By David Futrelle
Roosh V is over the moon. So over it.
Or at least the moon landings. In a post on his Roosh V forums earlier this week, the rapey-pickup-artist-turned-Christian-crackpot announced that he’s become a moon landing denier, citing the powerful evidence of fraud he had found in some random YouTube video on the subject.
“I first had doubts about the moon landing around 2015, but didn’t come to a definitive conclusion,” he wrote.
As the years went on, I was sympathetic to moon deniers because it was clear that those in power are lying about everything. If you catch someone in one lie, such as your wife, it’s natural to evaluate other things they’ve stated to you as fact. I started to believe that it was more likely we didn’t land on the moon than not.
I’m ready now to come out as a moon landing denier.
This is pretty crackpottish in itself, but it’s when he was asked to defend his position that things got really weird.
One of the commenters in the thread tried to appeal to Roosh’s faith in human ingenuity, only to find out he had none.
“Personally I rather believe in the human ingenuity, ” wrote the commenter,
our remarkable ability to accomplish something so challenging when we put our mind into it. This is the same belief and inspiration that we want to instill in our children and the future generations.
In his reply Roosh seemed to suggest that human ingenuity, and perhaps all of science itself, was part of a sneaky gay “secular humanist” revolt against God.
“This is called ‘secular humanism’,” Roosh sneered,
and is what has allowed us to inherit the world we have today. In other words, “human ingenuity” leads to gay pride, feminism, transgender children, deplatforming, fake news, etc. etc.
It’s not clear if Roosh thinks science is itself part of the plot, or if the plot simply involves people saying good things about science. If the former, there’s more than a bit of irony here. Before he became a professional pickup artist, Roosh was a lab technician, who presumably believed in the science underlying his job. When he started making bread in an automatic breadmaker not that long ago he proudly declared himself a “bread scientist.”
And of course he wrote these words on his laptop or a phone to post on the Internet.
Weird how selective science deniers can be in their denials of science. Moon landing deniers have no problem believing in the smart phones they hold in their hands. Flat Earthers have no trouble beliving YouTube is real.
Of course Roosh isn’t the only manosphere crackpot to deny the moon landings happened. Nazi-adjacent fantasy author Vox Day declared earlier this year that the mood landings were “one giant hoax for mankind.”
And in a post on his blog yesterday he seemed to come out as a flat earther.
Notice that ALL of the hemisphere photography we think we’ve seen has turned out to be nonexistent. It’s becoming clear that from the evolution fairy tale to the Blue Marble fraud to the dinosaur fraud and the satellite myth, the world is very, very different than we have been told it is. What is the point? To deceive you into serving Satan rather than God.
Could it be …
The satellite balloon technology also explains how the US can keep putting up satellites despite not having any rockets capable of sending up astronauts. I particularly enjoyed the video of the NASA satellite released by the Space Shuttle that was dangling from a wire.
Yeah, I must have missed that video.
Vox later clarified his remarks in the comments, stating flatly that he wasn’t a flat earther. Apparently he’s just someone who thinks that satellite photos are routinely faked, that satellites themselves are held up in the sky by balloons, and that the moon landing was just the world’s most elaborate hoax. Just normal regular stuff to believe.
I’m not sure what he thinks “dinosaur fraud” is all about. Maybe they go around passing a lot of bad checks?
Hey, that theory makes as much sense as suggesting that satellites are balloon-powered tools of Satan.
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My father works at NASA and I turned out to be asexual and agender so obviously that part of the “make everyone queer via ScIeNcE” plot is working. Also, Isaac Newton was gay, so a lot of modern science is based on gay ideas and stuff.
Crank magnetism, it is not that far a leap from “feminist conspiracy against men” to “all sciance is a conspiracy by satan”, it just keeps happening to these guys.
When I was in high school we had a crackpot substitute teacher who every time he had my class explained how he thought the moon landing was faked. I then spent the next few months trying to convince my more gullible classmates that the moon landing was real. For someone who in theory has a degree in molecular biology, Roosh seems very anti-science. Then again, it appears most conservatives favor BS over truth, so this isn’t really a surprise.
The thing about moon landing denialism is that it requires believing that the US and the USSR cooperated to make everyone believe that the US had won the Space Race, and the the PRC, all of Europe, and every Commonwealth country were also in on it.
It gets worse. Wonkette recently did an article on Flat Earthers who also believe that gravity is a hoax perpetuated by the Freemasons — and they post YouTube videos in which they perform folk songs about their conspiracy theories. Link is here. Some things you have to see to disbelieve.
Well, true, because it led to platforming in the first place.
So many of these people seem to live such bizarre fucking lives. Exhibit [A]; a former microbiologist who became a globe-trotting pickup artist/C-list right-wing internet celebrity and subsequently converted to fundamentalist Christianity and now moon-landing denialism. Did I mention he literally lives in his mother’s basement? It’s all just so goddamn idiosyncratic. It makes me wonder just what the fuck goes on behind the scenes. Makes me wonder if they’re not suffering from mental issues of some kind.
I invite everyone who says gravity is a hoax to jump off a chair.
In related themes, has anyone seen ‘Chasing the curve’ on netflix?
Flat earthers trying to explain away the evidence of a rotating spheroid earth at its finest.
Sooooo… Does he actually believe that crap or is he intentionally curating an audience of the most credulous dimwits so that he can exploit them later?
Roosh better not take his moon hoax bullshit to youtube because I know about half a dozen youtubers who would eat him alive. you know actually I think I want roosh to take his moon landing denial to youtube because watching the likes of Fight the flat earth, Greater Sapient, Bob The Science guy, The Creaky Blinder , Godless Engineer, Reds Rhetoric and SciManDan rip him to pieces would be highly entertaining.
I’ve seen posts online before that one way to argue with the conspiracy theorists is just to argue for an even more inane conspiracy theory.
“The Moon landing was faked!!!”
“Pffft, you still believe in the Moon? What a rube.”
I don’t know if it’s the best option, but it’s certainly a funny one.
@Catalpa
Your suggestion reminds me of this XKCD comic:
I try to limit myself to one comic per thread, but there are at least 3 XKCD comics with related ideas.
@Catalpa
There are those do think the moon is fake or at least its not really what it actually is.
For example there are those who think the moon is just a light in the sky that produces a light that cools stuff down and one guy who goes by the name flat Earth Aussie Jesus says the moon was made by giants who dug it out of the Grand canyon and put it in the sky to mock humans for worshiping the sun.
Dinosaur Fraud Guarantee is the name of my new band. We wear dinosaur costumes while singing about Rudy Giuliani and his shady associates.
Buzz Aldrin needs to punch every one of these guys out. Like so.
Maybe not a wise idea. Prion disease and all that.
Actually, he’d do just fine. Have you seen the flat earth vids on YouTube? Lots of them and no matter what you might post in refutation, they cannot be stopped. At least he’d be somewhat out of the hair of people who have lives– I’m reasonably sure that the pseudoscience population of YouTube are all undead.
They have to be, because living brains won’t come up with this stuff.
@Robert Haynie
Well I only watch the folk debunking Flat earthers but yes I know what you are talking about. In fact right now I’m watching a live stream of some flat earther debunkers . No mater what proof that is provided they just dismiss it or come up with some twisted logic to prove the world is flat. misusing ‘Perspective’ is a popular one with some like the apply named P-Brain.
And the problem with that would be?
Both. You see, it starts out as the latter, but you can’t spend day in and day out swimming in a giant vat of Kool-Ade without occasionally swallowing a bit here and there, so these guys always, always eventually start believing their own BS. See also: Hubbard, L. Ron.
FWIW the poll at the top of the forum seems to show that his fans aren’t buying it. As of now, roughly 50% think we did land on the moon, 33% think we didn’t, and 18% don’t know.
@Naglfar
maybe this will wake his followers up to how much shit he’s full off.
The cycle of Roosh’s insanity is now complete.
What the hell is going on with this guy? Do his parents not check in as long as he scrounges some rent together? What is going on with this family that they still support him? If I paid to send my kid to school and this is how they turned out, the chanclas would have come off a long time ago.