16 years after a mass suicide, the webpage is still up

http://www.heavensgate.com/

by standeven • 13 years ago

140 103 13 years ago

From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaven%27s_Gate_(religious_gro...

Only one of the group's members, Rio DiAngelo/Richard Ford, did not kill himself: weeks before the suicides, in December 1996, DiAngelo agreed with Applewhite to leave the group so he could ensure future dissemination of Heaven's Gate videos and literature.

This isn't surprising. The most dangerous viruses and parasites aren't the ones that kill their hosts immediately - they have to ensure their own survival first. If you view suicide cults as a meme (in Dawkin's terminology, not the Reddit usage of the word), then this makes sense.

k3n2• 13 years ago

That really shines a light into the mind of Applewhite, while he may have indeed been a lunatic, he knew his ideas were bullshit.

md224• 13 years ago

Not sure why this indicates he believed his ideas were bullshit... in my opinion, leaving material behind to spread his ideas after his own death suggests a truly held belief, not a purposeful scam.

ics• 13 years ago

The group earned revenues by offering professional website development for paying clients under the name Higher Source.

Wikipedia cites this[0] article which is pretty interesting. There even seems to be what I assume is a mirror of the original site: http://www.religio.de/highersource/server/

[0] http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=199...

softbuilder2• 13 years ago

The group earned revenues by offering professional website development

This is the best part of their story. Just because a person does technical work doesn't exclude them from being a moron.

milsorgen• 13 years ago

The keepthefaith.com site listed in examples certainly looks as if it could of been designed by Higher Source.

I wonder...

metric10• 13 years ago

While I agree with the characterization of Heaven's Gate as a parasite or virus, I disagree that this is a means of "survival." Suicide cults are an ancient phenomenon, and a key to their success (I think) is ignorance.

I hope the web page stays online. It serves as a monument to how wrong they where. Now that Heaven's Gate has run it's course, I think the biggest threat to the "virus" at this point is sunlight.

And, plus, I think it's an important part of Internet history. The Internet during the '90s was an amazing transformation of society, and this site shows how old ideas embrace new means. It's fascinating from a sociological perspective.

vidarh3• 13 years ago

It serves as a monument to how wrong they where.

Except it doesn't, for two reasons:

People who are inclined to sympathise with them have no way of seeing any "failure". They left their bodies behind, sure. Wannabe believers will assume they've left with the aliens and are now happily enjoying the fruits of their belief.

Secondly, cults does not work the way you'd expect them to: Failure does not diminish the belief of true believers.

On the contrary, what we see time and time again is that while failure may drive away some people, for many cults failure serves as a "do or die" trigger: These people are so incredibly invested already, that they have a deep need to find a way of explaining the failure that can justify their belief to themselves, that many cults after a temporary lull experiences an increase in activity following a failure. E.g. the cult may decide the explanation for the failure of whatever event they are waiting for is that they have not been devout enough, or that more believers are needed, and redouble their efforts to bring about their goal.

Now, I don't think the Heavens Gate site should be taken offline, mostly because there's plenty of worse material online, and unlike most extant cults Heavens Gate is pretty much entirely extinct, so they are not much of a danger to anyone.

But don't assume a "failure" in predictions mean anything to these cults, even if a failure can be objectively proven.

aaron6952• 13 years ago

I think you've missed the point on a lot of stuff here.

Viruses and parasites gain nothing from killing their host, hence most don't.

Heavens Gate has a very very small following today, so no it's not a meme by any means, it's failed to spread at all.

The religious memes aren't herded towards a path. There are millions of religions created and through evolution some succeed while most of them fail.

sejje• 13 years ago

I watched a really interesting TED talk last night about this: http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_ewald_asks_can_we_domesticate_...

Matt_Cutts• 13 years ago

And the page still has hidden text at the bottom of the page.

Truth be told, this is one of my favorite examples of hidden text, because it shows that people don't always use spam techniques for making money.

I haven't had much luck contacting the maintainer of that page to ask them to remove the hidden text.

ruttiger2• 13 years ago

Why are you trying to contact them to remove the hidden text?

ateevchopra• 13 years ago

maybe to improve their SEO.

patdennis• 13 years ago

From his HN bio:

I'm the head of the webspam team at Google.

bound008• 13 years ago

It's a joke

calvinlough• 13 years ago

I love how Yoda makes it into the list.

aaron6952• 13 years ago

Why on earth do you want the maintainer to harm this historic artefact?

zymhan• 13 years ago

Because people can still find any maybe fall for this insanity?

wentkenko• 13 years ago

Matt_Cutts, what a douche. Surely your algorithm is meant to detect this kind of text spam?

Edit: The website is responsive, clearly got there priorities sorted.

bushido• 13 years ago

Its not responsive in it current definition. The site is just fluid (based on percentages), the reason some elements seem to realign/behave like responsive design, is because those elements have fixed widths.

History lesson: Fluid widths were quite common until around 2005, as there weren't a large number of resolutions to cater to. Around the start of 2006 designers started switching to 800-960px to have the webpages look the same or nearly the same on every page.

[0] http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_display.asp - In early 2006 77% of displays were between 800-1024px wide.

bhrgunatha• 13 years ago

Ha ha - we quickly forget how the web USED to be.

Once a few clever souls realised they could increase their visibility by adding hidden words, they started appearing everywhere almost completely ruining any chance you had of finding something you want or need by searching due to all the false positives.

I know this arms race is still ongoing, but it's interesting to see back where we've been.

gngeal• 13 years ago

This kind of hidden text seems trivial to exclude. Does the phrase being searched occur in a parseable sentence? If not, penalize the result. Also, it's trivial to deduce that the text doesn't display; that alone should make it excludable from any and all searches.

ErikAugust2• 13 years ago

Hhahaha - come on Matt... when Heaven's Gate was doing their search spamming, Larry was posting this: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/comp.lang.java/aSPAJO0...

sillysaurus2• 13 years ago

It's strange that Page used to care about being a "good net citizen."

nailer• 13 years ago

I don't quite get the connection. It seems like you're trying to point out some hypocrisy, but search spamming is bad and identifying your crawler is good.

BorisMelnik3• 13 years ago

edit: still ranked on the first page of Google for multiple keywords

JacobAldridge• 13 years ago

buy cheap nike sneakers

harel• 13 years ago

I would assume the maintainer evacuated already...

foxhop2• 13 years ago

It isn't going to be online much longer.

Domain Name: HEAVENSGATE.COM

Creation Date: 1997-12-18 05:00:00Z

Registrar Registration Expiration Date: 2013-12-17 05:00:00Z

ben1040• 13 years ago

Creation Date: 1997-12-18 05:00:00Z

Considering the suicide happened in March 1997, I guess the name has already expired once, and someone re-purchased it.

RexRollman• 13 years ago

Certainly that can be seen. Does anyone keep historical whois data?

baddox• 13 years ago

Or it was created after the suicide, perhaps by the guy who was designated to leave the group and continue to distribute information about their beliefs. Also, the group apparently earned revenue by doing web development for hire.

username2• 13 years ago

Unless someone renews it again, as they have been doing every year since 1997.

foxhop2• 13 years ago

A domain name may be registered for more then one year at a time.

Aardwolf• 13 years ago

   Domain Name: HEAVENSGATE.COM
   Registrar: ENOM, INC.
   Whois Server: whois.enom.com
   Referral URL: http://www.enom.com
   Name Server: SNS19.WIN.HOSTGATOR.COM
   Name Server: SNS20.WIN.HOSTGATOR.COM
   Status: clientTransferProhibited
   Updated Date: 26-jul-2012
   Creation Date: 18-dec-1997
   Expiration Date: 17-dec-2013

So something was done on 26 juli 2012 at least. I guess that means it is still being actively maintained.

_bfhp• 13 years ago

Plenty of data: http://web.archive.org/web/query?type=urlquery&url=http://ww...!

nkuttler• 13 years ago

   Server: Microsoft-IIS/7.5
   X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
   X-Powered-By-Plesk: PleskWin

Does 7.5 still get security support?

dan1234• 13 years ago

Absolutely. IIS 7.5 is included in Windows Server 2008 R2, which will be supported until at least 2015 (2020 for extended support)

bcl• 13 years ago

Hosting is by hostgator

192.185.7.203

203.7.185.192.in-addr.arpa. 3600 IN PTR pss010a.win.hostgator.com.

ams6110• 13 years ago

Clearly not the server to which would originally have been deployed. Someone is actively maintaining it.

deweerdt• 13 years ago

This article from 2012 offers some background on the page: http://lasvegas.cbslocal.com/2012/05/02/heavens-gate-website...

adamnemecek• 13 years ago

The wiki page of the sect links to this

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

werner342• 13 years ago

I clicked on that link as well and was astonished

gotrecruit• 13 years ago

by what? that there are people who are stupid like that, or that enterprising individuals or companies would capitalize on their stupidity? i feel like both of those things are well documented in humanity by now...

STRiDEX• 13 years ago

Interesting that the G in gate from the top image is the green bay packers logo from the NFL.

dsl• 13 years ago

I have bad news for you if you think the packers game up with the idea of a stylized G.

chris_wot• 13 years ago

Their stance on suicide:

http://www.heavensgate.com/misc/letter.htm

maaku• 13 years ago

Well, were you expecting someone to take it down?

Timmmmbob• 13 years ago

I was expecting nobody to pay for hosting! Websites don't run on magic.

danso• 13 years ago

How sadly amusing is it that this website can be maintained in its original state 16 years after its owners died, yet publishing companies today routinely fail to protect heir still-alive brands.

Case in point: Michelin Guides http://www.constructaquote.com/business-insurance-blog/index...

atmosx• 13 years ago

Was Einstein who said that quote about the universe and human stupidity, trying to describe infinity?

Cantor would argue though that some infinities are bigger than others..

dobbsbob• 13 years ago

Their indoctrination vids are a must watch for craziness: http://youtu.be/AqSZhwu1Rwo

Check out that thousand yard stare.

This guy reminds me of that insane space cult leader from Star Trek TOS. Apparently this cult was full of ST fans, including wearing "away team" gear while they killed themselves.

mariodiana• 13 years ago

I remember hearing this at the time, but it's mentioned on her Wikipedia page as well. The brother of Nichelle Nicholas ("Uhura," as I'm sure you know) was a member of the cult and took part in the mass suicide.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nichelle_Nichols#Personal_life

mambodog• 13 years ago

I saw these videos recently as part of Captain Murphy's Duality[1]. Almost seems like something from a movie; it's hard to believe this really happened.

[1] http://vimeo.com/53603603

aryeh_hoffman• 13 years ago

If you look carefully, he also appears to literally have a "forked tongue"

nsxwolf• 13 years ago

I haven't looked at this in 16 years, but I remembered verbatim one of the links and got a little chill waiting to see it again as I scrolled down: "Our position against suicide".

mortyseinfeld• 13 years ago

And very Geocities looking.

ksrm• 13 years ago

Computer technology enables everyone from Madison Avenue executives to Government agencies to keep a record of your every move, and "flags" are thrown up any time you don't fit their pre-conceived mold of what a good citizen should be. Our right to travel and remain nomadic is rapidly being restricted. We often travel light on spur-of-the-moment instructions, however we can no longer take an airline flight on short notice without harassment. Anyone who purchases a ticket with cash without advance reservations and does not have a load of baggage to check will likely be subjected to baggage searches, interrogation, and suspicion. Even when they can find nothing whatsoever that is questionable, authorities have at times reluctantly let our members proceed, convinced that they are indeed guilty of some crime but too clever to be caught. Police presence at border crossings have increased to the point that you feel you are in a war zone.

About right.

goldenkey• 13 years ago

Back to the future...

saraid216• 13 years ago

I wonder how many mass suicides are being planned today.

chias2• 13 years ago

Wow... stuff

InclinedPlane2• 13 years ago

That was the norm back then. Just be glad the closing tags are present and in the correct order.

Those were dark times.

fyolnish• 13 years ago

Aren't attributes in closing tags meaningless?

code_duck2• 13 years ago

I've been working with an awful shopping cart product with template 'tags' that produce HTML containing <center> and many other unsemantic abominations. You also see tags still come up on stack overflow... Old tutorials will never die, it seems.

chias2• 13 years ago

nothing wrong with font tags per se (well back then, anyway)... more a matter of what appears to be a complete lack of understanding of the difference between a tag and an attribute. The page is a wealth of HTML abominations and bad quotation mark placement:

alt="To Access Our Book: "Heaven's Gate"

and so on

enko• 13 years ago

This is a fascinating, well-written account, a decade after the events: http://www.laweekly.com/2007-03-22/news/heaven-s-gate-the-se...

heavensgate• 13 years ago

Right after the mass suicide we took over DNS for heavensgate.com.

We pointed it at aolsucks.org until their t1 melted.

https://web.archive.org/web/19990429131245/http://www.aolsuc...

We took control of DNS for two weeks. http://linbsd.org/geek.mp3 details the rest of the fun we had from snafu.org. The person who did the hack put himself as technical contact...

Glad we got away with it...

BorisMelnik3• 13 years ago

lol @ meta keywords

InclinedPlane2• 13 years ago

I remember watching the "Hale-Bopp object" fiasco unfold in real time. It's really quite surreal to think about. A person takes a completely innocent picture and it contains a perfectly typical example of CCD bleeding from a background star. And yet in the hands of someone filled with ignorance and a willingness toward self-delusion they are able to convince themselves that it is in fact a picture of an alien space ship trailing the comet. And many other people fall into the same delusion despite many people trying to correct their misperceptions.

And then other folks who have been stewing in their own brand of delusion mix this new delusion with their own eventually leading to mass suicide.

It makes you think about the importance of critical reasoning skills.

shubhamjain• 13 years ago

A town in my state had a similar case where a family of 5 including 3 children committed suicide ( 3 survivors) by consuming poison [1]. Motive? Apparently, they wished to meet Lord Shiva after their death. They even made a video of it where each one was very delighted before the act. In India, lunacy in name of religion is not uncommon but I was deeply disappointed by the kind of foolishness that prevails in my country even with fairly educated people. However, it is surprising how such an incident could happen in US in name of some Sci-Fi Heaven-Earth bullshit.

[1] http://ibnlive.in.com/news/rajasthan-5-of-a-family-commit-su...

joshstrange• 13 years ago

"Lunacy in the name of religion"

Umm... That's par for the course....

girvo• 13 years ago

A tautology, as far as I'm concerned.

inanov• 13 years ago

ReligiousTolerance.org states that:

'A couple of the surviving members of the group who did not "leave" have been maintaining their web site at http://www.heavensgate.com' (http://j.mp/1cKc0KA)

FrankenPC• 13 years ago

Of course I had to contact the Kingdom of Heaven admin to see if they made it to the comet: rep@heavensgate.com.

I wonder if their nads were waiting for them?

elwell2• 13 years ago

i didn't know you could do that!

elwell2• 13 years ago

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHz9it70TdI

testsheep• 13 years ago

What if it was real and they are gods now.

foobar388383• 13 years ago

At the time, the site was hosted by Spacestar Communications (now defunct). Now, it's hosted by Cyrus One.

I wonder who maintains it.

axelfreeman• 13 years ago

There is a full documentary on youtube about "heavensgate". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBTLThA0wOw

16 years after a mass suicide, the webpage is still up

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