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When people can literally believe their dicks are disappearing, while said organ is in plain view, any extraordinary claims about UFOs should be treated sceptically:

"Koro is a culture-bound syndrome delusional disorder in which an individual has an overpowering belief that his or her sex organs are retracting and will disappear"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koro_(medicine)



Reminds me of "running amok" from Malaysia and Indonesia.

> In a typical case of running amok, an individual (often male), having shown no previous sign of anger or any inclination to violence, will acquire a weapon (traditionally a sword or dagger, but currently any of a variety of weapons) and in a sudden frenzy, will attempt to kill or seriously injure anyone he encounters and himself.

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

Culture-bound syndromes are fascinating.


Interesting. It's almost exactly a modern mass shooting, just with an edged weapon. Nothing new under the sun after all.


I had a friend in high school who used to do a magic trick where he would claim that he made your dick disappear. He used to do it all the time and find it amusing. He ipo'd his startup last year and made a lot of money.


Real life Randy Marsh then :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cock_Magic


What was the trick?


To prove the magic didn't work you'd have to show your dick to the whole classroom. The trick doesn't lie in whatever ritual was performed but in your presumed unwillingness to do what you had to do to prove it ineffective.


This is a brilliant anecdote to quote in the face of bad faith demands for evidence to disprove stupid claims.


he just declares that your dick is gone. its then on you if you want to prove him wrong


And related to that, somehow UFOs sightings tend to be mostly happening in the US and not so much outside of it, leading further evidence to it being a culture-bound syndrome rather than real-life events.


Or does the USA just do a lot of weird flying experiments? Isn’t that the Occam’s Razor answer?

Implying Americans are crazier seems odd. What would cause that? Higher rates of mental illness making their ancestors emigrate from their original countries? Is there any data on that? Western Diet causing mental illness? Too much empty space?


> Implying Americans are crazier seems odd

I'm not implying that (also, no need to imply such a thing, de facto knowledge at this point). I'm implying that the culture in US has a lot more UFOs in it, every major blockbuster alien movie has been produced in the US, as far as I know. Most if not all UFO sightings that gets reported around the world comes from the US. Flying experiments could contribute to that as well, which also go into the culture in the US of doing experimental aircrafts in order to achieve flight-superiority.


> Most if not all UFO sightings that gets reported around the world comes from the US.

This seems like a sort of sampling bias as a consequence of America being really good at exporting its culture.


I consume news from three different countries (from three continents), four if you count american news that I come across on HN and Twitter, and the only times I hear anything about UFO sightings on Earth (not about possible alien life on other planets or similar) is either on HN, Twitter or via news that comes from US sources ("This Texas man saw a UFO kindnap a cow in his backyard!"). Could be that my sources are biased of course, but it does certainly feel like the UFO paranoia comes from one specific country.



... especially when there is a government organized disinformation campaign: check out the documentary Mirage Men!




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