Scientology Speedrun Trend

Founded in 1953 by Ron Hubbard and is based on the belief that humans are immortal spiritual beings "thetans" trapped in physical bodies with past-life traumas “engrams”. It focuses on spiritual rehabilitation through "auditing," a counseling process aimed at achieving the state of "Clear" and "Operating Thetan".In the highest levels, there exists a being known as Xenu, that is only seen in the secret, upper-level doctrine According to L. Ron Hubbard, Xenu was the alien ruler of a 76-planet Galactic Confederacy who brought billions of people to Earth 75 million years ago, killing them with hydrogen bombs in volcanoes and creating "body thetans" that cause modern spiritual trauma. While Ron Hubbard was notably a science fiction novelist, with books like Battlefield Earth, he was also the founder of the church of Scientology, a secretive and mysterious religion whose inner workings have been unknown, until, that is, the introduction of the Scientology Speedrun

An example of a Scientology Speedrun

While interest in the inner workings of scientology has been around for years, with the rise in social media, youth have decided to answer the questions themselves, albeit by running through the large Scientology church buildings. The trend of Scientology speedruns usually includes a person or multiple people charging past the front desk workers and into the back levels of the scientology buildings by running, shoving, or pushing members out of the way to achieve this goal, eventually, they do get detained and brought out, and in some cases, even arrested. This fact, though, seems like a risk many are willing to take for a viral video. But the question remains, what are the ethics of breaking into a building and disrupting the work and lives of scientologists, and on the flip side, is it ok because they’re scientologists. “ Majority of people who are in higher levels of the religion are among the super rich, being top donors of the likes of Tom Cruise and John Travolta. This can lead to some questions about the morality of the things these people do leading many to justify speedrunning as an act of defiance or resistance against these celebrities and the church that seems to be preying on unexpecting people who just want a better life.

Even though the trend may be absurd and it could possibly create massive conflict between scientologists and the internet, it perfectly captures modern internet culture: if something exists online, someone will eventually try to speedrun it.