I remember watching it as a teenager and I was blown away. I don't know if I'll get the same feeling if I watch it again as an adult though.

Ps: my first time on lemmy, good stuff on here folks.

Haven't seen it but everything I read about it in the last two decades suggests that, yeah, as a 13-year-old I would've gobbled that shit up and as an adult I'd probably only make it through with enhancing substances and fellow-minded people to riff on it.

it's been 20 years, they already had a community in some random place.

How did it turn out for them?

*checks wikipedia*

Jack shit.

Zeitgeist was first linked to the Venus Project, which had been founded by Jacque Fresco in 1985. In April 2011, partnership between the two groups ended in an apparent power struggle, with Joseph commenting, "Without [the Zeitgeist Movement], [the Venus Project] doesn’t exist – it has nothing but ideas and has no viable method to bring it to light."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Venus_Project

https://www.thevenusproject.com/about/history/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacque_Fresco

Jacque died. The film is all BS.

Ok, if there's a chance I'll watch it again with my best mate and a couple of gummies

Can someone link to context? I have no idea what op is talking about and I'm too busy to duck duck go it.

Gotcha!

Things like 9/11 was an inside job to justify the invasion of Iraq and that Bin Laden was a CIA agent. And many more theories that I can't remember. But anyway, here's a link: Wikipedia

I don't remember what all it touched on, but I do remember giving some of it more consideration than it was probably worth, and the other parts I thought were just too crazy.

Definitely a "I am 14 and this is deep" film basically Walt Disney's full epcot design combined with socialism by another name.

It's funny cause I was 14 when I watched it 😂

I kept thinking of that 9/11 conspiracy theory. Traumatized me. It's what I can recall

Was this the one that spent the first half trying to explain that all religions were based on Egyptian mythology before awkwardly jumping to 9-11 stuff?

I think I remember burning this on DVD back in the day before watching it and being confused and disappointed.

According to the synopsis on Wikipedia, you are correct.

I was pretty close to that too. My brother watched it when it had juat came out and showed it to me later.

I bet it didn't foresee Trump becoming president!

trying to explain that all religions were based on Egyptian mythology

Oh God... For some reason this just reminded me of The Money Masters or whatever it's called... I went through a conspiracy phase like almost 20 years ago and I just got this vague memory of that freaking 4 hour "documentary"... I'm pretty sure they went on about Egypt and I wouldn't be surprised if I watched it again to find a "healthy" dose of antisemitism.

Also what the bleep do we know. Vaguely remember it starts kinda ok, then gets to spiritual BS and uses quantum woo as justification for it.

I remember the part about the RFID chips in every person being the most shocking part as a kid. Honestly with smartphones and the modern internet, we're not really that far off from what was speculated on that topic.

The film is over indulgent claptrap but a broken clock is right twice a day or whatever.

I watched this video of a lecture from Jacque Fresco and it’s rather interesting imo

I was 16 and thought so at first. Then I saw older people tearing it to shreds proper in forum posts firstly on the Screw Attack forums of all places which swiftly corrected me haha.

Alex Jones, American radio host, conspiracy theorist and executive producer of Loose Change, stated that film segments of Zeitgeist are taken directly from his documentary Terrorstorm, and that he supports "90 percent" of the film.

It's nonsense garbage.

IIRC I watched it at some point, and it was boilerplate Infowars era "THEY are controlling you!" and fearmongering as a sales pitch. It's a good reminder that it used to be a lot harder than posting some garbage on YT to make some "90 minutes of saying nothing" content.

Outstandingly idiotic piece of shit.

Even if you go in for spiritual stuff, it also falls into "saying everything by saying nothing" model of straight to video junk that was common for the time, just better-made and with higher production quality. Its only goal is to get people to not have critical thoughts about it, say "it really makes you think!" to their stoner friends, and then sell another copy of itself.

It was a college flavor of the month film that basically had 3 sections iirc. First was that Christianity is bullshit and how most religions have a bunch of common threads like the trinity, 3 day ressurection and how they lined up with astrology; Orion's belt and the winter equinox. Second was that the government are trying to collect intelligence on you, and how you will happily start tracking yourself soon and how they are training you to want that. This one is true about cell phones to some extent but was written in a time when the original RAZR fliphone was a technological marvel. And the third was pretty much bullshit iirc and op thinks it was that 9/11 was a false flag operation. But zeitgeist likely explained what they are and how they are effective. Widely available on the seas, and it was part of the social conversation. Which was in person Or rly smol txt limit

Alex Jones is everything he railed against, and all of his bullshit was performative. It's so satisfying to hear Dan from Knowledge Fight rip his dumbass arguments apart and expose how much he lies and makes up shit.

I was fascinated by it when I was young. Now I think it was one of the points where internet conspiracy theories started. How the "documentation" was told is very much manipulating.

watched it again recently. loved it. i get the hate though fo sho.

its out there for sure. but then again this was made before we knew that a pedophile shadow elite was manipulating online spaces into far right extremist shitholes so they can further an agenda of global control and systematically dismantling democracy whenever they could.

also apparantly aliens suddenly exist now right before the US invades iran

fuckin moon bears, man. crazy shit.

it's a kind of "WHOA DUDE" stoner film at best with no actual merit.

It feels like it was written by Alex Jones.

Yeah, I remember being annoyed by this as well, I just felt really messy and without clear purpose, like "how do you mean this all connects again?". Did not live up to the hype.

Loved it at 15. Now I know better.
I think it got a few things right, but its not a film I'd be proud of liking today.

Grok it you lazy fuck.

It was definitely an early catalyst for directing conspiracy minded people into deeper and deeper rabbit holes. I'd bet for most of us, this is how we discovered Alex Jones and as teenagers he seemed interesting. As an adult it was clear he was just another bullshitter.

But now, knowing what we know about geo politics, it's clear that it was all part of Russia's plan to brainwash the right wing into becoming domestic enemies of their nations in favour of Russia's interests.

I used to love watching Alex Jones while stoned. Just imagine hes right and youre being clued in on some super top secret knowledge.

Was a lot of fun as long as you remembered to sober up and realise its all bollocks.

i think this, loose change and jfk fucked peoples heads up for generations

It's the archetype for a lot of what I hate about YouTube. I was actually kind of mad at the friend who recommended it to me

Bro, [obvious truism]. Brooo, [obvious truism]. Brooooo, [conspiracy theory].

Ok thanks. That's interesting. This is the first I'm hearing of this.

I agree with it’s interpretation of the bible/Christianity, relating to many other religions before it, not just Egyptian:

Jesus was never real and was not recorded by dozens of scribes that were in the place at the same time (one famous example was debunked hundreds of years ago). He’s a sun-god astrological myth, like Horus and others before and they all share similar attributes.His purpose was to signal the start of the age of Pisces (two fish), and the winter solstice will see the sun rise (after 3 days of apparent stagnation) in the Aquarius constellation in 2150 or so. His resurrection is celebrated at Spring equinox, or Easter, when the sun finally overpowers the darkness.His purpose regarding factualization was a political move by the Romans and the Catholic church, setting the calendar year 1 to the start of the age of Pisces.

Worse, it was produced by Alex Jones.

Were you there when it happened to me?

I swear, that one Donald Sutherland scene in JFK had me going for such a long time on the conspiracy bent. I thought it was real.

Who knew, it was Kevin Bacon we needed to pay attention to all along.

Quite interesting and makes sense

It was coproduced by the "school" of the scammer "medium" JZ Knight aka "Ramtha", who appears in the film without any mention to this "curious" fact.