Going Viral

It doesn’t matter if you’re a believer in one of the Big Three religions, or spend Sabbaths wearing head-to-toe pleather and worshipping your pet parakeet, all faiths can agree that the closest proxy of hell on our planet is the comments section of YouTube. It is the worst place on the Internet. Sinners stuck in the 9th circle have recently taken up a petition to fund construction for a 10th for fear of being stuck with the commenters. So when my old writing partner Julia sent along an email saying that “one of those shitty videos we made three years ago somehow popped up to 185,000 views,” I knew I was going to be in for a treat as soon as I clicked the link.

A little back story: During the long and twisted wind-up to the 2008 election, Julia and I put our comedic sketch writing skills to use by making a handful of politically-minded videos. Our first attempt was a series of faux attack ads that were, supposedly, commissioned by the Church of Scientology to gain recruits by beating down other faiths—Scientology’s main selling point was that, sure, their beliefs are crazy as hell, but not that much crazier than the others. But mostly, the videos were an excuse for us to scour the Internet for photos of strange people in their underwear.

We made three. One was called “The Truth about Christianity,” and another was “The Truth about Mormonism.” But it was the third, “The Truth About Muslims,” that became an eventual viral sensation:

As you can see, the videos weren’t the most professionally-produced, and the jokes themselves won’t go on either of our résumés, but they were fine enough for what they were. We posted them, forwarded the link to friends, stuck it on our MySpace pages, quickly got sick of promoting them, and that was that. Or so we thought. Last month, the above video went, as the kids say, “viral.” I don’t know who linked it, or why it re-entered the public consciousness, but the video’s nearing 200,000 hits as I type.

And, of course, the comments section is a mighty shit-show. Taken at face value, they’re simply incoherent ramblings and illogical noise. But look at it through the right prism, and it’s actually a good example of the religious intolerance and cross-theistic hate taking place today. In fact, let’s take a short stroll through these comments. [Sics] all over the place, obviously.

Up first, and dominating the entire proceedings, are Christians getting riled up for no reason other than because the word “Muslims” is in the video’s title:

you'll never find any religion who teaches to kill inocent people but muslim alone…they're pure evil…Their fathers are demon, cause they can kill their daughter if they marry non muslim man. isn't that's the truth? im not trying to be racist but i am intitled to my own opinion.

Next up, those of the Muslim faith, for easily apparent reasons, taking issue to the above attacks and counter-blasting:

Muslim does'NT hate other religions… Its up to you what religion u wanna be.. WHY other religions hate Muslims…???? Praise to God that i was born to be Muslims…

at least we dont rape childeren you ppl do in church

Throw in a dash of random Jew-hating: check out the jews first JEWS WEAR FUNNY HATS AND SEX TRAFFIC WOMEN SO YOUR POINT IS? DUMB FOOLS!

Add in a few inane proclamations: scientologists and freemasons are the real enemies i could make up my own religion to now everyone god is a cheeseburger who makes patties all day there pray to chicken nuggets

Top it off with terribly-specific threats of violence against (gulp!) the makers of the video: What a waste of 55 seconds. Someone cut off this fools nose and ears. the one who made this video should be dead by cutting his body into 110 pieces and then give 55 pieces to his family to eat in their lunch. and other 55 pieces to the dogs and other animals in some other place so that he or she net gets his body together again ever……

And, ladies and gentlemen: The current state of religion!
Onto the ways religion are ruining the world this week:

- That “Purity Bear” video which urges young’uns to maintain their “purity” through a creepy and filthy teddy bear? Apparently, that was a sincere and real thing.

- Iran figured out how to keep those ominous-sounding “western cultural values” from overtaking them: By banning Barbie dolls.

- Boring Jay Leno accidentally stepped into controversy by making a joke about Mitt Romney’s vacation home whilst showing an image of the Golden Temple of Amritsar. Obviously, this was more in the “Hey, look at how rich Mitt is” tone than the “Sikhs are so stupid” one. But religious folk are humor-dear.

- The Catholic-based group Sober for Christ protested the opening of a new liquor store in La Puente. Which, you know, is kind of ironic seeing as one of the main sacraments of Catholicism consists of drinking wine.

- Grownup adult believers in Rhode Island are calling a 16-year-old girl a bunch of names because she (rightfully) requested her school take down a prayer banner.

- The Miami New Times unleashed this totally insane profile of Saturday Night Live alum and God hound Victoria Jackson. It features this sentence: “There she lost her virginity to the fire-eater.”

- In India, four authors read excerpts from Salman Rushdie’s long-banned novel The Satanic Verses—banned because of supposed Islamic “blasphemes” in the book—at a festival, and then quickly got the fuck out of there.

- Boko Harem, an Islamist militant terrorist organization, killed more than 140 people in a series of bombings in northern Nigeria.

- The women of Malawi are apparently getting forcibly stripped of their clothes if caught wearing trousers or mini-skirts, because it says somewhere in the Bible that women who wear those are prostitutes.

- An Indonesian man was arrested for blasphemy, carrying with it a five-year jail sentence, after he was caught moderating a Facebook group for like-minded atheists.

- Rick Perry, that dude trying to run for president on the “suck up to evangelicals in any way possible” platform, cold dropped out of the race and backed the only confirmed wife-cheater/open-marriage-wanting candidate left.

- The Pope literally told everyone to shut the fuck up.

- The NYPD have apparently been training their officers by showing them endlessly-looped anti-Muslim “documentary” films about how they’re planning on taking over America.

- Last week being the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade and all, plenty of pro-choice/pro-life rhetoric found its way into my Google Reader feed. A quick snapshot: America has more enacted abortion restrictions than ever before; Rep. Vicky Hartzler said college dorms should be plastered with posters of aborted fetii; Cum-proponent and amazingly-still-on presidential candidate Rick Santorum said that rape victims should just suck it up and “make the best out of a bad situation.” That last one. Ugh.

- And finally: Meet Vermin Supreme, the only presidential candidate you need to know, ever. His stances include mandatory once-a-day brushing of the teeth, energy created by zombie-run turbines, and ritual glitter-bombings of the asshole anti-abortion activist (and fellow presidential nominee!) Randall Terry because Jesus told him to make Terry gay.

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@RickPaulas

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