# Scientology Scientology is a belief system founded by L. Ron Hubbard in 1952 that became one of the internet's longest-running mockery targets after critics leaked its secret Xenu documents to Usenet in 1994[1]. The Church's aggressive legal responses to online criticism triggered decades of pushback, from YTMND parody floods to Anonymous's Project Chanology raids, and turned the group into a defining case study in what happens when a litigious organization tries to fight the internet. ## Origin The Usenet group alt.religion.scientology was created by Scientology critic Scott Goehring on July 17th, 1991, and spent its first three years as a debate forum[1]. The turning point came on December 24th, 1994, when an anonymous poster dumped high-level secret church documents, including the Xenu story, onto the newsgroup[1]. The Church of Scientology responded with lawyers: on January 11th, 1995, attorney Helena Kobrin sent a rmgroup message asking Usenet servers to delete alt.religion.scientology entirely, which the servers ignored[1]. Escalation followed quickly. On February 13th, 1995, federal marshals raided the homes of Arnaldo Lerma, Lawrence Wollersheim, Robert Penny, Karin Spaink, Zenon Panoussis and former Scientology minister Dennis Erlich, all newsgroup participants accused of posting copyrighted church materials[1]. The raids made the newsgroup a cause celebre and gave the Xenu story mainstream press it would never have otherwise received. - **Platform:** Usenet (alt.religion.scientology) / 4chan and YouTube (viral spread) - **Creator:** Unknown - **Date:** 1991 ## Overview Online mockery of Scientology tends to hit a small set of recurring beats: the Xenu space opera, the church's aggressive lawyers, the celebrity roster, and the personality test hard sell described in a 1999 Silicon Alley Reporter first-person account[3]. The Xenu story, an evil galactic ruler who dumped billions of frozen aliens into Earth's volcanoes 75 million years ago and blew them up with hydrogen bombs, became the most-remixed source material because the church spent so much money trying to keep it secret[1]. The running joke online is that any Scientology critique attracts a legal threat, which then attracts more critique. Salon reported in 1998 that starter kits handed to members installed a filtering program critics nicknamed the Scieno Sitter, which blocked terms like Xenu and the URL for Operation Clambake from the member's own browser[2]. That kind of behavior kept giving forum posters, YTMND users and eventually Anonymous fresh material to work with[4]. ## How It Spread After the 1995 raids, the church's problem was that every legal threat produced a Streisand effect. Between October 1998 and July 1999, alt.religion.scientology was hit with a sporgery attack, a portmanteau of spam and forgery, which flooded the group with nearly a gigabyte of forged posts using critics' real headers[1]. The attackers were never identified, though the newsgroup community suspected the church itself. The meme moved onto the web proper on June 10th, 2006, when YTMND founder Max Goldberg received a cease-and-desist from Scientology lawyers demanding he pull pages that mocked the organization[4]. Goldberg refused, and YTMND users retaliated by making over 550 new Scientology parody pages in June alone[4]. A year later, MSNBC reported on August 15th, 2007, that the Wikiscanner tool had caught PCs inside the Church of Scientology scrubbing criticism from the church's Wikipedia entry, which led the Wikipedia Arbitration Committee to ban all edits from church IP addresses in May 2009[5]. The biggest single flashpoint came on January 14th, 2008, when a Church training video of Tom Cruise passionately extolling Scientology leaked onto YouTube and spread through 4chan[6]. The church's DMCA takedown attempts kicked off Project Chanology, Anonymous's coordinated campaign of prank calls, black-fax attacks, DDoS strikes on church websites and real-world street protests outside orgs worldwide the following month[6]. ## How to Use Online Scientology jokes typically pull from a fixed vocabulary: Xenu, Body Thetans, the E-meter, OT levels, Operation Clambake, and the phrase 'space opera'[2]. Common formats include fake Scientology recruitment pages, edits of the leaked Tom Cruise indoctrination video, and Anonymous-style Guy Fawkes iconography from the Project Chanology protests[5]. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is Scientology? Scientology is a belief system created by science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard in 1952, built on his earlier Dianetics self-help ideas, and centered on a story about Body Thetans and the galactic ruler Xenu[1]. ### Where did Scientology come from? As an internet target it started with the Usenet group alt.religion.scientology, created July 17th, 1991 by critic Scott Goehring, which became ground zero for leaks and legal fights[1]. ### What does Scientology mean? Church doctrine teaches that humans are immortal beings whose problems come from Body Thetans, the souls of aliens that Xenu allegedly dropped into Earth's volcanoes 75 million years ago[1]. ### How do you use Scientology? Online, jokes about Scientology typically riff on Xenu, the Scieno Sitter filter that blocked church critics from members' own browsers[2], and the leaked Tom Cruise recruitment video that helped launch Anonymous's Project Chanology[6]. ### Is Scientology still popular? As a subject of internet mockery it is a classic case rather than a currently trending one, with the peak online conflict running from the 1994 Xenu leak through the 2008 Project Chanology protests[6]. ## References 1. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology_versus_the_Internet]() 2. [https://www.salon.com/1998/07/15/feature_299/]() 3. [https://web.archive.org/web/20010626113536/http://www.theta.btinternet.co.uk/intro.htm]() 4. [https://content.ytmnd.com/assets/mixed/legal_threats/l_ron.html]() 5. [https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/29/wikipedia-bans-scientolog_n_208967.html]() 6. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/scientology]() 7. [https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/alt.religion.scientology]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/scientology Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library