I remember it coming on the news that afternoon. It just made me sick, but it got worse as the days went on and people went there with cameras to find what happened. I'd seen bloated dead cows and other animals, but hundreds of humans all laid out and puffed up was just mind-numbing.

If you think that story is sad, read this

Link (new window)

It's a list of the dead, including some pictures photgraphs (living)
It will give you a sense of how farked up the whole thing was and why being vigilant against religous fanatics is important.

Just to get this out of the way, it wasn't Kool Aid. It was Flavor Aid.

"Drinking the Kool-Aid" is a 60's phrase referring to tripping on LSD. Look at Ken Kesey's book "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test", which was a best-seller and talks about traveling around the country in a day-glo school bus doing acid.

Ah, freshman year of college. To care about idiot suicide cultists or to smoke weed and blow off class. Decisions decisions.

Admittedly, it took a few seconds to decide.

notmtwain: "Drinking the Kool-Aid" is a 60's phrase referring to tripping on LSD. Look at Ken Kesey's book "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test", which was a best-seller and talks about traveling around the country in a day-glo school bus doing acid.

Not according to one of the linked articles, or anyone I know that uses the phrase. They all refer to Jonestown.

Link (new window)

notmtwain: "Drinking the Kool-Aid" is a 60's phrase referring to tripping on LSD. Look at Ken Kesey's book "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test", which was a best-seller and talks about traveling around the country in a day-glo school bus doing acid.


You miss my point. I had (still have) friends who were on Kesey's bus, and we used the phrase, but it wasn't so widely known till Jones pulled off this massacre. Sort of changed the context, entirely.

//lived the 60's, did you?

Ms.Maus: Not according to one of the linked articles, or anyone I know that uses the phrase. They all refer to Jonestown.

Thank you.

I can't believe how sad this is making me feel, all over again, and it's been such a long time.

darkhorse23: //lived the 60's, did you?

I do believe I have just witnessed my very first legitimate "You weren't there maaaaan, you wouldn't know!"

it was drink aid at jonestown, not kool aid. everyone knows that.

or maybe it was flavor aid. i just... don't know any more.

Jim Jones Jonestown Jucie Jamboree.

/Still don't understand HOW.

mrwknd: Jim Jones Jonestown Jucie Jamboree.

/Still don't understand HOW.

ask the Freepers. They're pretty good at living that kind of life.

notmtwain: "Drinking the Kool-Aid" is a 60's phrase referring to tripping on LSD. Look at Ken Kesey's book "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test", which was a best-seller and talks about traveling around the country in a day-glo school bus doing acid.


I probably sound like a dick saying this, but The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is by Tom Wolfe, though it is about Ken Kesey.

Every time I read or watch something about Jonestown it haunts my dreams. It is the most farked up thing I have ever heard of in my life. 900 people were killed. They shot a U.S. Congressman to death. I still can't imagine how it is real.

Hibno: I probably sound like a dick saying this, but The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is by Tom Wolfe, though it is about Ken Kesey.

You're not a dick. There's already an overabundance of people in here who have completely overlooked the big picture and have decided to quibble over inanities anyhow.

Hibno: Every time I read or watch something about Jonestown it haunts my dreams. It is the most farked up thing I have ever heard of in my life. 900 people were killed. They shot a U.S. Congressman to death. I still can't imagine how it is real.

Americans were still, at that time, watching the remains of Vietnam on the news every night, and had been for years. Still, this shocked the sh*t out of a lot of people.

darkhorse23:
I can't believe how sad this is making me feel, all over again, and it's been such a long time.

It was definitely something I don't remember (I'm 32) but I read about it in high school for a project on cults. Jonestown was by far the most bizarre and sad thing I'd ever heard of and I was surprised I'd not heard of it before I hit my teens. Seemed like such a huge tragedy. I guess that's the first time I realised that a LOT of "important stuff" gets forgotten until it happens again. Then year later, the standoff at Waco happened and I was like 'woah.'

Ms.Maus: Then year later, the standoff at Waco happened and I was like 'woah.'

no shiat. I remember sitting on the couch with my mom watching the live news feed on our black and white TV, of the ongoing Cuban Missile Crisis, and feeling completely sick to my stomach.

darkhorse23 :

ask the Freepers. They're pretty good at living that kind of life.

Any suicide cult just baffles the mind. As for asking freepers not me, but someone might want to keep watch. Their rapture will leave empty cars.

Hibno: Every time I read or watch something about Jonestown it haunts my dreams. It is the most farked up thing I have ever heard of in my life. 900 people were killed. They shot a U.S. Congressman to death. I still can't imagine how it is real.

weren't others shot as well? Like a small group who refused to drink & 2 trucks were sent after them to shoot them dead?

I watched a History Channel show on it once but can't remember.

crazy shiat either way.

Why are there so few Jim Jones jokes?
The punchlines are too long.

/Window seat, please.

mrwknd:
Any suicide cult just baffles the mind.

not all of them were suicidal or willing to drink. They refused and were shot instead. or were forced to drink. All after they gave the kids the drinks first and watched them die.

The difference between a cult and a religion is 2000 years.

/oldie but goodie

Jim Jones actually said, while they were drinking the grape drink, "Quickly, quickly, quickly, good to know you, quickly..."

I just can't believe someone urging suicide upon hundreds of people would take the time to say a folksy "good to know you" but he did.

There's a strange one in the jungle...

If you're at all interested in this, check out the documentary "Jonestown: The Life and Death of People's Temple" Fascinating in depth look at Jim Jones' rise to power, the mindsets of those captivated by him, and the horrifying/disturbing massacre that everyone already knows.

vegasj :

not all of them were suicidal or willing to drink. They refused and were shot instead. or were forced to drink. All after they gave the kids the drinks first and watched them die.

Yes, which made it much worse to understand.

I feel old now.

If you look hard enough, somewhere on the internet are audio tapes of Jim Jones last sermon where he talks with and argues with some people about the mass suicide. It's long, but you get to hear what actually transpires in a situation like that.

Horizontal Woodstock.

I was going to post a joke about this tragedy but I can't.

The punch line is too long.

This was before my time but I've read a few books on it, most recently Seductive Poison: A Jonestown Survivor's Story of Life and Death in the People's Temple by Deborah Layton. Such an incredibly sad but amazing look into the human psyche.

I was 8 at the time. Remember the Time Magazine spread vividly.

Never did drink any purple Kool-Aid, never will.

/I don't drink anything purple
//Not unless it's cheap wine, of course

Should've seen the salad bar.

vegasj: mrwknd:
Any suicide cult just baffles the mind.


not all of them were suicidal or willing to drink. They refused and were shot instead. or were forced to drink. All after they gave the kids the drinks first and watched them die.

Only people off the site were shot (besides Jim Jones himself). Everyone else was forced to drink or were actually injected. A majority were forced.

It's the kids dying that really upsets me :(

Well at least I didn't drink the Kool-Aid on Tuesday.

/Voted for McCain.

bungle in the jungle...

/yeah I went there
//remember it like it was yesterday
///sucks being old

/Approves

Sympathy for the ones who were forced into it. But the world is better off without any idiot actually willing to die for their religion. Unfortunately these idiots almost always want to take others with them.
That heaven's gate cult at least had the decency to just do themselves in.

it's one thing to know intellectually that some folks are messed up but another altogether to see what happened there. you just have to feel sorry for the dead in any case.

vegasj: mrwknd:
Any suicide cult just baffles the mind.

not all of them were suicidal or willing to drink. They refused and were shot instead. or were forced to drink. All after they gave the kids the drinks first and watched them die.

The tape recording he left behind shows that he called all the children up to him first, and had his most ardent followers (who seem to have been aware of what was going to happen and had planned for it) poison them first. That way most of the parents followed suit, out of grief if nothing else. Someone he called "mother" tried to stop him, but I don't think it was actually his mother. I think they said it was his wife or something, who he used to call mother since she was the mother of the temple in everyone's eyes.

But yeah, Jonestown is mistakenly referred to as a mass suicide when it's mostly a mass murder. Most of those people were not taken willingly.

I walked from New York and Back to L.A.

I had heard about it but it never really set into my brain how crazy it was until I saw some made for tv movie about his cult. The fact that so many people blindly followed this guy and killed their own children was terrifying to me. Did Jim Jones actually think he was the Messiah or was he just power hungry?

"We come on this one church, it had been overrun . . it was clear that all the adults had killed the kids first."

/hopefully not obscure

Wasn't around for this, but I remember the whole "Heaven's Gate" mass suicide. Some f*cked-up stuff.

One of the journalists down there who survived, or else one who showed up immediately afterward to cover the story, worked for the Washington Post. And so we in DC ended up having massive coverage of the story. It was the top story on the front page of the Post for more than 30 consecutive days. I remember that because I saved the newspapers for awhile. Reading the details of that story every morning had a profoundly depressive effect on me. I was just stunned and bewildered for a very long time.

Damn, I've already forgotten the name of that idiot who offed himself and a bunch of other cultists. I think they drank spiked koolaid too. They were hitching a ride on a comet or some shiate.

I earnestly recommend "Seductive Poison" by Deborah Layton, a survivor.

PBS also did an "American Experience" program about Jonestown which absolutely blew my mind: audio of Jones exhorting his followers to "die with a degree of dignity" and coaxing mothers to give the stuff to their kids before drinking the stuff themselves. Featuring interviews with people who lost spouses and children to Jones' madness.

And yes, btw, the documentary shows footage of Jones pointing out the stock of Kool-Aid to observers. It was Kool-Aid.

Sorry to all you Wolfe/Kesey/60s fans who saw an amusing reference hijacked by tragedy. Just think "Helter Skelter" and live with it.

Yeah, nothing funny about any of this.

\was nine years old when Jonestown happened