Quarter Pounders and 1 liter bottles of diet Coke? How many college students are Breatharians and just don’t realize it?
Some things just can’t be parodied.
This blog pretty well sums up why the “two sides” of this issue aren’t getting equal attention: There is only one side to this issue.
and
As to quarter pounders for Breatharians, the Sungazers apparently prefer Burger King:
Au contrair. Not a matter of opinion at all. Just simple hard facts. Any reputable opthomoligist will tell you NOT TO LOOK AT THE SUN. Doing so will do irreparable damage to the retina of the eye.
Holy men of India practice this daily from sun up to sundown, are blind as a bat to their surroundings, seeing nothing at all.
Help yourself if you want to go blind, otherwise wear good sunglasses. They provide protection from glare. Not to be used to look at the sun.
Welder’s helmelt filters in the darkest shade available (#12) IIRC is what to ask for at the welders supply shop.
Even when I was a kid, I was told not to stare directly at the sun. I don’t really think this has to do with lack of education. This has to do with being 100% delusional. I’m talking about delusional to the point where I highly doubt there would be cure. I don’t even think many years of intense therapy would help. This is almost as bad as believing that there is a boogeyman under the bed.
Au contraire yerself. Inasmuch as the question was supposedly “has anyone had any experience of this?”, it’s suited to IMHO.
The risks have nothing to do with the choice of forum: “Have you ever tried drilling holes in your head?” is a question for the IMHO forum.
Actually, as a question with a factual answer, it should be in GQ.
Not usefully. The GQ answer to “has anyone had experience of sungazing?” Is “yes someone has.”
I’m not unaware that there are facts about sungazing which are ripe for description in GQ, nor that sungazers make claims that are appropriate for debate in GD. But neither of those scenarios are what I’m talking about.
This WAS originally posted in GQ. When it turned into a farcical circus, completely off topic, it was moved to GD.
One only need read the original post to see how it has digressed to the point where the original question was not answered. Most posters seemed to be more interested in debating the question than trying to provide any type of informed answer.
I merely asked if anyone had any experience or knew of anyone that practices Sungazing. I never received any answer from anyone with any first hand knowledge but plenty of answers from people that condemn the question itself.
If you only wanted responses from people who have actually engaged in this practice, you should probably tried a forum devoted to sungazing, if there is one, or similar practices. I know you’re to the Straight Dope forums, but there’s just no way that any committed sungazers hang out on this message board. That being said, you received a lot of replies that were on topic and relevant even if you did not get what you want. (There’s a song about that.) And frankly I’m surprised you had such a problem with the disparagement of sungazing. Aside from the fact that the concept is absurd, you titled the thread “Sungazing…WTF?” That suggests a little skepticism from you, too.
If no one else has anything to add to this thread except discussions of what forum it should have been posted in or more complaints from the OP about the responses he got, I will lock this.
Regarding the question of “awardwinning”, I contacted the director to ask him about it, and he responded that Eat The Sun won the Jury Award at the United Chicago Film Festival. I wrote back to him to see what he thought about Mason Dwinell and the whole Sungazing movement but haven’t gotten a response.
This is the original question. As you can plainly see I asked if anyone had any first hand knowledge or knew anyone that had practiced it. I wanted answers from objective observers, not people from a website with obvious biases.
I can’t figure out why this question was so easily misunderstood.
I even got jokes from moderators. Sheesh!
Please note post #53. The film director has acknowledged accompanying the subject of the film to an eye exam where they learned his retinas were burned. That should certainly answer the question of whether eye damage will result from the practice, and it’s as close to first hand as you are likely to get. That is aside from any conceivable benefit from doing it, of course.
It wasn’t misunderstood at all. People who did not have direct or second-hand experience with sungazing contributed what information they had. This is usually called “helping,” although it apparently did not live up to your lofty expectations. If you think this forum is biased, then starting a thread here was a very strange decision.
If you continue complaining in this thread (instead of the Pit, where that kind of thing belongs), at minimum you’ll be warned for violating my instructions.
Fine! Fine! Fine!! I’ll answer the question:
“No.”
There. It’s done. You have your answer. We can lock this thread now.
I got a response from Peter Seluin (the director/producer) to my second question, and he gave me permission to post it here.
I asked, “Just out of curiosity, what’s your opinion about what Mason Dwinell did and the whole “sungazing” movement?”
He responded:
except it turns out you wanted it to be an opinion poll + hence my suggestion that it would be better suited to IMHO.
The subject matter itself is farcical. Your expectations weren’t very realistic. Many of the posts people responded with were quite on topic - they just weren’t what you wanted to hear.
What makes you imagine that people who do any particular thing are also going to be objective about it?
Now that’s a diplomatic answer.
So, just curious. Did you ever ask the question on a message board where you were likely to find sungazing practitioners? If you have, I’d be interested in hearing what you learned.