Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/02/15/man-claims-walgreens-fridges-are-the-gateway-to-the-apocalypse-video.html
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ETA
As the contraption opened its door, does this guy already have the mark of the Beast? Is he a Beastie boy?
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I’ve seen those in at the Walgreens in Berkeley, on the campus and in more affluent areas. Ironically, they are often not in working order.
They seem like a needless waste of money time and energy, so yeah:
late-stage capitalism, at it’s “finest.”
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Same old tune with a new melody.
I was taught, as a youth 30 years ago, that the mark of the beast (or the number 666) was just around the corner. Fear of microchips and bar codes were the thing at the time if I remember correctly.
The apocalypse is always just over the horizon, for some people.
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A couple of years ago one of the local supermarkets installed a widget in the refrigerated section that would make clucking sounds or moo-ing sounds as appropriate. I’m not sure if it was eventually vandalized or if some measure of sanity was otherwise restored.
(This was around the same time they installed a bell at the front with an invitation to “Ring if you got great service!”. The cashiers were apparently obliged to stop and applaud whenever it was rung. Heartbreaking, truly.)
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I remember being informed by the responsible church people that during the time of the beast there would be peace.
Now i know why, all the xtians would be whisked away.
Don’t let the rapture door hit ya!
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That may not be far off the mark, but methinks the perpetrators will not be the people he suspects…
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If you don’t have the mark you won’t be able to get corporate labeled products…I’m actually ok with that. 
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You do; I was pentecostal when I was an adolescent and the fear mongering was a constant; the bar codes, the microchips, backward masking in music, tattoos… on and on, ad nauseum.
Meanwhile, I actually read their holy book cover to cover; and in doing so, I noticed that more than 90% of that congregation was only ‘talking the talk’ without actually walking that walk.
If there’s one thing I hate just as much as I hate bullies, it’s fucking hypocrites.
So I quit attending the year before I went off to college, and I never looked back.
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Oh… this guy hasn’t been in a Whole Foods yet:
The Hill: How does Whole Foods’ new palm reader payment system work?
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Not just Walgreens!
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I’m looking forward to the day we need the mark of the beast to buy things personally.
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I’m guessing that someone in C-Suite got a bonus for using the words, “AI”, “Surveillance” and “Cloud”.
When I used to work in a Police Station, we’d send off prints to Scotland Yard to be added to the database. These included finger and palm prints. I liked to imagine a dusty office, overlooking Victoria Embankment, where clairvoyants would be employed to look at the palm prints, and do some spooky “pre-crime” nonsense.
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It would probably not surprise you that, years ago, I saw a pamphlet from the 1930s informing the credulous that the new Social Security numbers were the prophesied Mark of the Beast.
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He concludes, “The stage is set.”
Yes. Long ago, for an absurdist tragicomedy… and he’s the main character.
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Wireless-connected to Psychic Readings By Frances
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I sense a Netflix show in your future.
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I did have major appliances spying on you and judging you on my Apocalypse Bingo card…
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