Link: https://old.reddit.com/r/HighStrangeness/comments/1uco3z8/the_john_dillinger_died_for_you_society_a/

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The original was posted on /r/highstrangeness by /u/Dependent_Run_6410 on 2026-06-22 15:41:55+00:00.

Filing this under high weirdness because the mechanism is the weird part, not the dead bank robber.

The John Dillinger Died For You Society started as a 1966 bar joke near the Biograph Theater, where Dillinger was shot on July 22, 1934. It should have died there. Instead it became a self-perpetuating organization — and the trick is in the structure. You pay dues, you get a card, and the act of handing someone else a card is built into the membership. The obligation to recruit is the product. It's a meme with its own propagation engine bolted on, a thoughtform that figured out how to keep itself alive by making hosts feel duty-bound to infect the next one.

I got inducted by Robert Anton Wilson personally at a convention in 1993. He didn't just hand me a card — he walked me through why it works, treating the whole thing as a live demonstration of how ideas replicate and take on a life independent of anyone's intent. Pure Operation Mindfuck energy. He later sold his own membership card on eBay for $400, which, the more you sit with it, is exactly the move the Society would bless.

There's still an annual Dillinger Day in Chicago — bagpipes, a "Lady in Red" contest, the works. A bar joke that's outlived most of the people who started it.

Wrote the whole thing up if anyone wants the long version (link in comments), but mostly I'm curious: anyone here actually carrying a card? How'd you get inducted?