[AbrahamParangi]

In 1978, 918 people committed suicide at Jonestown. I think we should all understand that an average human being surrounded by people acting insane will act insane themselves. Some won't, some have contrary convictions or just don't like to go with the flow, but this isn't typical.

Better to understand that this is innate human nature and guard against it than to just say "couldn't be me".

[dragonwriter]

> In 1978, 918 people committed suicide at Jonestown

Almost certainly not; somewhat more than that died related to the cult on the day in question, but many of them, including at the compound, were murdered either outright (as occurred in the mass killing/assassination used deliberately by Jones to justify the call to suicide as the only option for his followers, painting a picture that they would otherwise be killed for their association with the act, an idea that had been carefully prepped by extensive prior indoctrination into the idea that they were targeted), or coerced into taking the poison.

But closed coercive authoritarian cults are a separate phenomenon than any that would explain the “dancing plague”.

[lostlogin]

It doesn’t have to be hysteria or mass psychosis or whatever Jonestown was.

There are disease processes which cause some pretty distinctive movements, and this was pointed out last time this topic came up here.

The leg movements in the below case report are dance-like and it’s epilepsy. https://bmcneurol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12883-...

In the first link Dang has posted (early 2023) user c3534l started a thread that is interesting. St. Vitis' Dance and Sydenham’s chorea are discussed and it’s an interesting and convincing read.

[zzzeek]

that is a totally different kind of event, it was not a spontaneous event among people who a day earlier didn't know each other and without any apparent cause. The Jonestown massacre was an intentional, orchestrated event among leaders of a cult and its victims were people who had gone through a substantial cult mind control process for months or years beforehand. There were also people who were murdered in connection with the same event including a US congressman.

in short, the Jonestown massacre was an organized mass murder that had nothing to do with mass psychogenic illness, as the mechanisms of cult mind control have been studied and documented for decades and are well understood.

[jncfhnb]

fwiw These people were drugged up and surrounded by armed guards threatening to kill them.

[AbrahamParangi]

It's uncertain that these people were in-fact drugged up and the guards themselves killed themselves as well. Moreover, it doesn't really excuse the point. It was insane. Insane for the people to be there. Insane for the guards to keep them there. Insane for their leaders to tell them to die.

[jncfhnb]

Sure there were some crazies. But it wasn’t 900 people thinking suicide was a great idea.

They were held at gunpoint, probably drugged, and being told that they were going to face a fate worse than death if they didn’t kill then selves.

The vast majority of these people were almost certainly not happy with the setting, to say the least