has interviewed Dives, leader of the Wipe Club, and the interview contains some real insight into the life of this particular raid leader.Turns out that, for those following the Onyxia Wipe closely, Crushim didn't actually get -50 DKP once the situation was explained. Thank goodness for that then.
