> I still can't believe anyone ever took Roko's Basilisk seriously, but people did... to the point of freaking out about it.

If you've spent much time in US Christian circles you've probably encountered people suffering from apocalyptic thinking. The Roko's Basilisk folks seem like the atheist version of the same crowd. It's hard to take them seriously when they're always seeing portents of the end times, and their thinking is clearly clouded by anxiety and fear and not based in reality.