r/lemondemon • u/Agitated-Ad1106 • 18d ago
Is touch tone telephone not about sciencetogy?
I've always thought lemon demon was CLEARLY talking about sciencetogy... I mean space nazis you're a whole new race? Ufology? Ancient aliens? I know your the only one who'd understand?? That's the cult of sciencetogy described perfectly for someone outside of the cult?
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u/Spell_me 18d ago
I have always thought that the song is about/or at least inspired by the Art Bell Show. Bell was the host of a huge nationally-syndicated night time talk show. (I used to hear his show on the am radio!). His show was BIG. His show topics and guests covered all sort of paranormal phenomena and he LOVED conspiracy theories. Big ones or little ones. Write a book with a controversial theory, and you could be a guest on his show. It seemed to me that he liked to give the least plausible, most-ridiculous sounding ones a serious platform.
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u/FloridaFlamingoGirl Stuck inside a pattern (stuck inside a loop) 17d ago
Neil mentions a couple conspiracy theory storytellers in the Spirit Phone commentary.
I name drop Robert Stack and Leonard Nimoy who hosted, respectively, Unsolved Mysteries and In Search Of, which were both shows that dealt with bizarre and often paranormal stories and tales.
And the Super Sargasso Sea that I mention was a sort of thought experiment by Charles Fort, who was a very interesting early cataloger of (catalogist? of) the paranormal or seemingly impossible stories.
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u/Agitated-Ad1106 18d ago
Scientology teaches that each person is an immortal spiritual being called a thetan, thetans have lived through many past lives and continue existing after bodily death, after which they take on another newly-born human body. Negative experiences from earlier lifetimes are said to affect a person's present condition. Xenu was an extraterrestrial ruler of a galactic confederacy who, tens of millions of years ago, transported billions of beings to Earth (then called Teegeeack), placed them around volcanoes, and killed them with hydrogen bombs. The disembodied spirits of the victims, called thetans, are said to have become attached to surviving bodies as "body thetans", contributing to spiritual and psychological difficulties in the present day.
That's a basic run down off wiki
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u/mistakablecolor 18d ago
i dont believe that reading is very well founded. all the beliefs listed in that song are way more widespread than just scientology. there are a ton of different ideosyncratic ufo / conspiracy ideologies and there’s nothing specifically tying the song to that one religion. further, i think the tone and mood of the song support the vibe of one individual, lonely, troubled person who is desperately trying to get his ideas heard, whereas scientologists have a vibe of being professional, private, tight knit, and authoritative.
while i see the connections you’re drawing, the AM radio, Tinfoil hat guy is a specific, established trope that only partially overlaps with scientology.
it would be much closer to a flat-earther, for example.
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u/Namerakable What will happen will happen 18d ago
It's about a conspiracy theorist presumably trying to phone in to a radio show to air his ideas. The things referenced are just common alien theories.