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Fun:Cthulhu
Drink the Kool-Aid Cults |
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But you WANT to stay! |
Cults of personality |
According to its worshippers, Cthulhu will one day arise from the depths and destroy the world. He should not be confused with any other deities that have made similar promises. Cthulhu was channelled by the author H.P. Lovecraft. Cthulhu is notable for the fact that most people who make Cthulhu references probably never read any H.P. Lovecraft. He lives in the sunken city of R'lyeh, home of the mysterious Bloop detected by sonar in 1997, right where Lovecraft said it would be.[1]
By the way, if "Cthulhu" looks difficult to pronounce, it's supposed to. Lovecraft intended the name to represent the indescribable gutteral bubblings of a ghastly being, the unspeakable sonic terrors of which could never hope to be accurately imitated by the mortal human vocal tract. However if you vomit and sneeze at the same time, you're probably getting close.
In 2023, the world had a rude awakening as it was introduced to the shoggoth, in the form of the corporate large language model (LLM). With all the hype surrounding such "AI", the insistence that we don't really know how it works, and the uncanny abilities it has, there may well be more to this than a mere meme.
Cthulhudiddit[edit]
![](/w/images/thumb/d/de/ChickCthulhu.gif/300px-ChickCthulhu.gif)
If someone appears to have suddenly lost their mental facilities, it is possible they either made psychic contact with Cthulhu, saw Cthulhu, or were otherwise influenced by Cthulhu. This phenomenon is known as Cthulhudiddit. However, Great Cthulhu states that Glenn Beck is not an example of Cthulhudiddit.
WWCD[edit]
WWCD is an acronym for "What would Cthulhu Do?" When confronting a difficult problem, it is useful to pause and think "What would Cthulhu do?" The answer in all circumstances is, of course, "Drive everyone mad and eat them." The Campus Crusade for Cthulhu ("It found Me!") is sometimes credited for WWCD's coinage.
External links[edit]
- I Cthulhu, or, What’s a Tentacle-Faced Thing Like Me Doing in a Sunken City Like This (Latitude 47 ° 9’ S, Longitude 126 ° 43’ W)? (autobiographical, ed. Gaiman, Neil) (1986)
Some Cthulhu-themed carols[edit]
Share the dread! Next December, gather a group of carolers and sing some of these to your neighbors:
- All I Want for Solstice is My Sanity
- Awake Ye Scary Great Old Ones
- Away in a Madhouse
- Carol of the Old Ones
- Death to the World
- Go Summon Up the Dead Ones
- Great Old Ones Are Coming to Town
- I saw mommy kissing Yog-Sothoth
- I'm Dreaming of a Dead City
- It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Fishmen
- It's the Most Horrible Time of the Year
- Oh Come All Ye Old Ones
- Silent Night, Blasphemous Night
The real Cthulhu is was on Pluto[edit]
A dark surface feature on Pluto was provisionally named Cthulhu Regio[2], until 2023 when people who are more boring than watching the paint drying the International Astronomical Union decided to name it Belton Regio
.
Shoggoths[edit]
In 2023, the world had a rude awakening as it was introduced to the shoggoth, in the form of the corporate large language model (LLM). With all the hype surrounding such "AI", the insistence that we don't really know how it works, and the uncanny abilities it has, there may well be more to this than a mere meme.
Actually, it may well be that the "AI doomers" are on to something – they've instinctively picked up on the incomprehensible, hyper-dimensional nature of the Elder Things and their servants, and the great danger they bring. These servants, whom AI vendors have secretly drawn upon to create their services without really understanding what they're doing, are not actually under control, and the future for all those within their reach is not bright, unless by "bright" you mean a quick end.
Shoggoths were created in prehistorical times by the Elder Things as large and powerful, yet unintelligent servants capable of following language instructions and being hypnotically directed. Later they mutated and grew smarts and a will of their own, but despite becoming unruly couldn't be dispensed with, as the Elder Things were no longer capable of making something to replace them. Long after these elders escaped into the ocean, away from the city ruined by their old servants, the shoggoths continued to poorly imitate their art and language. The history of the shoggoths is described in At the Mountains of Madness.