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1:06

Season We've covered a lot

1:08

of different fanatical groups. But.

1:11

Today. I. Want to talk to

1:13

you about one. That's. Unlike any of

1:15

the rest. They're easily the

1:17

most prevalent group that we know if.

1:20

They're. Probably the most feared group

1:22

online. The. Brooke no criticism

1:24

of their leaders, and they

1:26

worship their sacred texts with

1:28

fanatical fervor. There's. Millions

1:30

and millions and millions of them.

1:33

Children as young as eight or

1:35

nine have fallen into their grasp,

1:37

and even the elderly are known

1:39

to submit. One. Of

1:41

them might be in your workplace. Or.

1:43

Your neighborhood. Maybe. Even

1:46

in your family. In

1:48

fact, I bet you

1:50

might be one yourself. I'm

1:52

of course talking. About. The

1:55

stands. Our

2:03

pay my son his middle

2:05

name sailor so like soon

2:07

as he called us with

2:10

quests. Therapists,

2:20

And it actually causes equivalent of

2:22

a two point three magnitude earthquake.

2:52

There's the believers in the Bay

2:54

highs bruni Greeks and who wins

2:56

the Bts army and the Bharti

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gangs. Smiler slippers. So editors and

3:00

stands swiss these for the under

3:02

sixteen crowd and parents heads for

3:04

the over sixty. We. Live

3:06

today in a world of fractured

3:09

fandom that people participate in with

3:11

cult like adherence. Thousands.

3:13

Of years after God commanded Moses

3:15

to not worship any false idols.

3:18

And almost fifteen hundred years after

3:20

Mohamad winded to Mecca and smashed

3:22

the idols in the Kaaba, we'd

3:24

become a society, a globe of

3:27

idol worshippers. We literally even call

3:29

them idols. so that is what

3:31

we're gonna be talking about today.

3:34

and our final episode of our

3:36

cold Season. What's the

3:38

relationship between or pop culture

3:40

obsessions and religion? How

3:42

deep can this run? And at

3:44

what point does he go from

3:46

being harmless entertainment and become something

3:49

more sinister? I

3:52

marshy man in this is commons.

3:54

More. After the break. This.

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6:05

Where to look for the Earth Fandom:

6:07

The. One that can help us best understand

6:10

how we got to where we are today.

6:13

Harry. Potter. Might. Be the

6:15

best place to start. Obsessive.

6:17

Fans existed well before Jk Rowling

6:19

ever put pen to paper. But.

6:21

The difference between Harry Potter and

6:24

say, Beatlemania or Star Wars? Is

6:26

that the rise of Potter? Dumb? Coincided.

6:29

With the emergence of the Innards, Back.

6:31

In the mid two thousand, Potter Mania

6:33

was in full swing. Moon

6:42

on the cover of a wildly popular

6:44

books. It's Harry Potter and if you

6:46

haven't heard of him, then you probably

6:48

don't have a middle school child. And.

7:02

There was a thriving ecosystem, a fan

7:04

sites and forums where Potter Heads debated

7:07

what houses they would be sorted into,

7:09

which characters would live or die, and

7:11

even wrote their own fan fiction, some

7:13

of which could get so little lurid.

7:16

But. No matter how obsessed certain fans

7:19

got, There. Was always one corner of the

7:21

sand and that they could point to. In

7:23

order to prove that pay, at least

7:25

we're not crazy like them. That.

7:28

Would. Be the Snape lives. The

7:34

Snape Winds of now become one of

7:36

the most notorious and most miss understood

7:38

examples of obsessive sand amps that we

7:41

have in the internet era. Back.

7:43

In the mid two thousand, they

7:45

were the butt of a thousand

7:47

jokes on Potter themed forums and

7:49

message boards, and today they've become

7:51

a meme. a shorthand for people

7:54

who take their fandom to the

7:56

most extreme limits. On some

7:58

corners of the internet today. They're

8:00

even accused of being a cult.

8:03

The Snape wives were women who

8:05

believed that they were married to

8:07

Sever is Snape. The. Potions Master

8:09

from Harry Potter. I

8:11

can teach you how to

8:14

for which the mind and

8:16

and snare the senses can

8:18

tell you how to bottle

8:20

same group glory and even

8:23

to suffer in. Now.

8:26

I can hear what you're thinking

8:28

that Severs Snape isn't a real

8:30

person. he's a fictional characters. Surely

8:32

they must have been joking. But

8:34

according to Doctor Zoe Alderton, a

8:36

scholar of New Religious movements at

8:39

the University of Sydney, They

8:41

absolutely we're not. It's

8:44

not an easy story

8:46

to tell because I

8:48

wanted to take it

8:50

seriously, thought it something

8:53

that immediately stripes people

8:55

as very silly and

8:57

very ridiculous. Though he

8:59

was a major Harry Potter fan as

9:01

a teenager and she remembers the ridicule

9:03

that was piled on, the Snape lives

9:05

online at the time. And

9:07

back And twenty fourteen she decided to

9:10

write a paper about the Snape Wives

9:12

or Snape This as they prefer to

9:14

be called. And. She came

9:16

to what might be a somewhat

9:18

startling conclusion. The. Snape Asks

9:20

are best understood as an

9:23

actual religion. So.

9:26

Who exactly were they? Will.

9:28

The first thing to understand

9:30

is that they were very

9:32

big fans of Separate Snake.

9:35

Especially as portrayed by Alan Rickman

9:37

in the Harry Potter movies. Should.

9:40

Anyone. Student.

9:43

Or star temps to aid.

9:45

must have them. They

9:48

will be honest. In

9:50

a manner consistent with the

9:53

severity of the transcripts. They

9:56

thought that he was a

9:58

very domineering man. They

10:01

found him very exciting.

10:04

And there were three of the. Rose.

10:06

Tanya and Conchita. By.

10:09

All accounts they were all fairly ordinary

10:11

middle aged women. They. Had husbands

10:13

and children. Rosen. Tanya lived

10:15

in the Us while consider was in

10:17

the Netherlands. But. They were united

10:20

by their belief that Snape. Wasn't.

10:22

Really a character from the Harry

10:24

Potter world. Instead. He.

10:27

Was a spiritual beings who actually

10:29

inspired Jk Rowling to write the

10:31

books. And these three

10:33

women were all able to get

10:36

in touch with this cosmic spirit.

10:38

See. Someone eating tom and this

10:40

is them in their home. Give

10:43

them guidance in their lives. But.

10:45

Their relationships with Snape. Went.

10:48

Far beyond spiritual guidance.

10:51

The. Reason why they were Cold:

10:53

Snap: Why it isn't just

10:56

because they like him a

10:58

lot, it's because they actually

11:00

released photographs of themselves in

11:03

photo shopped wedding ceremonies with

11:05

Snape. And they actually conducted

11:07

the ceremonies in there on

11:10

flights. And while this

11:12

might sound of it's strange, Catholic nuns

11:14

have wedding ceremonies believing themselves to be

11:16

the bride's of Christ. It's

11:18

kind of like you

11:21

take the sodas generic

11:23

idea of a slightly

11:25

angry slightly then school

11:27

board swap that kind

11:29

of abstract figure for

11:31

Professor Snape as portrayed

11:33

by Alan Rickman and

11:35

kind of go on.

11:37

Said to worship this

11:39

particular character in a

11:41

way that I think

11:43

we could say is

11:45

is pretty deeply christian.

11:48

But. Unlike Catholic nuns, the

11:50

snape wives had a much

11:52

more carnal relationship to their

11:55

shared spiritual husband. They.

11:57

See him as someone who is

11:59

a. In your inbox during

12:01

perhaps more the Bdsm sense

12:04

and someone who really gives

12:06

a lot of sexual purpose

12:09

to their lives as well.

12:12

The. Women at the center of the

12:14

Snape lists Rose, Tanya, and Conchita

12:16

all had different relationships to their

12:19

master god and husband. Rosen.

12:21

Tanya could easily conjure his

12:23

spirit. But. For Conchita

12:26

Snape. Was. Sometimes a

12:28

more absent figure, I

12:30

peninsula bit sad. Say consider

12:32

because to and you're in various

12:35

have all of these. Mystical

12:37

experiences, Where they talked

12:40

about, You know, Snape really like

12:42

physically coming in into their high.

12:46

Slate whispering in there. he

12:48

is giving them signs sometimes

12:50

even completely overtaking their hands

12:52

of then and lane walls

12:54

can see. does he lives

12:56

in the Netherlands? She just

12:58

seems. Very disconnected

13:00

from it all. There's

13:02

a real kind of third

13:04

wheel feeling around her where

13:06

she just doesn't have that

13:09

capacity to directly tapping to

13:11

snipe. The. Other to help

13:13

her out that there's so many

13:15

journal entry she wrote at the

13:18

time way she just talks about

13:20

struggling, she just talks about how

13:22

much this all means to her.

13:25

But she just caught have those

13:27

deep spiritual experiences like Be Other

13:29

Night Live scan. And

13:32

like all religions, The. Psni busts

13:34

had their own specific theological

13:36

beliefs. Right near the

13:38

top of that list. That

13:40

homosexuality is very very wrong.

13:43

And. I think a big reason

13:45

why they do that is a

13:47

lot of the sexual activity. Between.

13:50

Them and Snipe. Takes place.

13:52

We. The. Two of

13:54

them having a chat, One

13:57

of them will ten old maid.

14:00

The had a. Really

14:02

erotic. Can't leave the

14:04

other one. And. Then

14:06

they seem to spend a

14:08

lot of time being like

14:10

all that. it's not guy

14:12

made, doesn't like gay people

14:14

pleasers extremely heterosexual, so they've

14:17

They've really putting a lot

14:19

of effort into policing those

14:21

boundaries and making it as

14:23

rigidly heterosexual as possible. Zone

14:25

We understand this homophobia not only

14:28

as a way for the sniff

14:30

wives to reaffirm their own heterosexuality

14:32

with in what could otherwise we

14:35

understood as a fairly queer context.

14:37

But. Of an explicit rejection to

14:39

the popularity of homoerotic stand sections

14:42

within the rest of the Harry

14:44

Potter fandom. That. With all

14:46

sorts of like/fiction with like you

14:48

know, Harry and the Night was

14:51

a popular one or Dumbledore inside,

14:53

you know, basically like whatever hard

14:55

to combination could be says they've

14:57

told someone would have written same

15:00

Sex and About it and they

15:02

made it very clear that. Snipe.

15:05

Was incredibly angry about

15:07

that, and it was

15:09

very, very disrespectful. Thirty

15:11

people to be passing

15:13

him or for exploring

15:15

see him in gay

15:17

relationships. But. Snape Ism

15:19

was not long for this world.

15:25

It's death can be attributed to

15:28

to primary factors. Internal

15:30

personality clashes, And.

15:32

The Naval Criminal Investigative

15:34

Service. So first

15:36

of all, conceit ends up.

15:39

Just getting pretty alienated by

15:41

the elements. It's live in

15:43

a Cbc. the see the

15:45

clear exactly what happened to put

15:48

consider often i think a lot

15:50

of these might have just been

15:53

private arguments on private chats and

15:55

and will never find out but

15:57

then we ended up having In

28:00

some ways, I think the word

28:02

cult when improperly deployed can be

28:04

a sort of thought stopping cliche of

28:07

it's own. When someone gets labeled,

28:09

a cult can lead us to stop

28:11

thinking deeply about it. We feel like

28:13

we know everything we need to

28:15

already. If there's one

28:17

thing I've learned this season, he said

28:19

the word called should be the beginning

28:22

of a discussion, not the end of.

29:04

That's your episode. Comments: If you like

29:06

this episode, please leave us a rating

29:09

and review and Apple podcasts seven so

29:11

relied on work done by Zoe Alderton,

29:13

Robert Lawson, Caitlin, Tiffany, and many others.

29:15

This is the final episode in our

29:17

season on Colts and I hope you've

29:19

enjoyed. You want to get in touch

29:21

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29:23

com and pod. He can also email

29:26

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29:30

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