And Now for a Newsletter... About Cults
Yes, really.
Hey, hey! I’m in the middle of collating my end-of-year thoughts, and have been greatly enjoying The Gilded Age, Doctor Who, and The Fall of the House of Usher.
During these dark and dreary winter months, I often put documentaries on in the background while I’m questionably knitting or painting. And, for some reason, I landed on documentaries about cults including: Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God, The Vow (based on NXVIUM), and the cult undertones in Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets. I even watched this YouTube! deep-dive into The Cult of I AM recommended by K Tempest Bradford.
All of these documentaries have a few things in common, and apparently I have Things To SayTM that at least two of you are interested in reading.
Every single time a cult gets exposed, there’s a sense of wonder and morbid fascination. How did the cult form? Who knew that bad behavior was happening? Etc. Etc. Etc. And every single time, it’s easy to see what happens after the fact, but not while shizzit is going down.
“Why do people join a cult?” you might wonder. Why? Well, my feeling is that the people who are attracted to cults and cult leaders are people trying to find a sense of belonging, purpose, and community. No, intelligence is not a factor, in my opinion, because intelligent people can get wrapped up in a cult just as easily as someone who’s not considered smart. The primary issue, in my mind, is whether or not that person is lost and is seeking direction—because this openness is perceived as vulnerability by bad actors. The reason why cults and, by extent cult leaders, are so effective at brainwashing people is because the roots of those three elements—belonging, purpose, and community—are found in communities and organizations that aren’t a cult. For example, if you’ve ever been to a multi-level marketing (MLM) meeting, there’s the sense that you belong because everyone has a shared purpose (financial success) and this financial dream is the cornerstone of community to help members succeed. Unfortunately, one of the reasons why cults and cult leaders work so well is because they build off of existing, accepted structures, either spiritual or business-related with some hook, to lure people in.
The other reason why I believe that cults are so effective, especially in the After Times, is because nobody ever truly expects the people powering communities to be flies on toast—especially if that person is celebrated in some fashion vis-a-vis awards, popularity, money, etc. Cult leaders are extremely adept at protecting themselves and securing a shared illusion. It does take time to perceive their nonsense and some amount of effort that, unfortunately, costs the whistleblower.
The Vow (Episode 1) brilliant relays what happens when one member’s rose-colored glasses cracks. When Bonnie first shared her feelings, others did not perceive what was happening or why. Then, when the documentary portrayed the trap that closed following her revelation, it all felt too real. Not only did the people involved wanted to make sure she was happy, they wanted to protect the cult by ensuring she didn’t have any hard feelings, and her husband would also tow the line.
Here, the reason why it took so long for the illusion to break down, is because we find out that social forms of blackmail and coercion were used to keep people in line. And, not to be understated, just because Bonnie saw through the illusion didn’t mean that other people in her life did, too. There’s a line, though, from The Vow that I want to point out, because this type of abusive tactic is extremely common among bad actors. “He got my best friend to spy on me. I thought I was going crazy.”
Gaslighting is common not only for isolated victims, but also for people who are waking up to the truth. In a digital age, it’s fairly common for abusers and bullies of all stripes to isolate individual social media users and use these tools to harm. Unfortunately, social media profiles are public and can be weaponized because they provide information about you, personally, that bad actors use to their benefit.
Just to be crystal clear, there are costs for cult members to expose the truth. The cult and, by extent, its leaders may:
Scrutinize a member’s social media accounts
Contact a member’s close friends/family and build a relationship with them
Plant spies/loyalists in friend circles to protect their popularity and reputation
Leverage tangible rewards to cover mistakes (or to the member’s peers) so their victims remain silent
Assign themselves as the de facto gatekeeper for a larger community, and then actively gatekeep members out of tangentially-related groups to further isolate them
Buy fake websites and/or use social media and the press to bully/intimidate members
Find out personal details or fabricate falsehoods to discredit members
And the list goes on and on…
In the hands of a cult leader, digital tools for connection becomes a nuclear bomb. As every documentary shows, people who step forward to expose a cult leader do so at great cost without even realizing how much they’ll lose. Not only are victims not believed and require in-the-moment receipts, they risk the exact opposite of the three reasons why they felt so connected to the cult in the first place. Instead of belonging, they are isolated. Instead of having a purpose, they are left defending their decision to leave. Instead of being in a community, they are ultimately exiled.
There's also common misperception that victims must be weak or vulnerable to fall into a cult—which winds up working against folks who need to process the hurt and come forward. Except, cult leaders are master manipulators who know exactly how to weaponize basic interactions. Again, I don’t think most people expect to have a conversation with someone and worry that person might be an abuser or cult leader. Nobody walks into a community for the first time thinking: “Yes, I want to give up my opinions, my bodily autonomy, my finances!”
Whether they’re a narcissist, con artist, or both—cult leaders use people the way you might use a hammer and a nail. And, I expect cult activity will likely increase, too, because the epidemic of loneliness has skyrocketed and we are immersed in so much content it’s hard to know what’s true and what’s not. Recruiters prey on people who seem lost, confused, and lonely. Sometimes, as is the case with so many cults, the recruiters themselves may not even realize they’re in a cult, either, which ends up helping cement leadership’s control of information, image, finances, behavior, etc. so everyone fits a model image of their choosing to further protect the cult.
Because cults function best by drawing from real-world traditions, spirituality, and beliefs, certain religious groups are often conflated with a cult. In “Are Women More Susceptible to Cults,” Amanda Montell talks about this phenomenon and addresses how no cult ticks every box and no church does either. I don’t think there ever will be a neat checklist of diagonistic criteria for cults, either, because communities are living organisms that can be healthy or sick depending on the composition of its structure, members, and leaders. Both cults and religious groups are communities no matter how healthy or dysfunctional they are. Some groups, however, are so sick and there’s no remedy to heal them other than for that community to disband.
Cults are an example of how the truth is more terrifying than fiction. In real life, someone preyed on multiple human beings to chip away at their humanity and individualism for their own nefarious reasons. Yikes! With all that said, I feel I should do my duty and mention there’s tons of other articles written by subject-matter experts on the subject. Want to know what to watch out for? Read How to Identify a Cult.
Lastly, if you're creating cults for fiction or games, keep in mind that cults operate on a shared reality and do contain many brainwashed and trapped victims who possess their own personalities, relationships, and lives. A cult is a dysfunctional-slash-abusive community that has certain tenets—but it doesn’t mean that every member is aware of the harm (or, by extent, the harm they’re causing) or is able to leave. Sometimes, people get trapped in terrible situations and either don’t know how to get out, cannot pay the cost of leaving, or are prevented from escaping.
On that not-so-cheerful note... I am turning my attention to Not-Cult documentaries for a little while at least.
Got comments? Recs? Please chime in!