[HN Gopher] The occult technology of the rollercoaster
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The occult technology of the rollercoaster
Author : iwishiknewlisp
Score : 76 points
Date : 2024-08-30 05:15 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (simonindelicate.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (simonindelicate.substack.com)
| sprior wrote:
| "It produces no goods and facilitates no conversations." - said
| in an article about them.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| we ride on our ships, further than most raiding and
| pillaging from North to South Coast We steal only
| metal, like guns, tanks and toasters and melt them
| all down, to make RollarCoasters --Buckethead
| rdtsc wrote:
| Nice!
|
| Also, greetings to a fellow Buckethead fan!
| schneems wrote:
| > It produces no
|
| As someone with kids. We now know that "senses" aren't just
| things that we have that inform us about the world, there are
| also "sensory needs."
|
| From proprioception to vestibular and plenty other $5 words. This
| seems like a new development or at least a new acknowledgement
| and awareness is still growing.
|
| So I would say that these devices produce sensory experiences.
| empath75 wrote:
| Sometimes it helps to read past the first paragraph before
| commenting on something.
| fragmede wrote:
| The fact that you call them $5 words says more about you than
| anything else.
| Clamchop wrote:
| The article's predicate is that rollercoasters have no purpose,
| but then seems to explain what their purpose is. There are far
| more things in the world that are "purposeless" than
| rollercoasters, if amusement is insufficient.
|
| As someone who appreciates rollercoasters and psychoactive
| substances, I've made comparisons between them. A good ride will
| make you feel weightless one moment, four times heavier the next.
| You'll feel adrenalin, awe, fear, and catharsis, all neatly
| packaged in under five minutes, usually a good deal shorter than
| that, and with fewer contraindications.
|
| Rollercoasters and psychedelics can be a great pairing, too, but
| your mileage may vary, of course.
| jamal-kumar wrote:
| https://erowid.org/experiences/exp.php?ID=8088
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| This kind of stupid behaviour does not improve the image of
| drug use.
| larrydag wrote:
| According to the premise of the article then go-carts, ATVs,
| jet skis, or any other machine for recreational activity is
| also useless. I agree that the useless premise is wrong.
| teractiveodular wrote:
| The article is not saying rollercoasters are useless: it
| starts by noting they are _apparently_ useless, and goes on
| to explain in great detail why they are in fact wonderful and
| useful.
| digbybk wrote:
| > Rollercoasters and psychedelics can be a great pairing
|
| Reading this sentence made my arms tingle with anxiety.
| geostupid wrote:
| Exactly; some of these machines have an explicit purpose
| according to the author: "We feed children into this machine
| and it spits out teenagers."
| pjs_ wrote:
| Great and beautiful article
| tiborsaas wrote:
| > but they don't really do anything
|
| A rollercoaster is an adrenaline production machine.
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| I would argue it's more catalyst for the biological machine
| that produces adrenaline
| rob74 wrote:
| Yeah, it shows that the writer is a true rollercoaster
| afficionado. Basically, the technology of rollercoasters is
| pretty simple: converting potential energy into kinetic energy
| and back several times before friction has a chance to eat it up
| (while taking care to not exceed certain acceleration limits that
| would hurt the passengers or, in case of wooden coasters with
| "classic" rails, send the cars flying off the track). All the
| rest is just in our heads...
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| "Star Tours" at Disneyland doubled down on this uselessness
| factor. When it opened in 1987 I was fascinated, as a teen, and
| there were several demonstrations of the technology they were
| using, and principles they exploited, to make a roller-coaster
| ride out of a "room" that never traveled anywhere! It was a
| large-scale flight simulator, in fact; you cram people into the
| fuselage, shut the doors, and then toss them around with
| hydraulic actuators while showing them a film, and the combined
| sensations really convince people that they're in motion, flying
| through space, and being buffeted by battles and explosions.
|
| The waiting in line part was even made fun by all the branded
| Star Wars animatronics. There was never a dull moment, even if it
| was two hours before you actually boarded the "ride".
|
| But it was all completely fake, pseudo-futuristic, and based on a
| fictional universe of characters who don't exist, yet with all
| those layers of simulation, people paid good money and invested
| an entire day at the park to be hoodwinked and thereby
| entertained, and indeed, inspired to bond with friends, family,
| and significant others.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> inspired to bond with friends, family, and significant
| others.
|
| That is what I remember from decades past, but parks seem
| different now. With all the complex ticketing and line-
| bypassing schemes, it now seems more about social signaling
| than enjoying the ride. Those Disney lines were fun but now it
| seems that standing in a line is only a signal that you aren't
| subscribed to whatever scheme allows one to bypass the line on
| a given day. Airlines are the same. Once upon a time everyone
| just got onto the plane. Now we all line up and compare each
| other according to which order we are allowed to board. Disney
| worked to make the line entertaining. Now they want to upsell
| and I worry that, like airlines, they now want to make the line
| experience worse in order to better sell the bypass option.
|
| (Starting in the late 90s, Disney actively tried to reduce
| lines so that people would spend more time shopping/spending,
| which is why the parks suddenly felt far more crowded.)
| dartos wrote:
| Just like airline boarding groups, the fast lines are
| supposed to make you feel 2nd class to encourage you to buy
| fast passes.
|
| Selling solutions to problems you create is the essence of
| gamification
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| It's not like this is a new thing at Disneyland or
| anywhere. When they opened, they sold your tickets in
| tiers, and that's when we coined the expression "E-ticket
| Ride" because they'd deem the most desirable, most exciting
| attractions as top-tier premium packages, and families on a
| budget would settle for less.
|
| It was the abolition of these distinctions and the
| flattening of the price of admission that took a step
| forward. Since Disneyland's reputation had been
| established, they were more willing to let the patrons and
| fans decide which rides were the best and coolest, and
| inform future iterations of Imagineering.
|
| By the way, to speak to the article itself, I've been
| reviewing "classic" Disney films and found significant
| occultism, a lot of "magick" and such ("Sorceror's
| Apprentice", "Pinocchio"); everyone knows the fairies and
| supernatural elements; some say that Disney has changed and
| Disney has lost moral character and is no longer suitable
| for children, but I suggest that Walt Disney's morality
| hasn't altered course since its foundation, when "Alice in
| Wonderland" was a drug-fueled sex romp written by an
| ephebophile; when Steamboat Willie was an arrogant bigot
| who violently pounded other animals into submission...
| cdaringe wrote:
| One could also argue that a coaster is a transducer of sorts. It
| converts chemical energy into sound (screams of passengers) and
| is also a substance-free emetic [1].
|
| When i was young my siblings and I were riding a low/mid
| intensity coaster. My brother and I are smiling and screaming,
| and we look at momentarily at some point backwards a couple of
| cars and we see our sister, looking completely unamused, staring
| indifferently out into the horizon. No smile, no frown. She seems
| like normal person now. But what does that say about a person!?
| Maybe it was an 8-10 year old power move.
|
| 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vomiting#Emetics
| MyFirstSass wrote:
| What a ridiculous piece. A rollercoaster is just like literality
| 100000 other things that are done just for the adrenaline/novelty
| maxing like video games, sports, scrolling tiktok or jumping into
| a pool of water over and over.
|
| Play behaviour that carried over from kid to adult life to
| encourage developing oneself and exploring the environment, all
| traits that tech today exploit in benign and less benign ways.
| hgomersall wrote:
| It's a poetical polemic about his love of rollercoasters which
| is why it's all about rollercoasters. Lighten up.
| kelsey98765431 wrote:
| this is just basic thermodynamics, converting liquid capital
| energy into emotional energy which has monetary value to justify
| the loss of heat produced by the conversion cascade from liquid
| capital to revenue
| gregw134 wrote:
| >Rollercoasters are subject to multiple schemas of classification
|
| Rollercoaster is one of my favorite answers to the game 20
| questions for this reason.
| MarkusWandel wrote:
| Not sure about this. Isn't a ski lift in the same category? A
| machine strictly designed to give humans a thrill, not to do any
| other useful work otherwise. Where do you stop? A water park? A
| movie theater? Any form of motorized racing?
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > have no purpose ... produces no goods and facilitates no
| conversations
|
| I would venture to say that by that metric, a great deal of human
| energy and effort is spent on creating things which have no
| purpose.
| throwaway2562 wrote:
| Guy writes 10 bazillion sub-lit-crit words on rollercoasters,
| fails to mention Euler spirals and clothoids, where the beauty
| is, where maths guides and protects meat. A depressing lack of
| curiosity by the author.
|
| https://thatsmaths.com/2014/04/10/rollercoaster-loops/
| bragr wrote:
| >Horror stories, like pop music and alcohol, are designed first
| and foremost to make sex possible. Horror stories let young men
| place their arms across the shoulders of young women.
|
| So much here to unpack about the author's world view in just two
| sentences. I think I'll stop reading here.
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