[HN Gopher] How do the pros get someone to leave a cult?
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How do the pros get someone to leave a cult?
Author : n1b0m
Score : 120 points
Date : 2025-11-19 12:31 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| internet_points wrote:
| So that works if it's possible to actually reach the person and
| the family agrees that they need help to get out. What if the
| family is part of the problem or is tricked? (I recently read
| https://elan.school/ about this unimaginably horrible Kids for
| Cash-like scheme/cult. The only thing I can think of to prevent
| such things would be to get parents, teachers, lawmakers and
| social workers to read those stories too.)
| komali2 wrote:
| Dude you can't just drop a link like that without warning how
| deep the rabbit hole goes.
|
| You posted this 5 hours ago. It's 2am here and I'm still
| reading from just a few minutes after you posted. This is a
| horrifying train wreck of a story, I can't look away. It's
| unbelievable these things went on for so long!
| mbivert wrote:
| haven't bothered reading it all, but it's just plain awful...
| such coldness is highly disturbing
| meken wrote:
| Fascinating. I would totally watch a TV series on this.
| hn_user82179 wrote:
| Same, I would love this as a quirky detective-type series.
| There's something very adorable about the man buying himself a
| bright green parrot to comfort himself that he must not be very
| good at his job if he can't convince someone to leave an enema-
| cult (I swear, that reads like something out of some author I
| love but I can't think of the name). But also the amount of
| love and empathy it'd take to do this kind of work, and also
| almost private-investigator-type scheming (taking the tour
| through the religious library and passing by the eastern
| spirituality section to establish a common ground and level of
| trust) just adds so many layers
| dzink wrote:
| Trying to read this to the end feels impossible - the Guardian
| keeps flicking the page to show ads and the page refreshes for no
| reason and I'm sure their ads impressions numbers are going
| through the roof. Feels like ad fraud.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Worked fine in Firefox incognito.
| munchler wrote:
| Reader mode. No ads, just text.
| esseph wrote:
| I'm not seeing page refreshes on chrome. It's just a lot of
| fixed sized ad boxes.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I hate ads as much as everyone, but I think you need to at
| least take a modicum of steps to block ads before posting to HN
| that you hate seeing all the ads.
|
| (Perhaps your point though is to broadcast to everyone--who
| presumably are in fact blocking ads--that the site is pure
| awfulness _without_ any ad-blocking. Of course you 're
| preaching to the choir at that point anyway.)
| gjm11 wrote:
| The _Guardian_ attempts to stop you accessing its articles if
| you are using an ad-blocker and don 't have a paid
| subscription. (They didn't always do this. I don't know
| whether they do it uniformly to everyone or whether e.g. it's
| different based on their guess of your location.)
| philipallstar wrote:
| This is like saying "if you don't like train prices then
| don't complain until you've tried jumping the turnstile".
| zen928 wrote:
| Yeah, which is a reasonable statement to make on the
| website TrainHackersAndPassAvoiders.com. I think its
| appropriate if you consider yourself in the culture to be
| reminded of the norms everyone in that culture typically
| follows.
| philipallstar wrote:
| That definitely isn't the topic of this website, though.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| If jumping the turnstile were legal, yeah. So far anyway,
| Reader Mode, and various ad-blockers are still legal.
|
| I see your point generally though: accessing content that
| the publisher has attempted to force you to pay for. My
| general thought though is that it appears to be a failed
| (failing?) business model. I just don't know what the
| solution is. Perhaps if the ads avoided obscuring the
| content (like newspapers and magazines) I would probably
| just ignore them and not actively try to suppress them.
| HeinzStuckeIt wrote:
| The Guardian from a desktop browser started confronting me with
| a paywall about two weeks ago. Can't even see the front page,
| and uBlock Origin doesn't help. Far from encouraging me to
| subscribe, I think this might actually finally cure my news
| addiction.
| gooseus wrote:
| I remember reading The Guardian back in the oughts when they
| were winning awards for their UX and they were my go-to answer
| to the front-end interview question of "Which websites do you
| admire?"
|
| Ha, they even have their "Website of the year" award linked on
| their top banner
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20080704050905/http://theguardia...
| pwg wrote:
| Ublock origin -- blocking the javascript, and the article is
| readable with no page flicking, and no ads at all.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| See https://www.deccanherald.com/world/china-woman-counsels-
| mist...
| pjc50 wrote:
| Some pull quotes, since people seem to be struggling with page
| loading:
|
| > his client, a woman who had recently finished her master's at a
| prestigious university, had been drawn into a scam job. It was
| essentially a pyramid scheme built around a health regimen.
| Before you could sell it, you had to try it, so you knew what you
| were selling.
|
| > The regimen? Multiple enemas a day. "It escalated to 40 to 60
| enemas a day,"
|
| > All groups have a rhythm, like a pulse across the calendar
| year. We have holidays, and we have tax season. There are highs
| and lows.
|
| > Furthermore, Kelly and Ryan urge their clients not to speak
| with the media. The firmest "no" I ever got was when I asked Ryan
| if I could speak to a former client.
|
| > One of their cases in the 90s involved a cult leader who was
| systematically sexually assaulting the group's members. [NB: do
| you have any idea how little that narrows it down]
|
| > the girl's uncle, their client, had a very difficult time
| finding anything positive about the group or the leader who had
| allegedly raped his niece
|
| > What Kelly and Ryan mean when they say these groups are
| "offering something" to people, it is exactly that. There is a
| hole a group fills: alienation from community, family, sexuality;
| pressure to follow a certain life plan, addiction, unrealized
| spirituality, economic catastrophe - all reasons to join a group
| dylan604 wrote:
| 40 to 60 enemas a day? Per person? Even for hyperbole, that
| sounds like a lot.
| pjc50 wrote:
| It is! It's completely insane, and apparently at that level
| significantly harmful. That's why it was deemed to be a cult.
|
| .. but you can also see a lot of slightly less intense
| grassroots health marketing or MLMs that also look very
| culty. Health in particular is a fertile ground for
| microcults.
| ljm wrote:
| I knew one person--shared a flat with them--who was heavily
| into that sort of spiritual-esque alternative health, the
| sort you'd connect to the so-called Woo-to-Q pipeline these
| days, who would subject themselves to that kind of thing. It
| was all about the 'cleanse':
|
| 1. Fast on water for a week 2. Drink a cup of olive oil,
| straight 3. Multiple enemas several times a week 4. Maintain
| a raw vegan diet in between
|
| Throw in the occasional ayahuasca weekend (another cleaning
| ritual involving a rather extreme amount of, uh, purging).
| And for good measure dose yourself on some kind of poisonous
| frog venom for more of the same.
|
| If I didn't know any better I would say there was some cult
| mentality going on, the gateway to manipulation being past
| childhood trauma and a borderline eating disorder. None of it
| seemed particularly healthy.
|
| Although with 40+ enemas a day I don't know how you'd have
| time to do anything else.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > Although with 40+ enemas a day I don't know how you'd
| have time to do anything else
|
| This is what triggered me to questioning even allowing for
| hyperbole. At what point does it become
| kink/fetish/addiction?
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| Maybe "giving yourself enemas for 2 hours straight every
| day" is what they're referring to as "giving yourself
| 40-60 enemas a day". At 2-3 minutes per enema, that's
| plausible. It's also crazy but I think it's supposed to
| be crazy.
| ffsm8 wrote:
| That's roughly one per 20 minutes?
|
| I think that's doable, it likely wasnt a traditional enema,
| they most likely just had to put some fluid in which
| consequently got absorbed by their column. Like 5 ml or so.
|
| Definitely mind boggling people are willing to do such, but
| it's within my expectations for people that fall to such
| obvious scams/cults.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >That's roughly one per 20 minutes? >I think that's
| doable,
|
| I'm thinking of this for someone working in an office
| situation. Depending on how long it takes to perform the
| enema, this is about the same schedule as smokers. So
| maybe it's not so far off??
|
| Then again, I'm guessing you divided that by 24 hours
| rather than a work day. Once per 20 minutes would me no
| sleep which would have worse health effects
| ffsm8 wrote:
| No, I dividend between 16 waking hours - it's a pretty
| easy calculation: 16x3=48, which is within the range of
| 40-60.
|
| If the person did it every 15 minutes it'd be 64 times
| during waking hours, but I felt that "roughly 20 minutes"
| suffices for a time range of 16-20 minutes * _ , *
| bossyTeacher wrote:
| > Throw in the occasional ayahuasca weekend (another
| cleaning ritual involving a rather extreme amount of, uh,
| purging).
|
| Ayahuasca is a psychdelic substance. sure, there is
| vomiting, but that isn't the main part of it just like
| drinking alcohol isn't centered around getting a hangover
| or destroying your brain cells
| ljm wrote:
| I misrepresented it, yes, but learning from my then-time
| friend, the purging aspect was a key aspect of it for
| them. More or less a way of getting 'all that shit' out
| of your system.
|
| That is obviously a perversion of the social act of
| taking ayahuasca in the context of a cult-like situation,
| when you also combine it with the ritual of deep and
| frequent cleansing.
|
| I think a good characterisation of it is Vera in Mr
| Robot, who basically does this and comes back as if he's
| fully enlightened.
| wmeredith wrote:
| Seems like a pure logistics issue to me.
| hn_user82179 wrote:
| The article specifies that it was enough to cause
| hallucinations
| derbOac wrote:
| Interesting read. Framing things as a "cultic relationship" makes
| a lot of sense to me. The part about using your experience as a
| basis of truth determination being flawed and a source of
| vulnerability also was pretty insightful.
|
| I'm a little surprised by mention of pushback and accusations of
| being cult apologists, only because what they're describing as
| their method is pretty similar in principle to some widespread
| and empirically validated therapies for more common things. It's
| just much more invasive, to understate things. I guess at some
| point there are probably basic immediate safety issues that
| arise, where taking time has its own risks.
|
| The piece left me thinking that the reasons people become
| involved with and attached to cults might not be different at
| some fundamental level from a lot of other psychological problems
| they get themselves in -- just a matter of degree or
| pervasiveness.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| > The piece left me thinking that the reasons people become
| involved with and attached to cults might not be different at
| some fundamental level from a lot of other psychological
| problems they get themselves in -- just a matter of degree or
| pervasiveness.
|
| It's kind of hard to articulate but the thing with cult and
| cult-like movements, and also somewhat cons & scams, is the
| "vulnerability" they exploit is the raw material of human
| connection.
|
| A person who is immune to cult recruitment is a person who
| never feels isolation, desire, loneliness, grief, hope, fear of
| loss or lack of control, a person who never wants a hug or
| someone to talk to, who feels nothing at a smile from a
| stranger or the giggle of a baby.
|
| Is that a person worth trying to be? I don't think so. To the
| degree you're open to human connection you're proportionally
| vulnerable to malicious connection too. Everyone, no matter how
| resilient, will go through periods of relative need, want, and
| weakness and at those times they are vulnerable. There are risk
| factors for getting involved, just like with say addiction, but
| no one is completely immune. If the wrong person is around you
| at the wrong time in your life you're in danger.
| pjc50 wrote:
| It's rather like romantic relationships. We do have a drive
| to and benefit from connections with other people, but in
| various circumstances can end up with a "cult of two" (folie
| a deux) mutually destructive situation or a one-sided
| exploitation situation.
| Tade0 wrote:
| > A person who is immune to cult recruitment is a person who
| never feels isolation, desire, loneliness, grief, hope, fear
| of loss or lack of control, a person who never wants a hug or
| someone to talk to, who feels nothing at a smile from a
| stranger or the giggle of a baby.
|
| You're describing a cult leader BTW. I've met one. Scary
| person underneath that mask he was wearing.
|
| Also I now know what a degree in business management is good
| for.
| fluoridation wrote:
| >A person who is immune to cult recruitment is a person who
| never feels isolation, desire, loneliness, grief, hope, fear
| of loss or lack of control, a person who never wants a hug or
| someone to talk to, who feels nothing at a smile from a
| stranger or the giggle of a baby.
|
| Is it? Surely you can feel all those things and also be
| cynical enough to think no group can really provide a
| satisfying alternative.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| A satisfying alternative to what? Some of these things can
| only be provided or alleviated by relationship and
| community.
|
| A cult recruiter (or MLM or whatever) _is_ offering what
| you need, it 's just not a sincere offer. Your ability to
| assess that, to judge which relationships can safely meet
| these needs, is exactly what is compromised by having those
| experiences.
| fluoridation wrote:
| >A satisfying alternative to what?
|
| A satisfying alternative to legitimate connections,
| formed organically.
|
| >A cult recruiter (or MLM or whatever) is offering what
| you need
|
| No, it's offering a shallow facsimile of it, with the
| intent of exploiting you.
|
| >Your ability to assess that, to judge which
| relationships can safely meet these needs, is exactly
| what is compromised by having those experiences.
|
| Yes, that _is_ what I 'm saying. You can be able to enjoy
| all those things you said, _and also_ have the ability to
| judge when someone just wants to manipulate you, or
| exploit you, or when the offer is too good to be true.
| lazide wrote:
| Eh, not really.
|
| A person immune to a cult is not someone who doesn't feel
| those things, but rather a person who can tell when someone
| is pushing those buttons/feelings in a context that is not in
| their best interests - and has the strength to remove
| themselves or fight back.
|
| Arguably, the ones who are most sensitive to cults are those
| who have the biggest buttons for these things AND refuse
| to/are unable to acknowledge when those buttons are being
| pressed (because they 'don't feel it' - but they do, and
| either don't have the tools, or have been trained to not use
| them, to stop them from being pressed.
|
| This comes up really frequently for unhealed past trauma,
| because that is basically what PTSD or bad childhoods do to
| you. Make it so you can't see what's happening clearly, or
| use the wrong tools to deal with what is happening, because
| you've either been overwhelmed with those emotions in the
| past to the point you're relatively numb to them, or you've
| been raised/trained to not respond in a healthy way to them.
|
| Notably, there is a _very_ high correlation with unhealed
| trauma and PTSD with a lot of the conservative voting base
| (but certainly not all!).
| dap wrote:
| I'd strongly recommend the documentary "Behind the Curve". The
| close look at people in (not quite a cult) gave me a visceral
| appreciation for what draws people to it (it provides acceptance
| for people who sorely lack it) and why it can be so hard to leave
| (one's identity becomes so tied up in it).
| mikkupikku wrote:
| I went down the rabbit hole of researching both cults and
| deprogramming groups a few years ago and one of the things which
| I found remarkable was how much overlap in methods there was
| between the two. Different groups go to different extremes, but
| the overlap between the two is such that in many cases they can
| only be distinguished using social context, and in some cases I
| am pretty sure the deprogramming groups are in fact cults
| masquerading as groups to help former cult members because those
| make the best members for new cults.
|
| Interesting space. I'm glad I don't have any personal reason to
| be involved.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| For those who are interested:
|
| I recently read the book "Combatting Cult Mind Control" by Steven
| Hassan, a professional who also helps people leave cults. His
| approach isn't as much of a "long game" as Ryan and Kelly's
| approach. One thing that Hassan explains is that MLMs are often
| very similar to cults, and he also explains the difference
| between cults and religion.
|
| Another book to read is The Running Grave by Robert Galabraith
| (pen name for J.K. Rownling.) One of the detectives joins a cult
| to try and get someone out. The book is well researched and gives
| an insider's view of a cult.
| lawn wrote:
| Steven Hassan also wrote "The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult
| Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control", which is
| very relevant today.
| lazyeye wrote:
| Either that or you lack the life experience, maturity and
| wisdom to accept that people can disagree with you without
| there being a conspiracy involved.
| 47282847 wrote:
| Are you saying that after reading the book? Isn't it pretty
| straightforward to review which methods are used, and
| discriminate based on these methods, without taking a
| position on the content/beliefs/political goals? My
| understanding is that cults share methods of manipulation
| and coercion.
| Refreeze5224 wrote:
| You specifically may not be in the Trump/MAGA cult, and
| there are others who simply do disagree, as you say. But
| there is undoubtedly a cult wing of MAGA. My mother is a
| member, and it checks every single box of cult behavior.
| lawn wrote:
| The author correctly asserts that you don't have to be in
| the cult to support Trump.
| simonw wrote:
| The best thing I have ever read on this subject is
| https://harpers.org/archive/2013/11/the-man-who-saves-you-fr... -
| it is a truly wild ride, profiling David Sullivan, a private
| investigator who specialized in helping people get their loved
| ones out of cults and was based in the San Francisco Bay Area for
| many years.
| vishkk wrote:
| Thank you for sharing -- that was a great read!
| ruralfam wrote:
| Agree with the other reply. Great read, although very
| disturbing. Very.
| dang wrote:
| Discussed once on HN here:
|
| _The Man Who Saves You from Yourself (2013)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7903938 - June 2014 (139
| comments)
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| Fantastic article. And their "light touch" approach seems very
| correct.
|
| Now --
|
| What counts as a cult?
|
| One sufficient condition, in my opinion, would be ritualized
| sexual abuse, especially of children.
|
| But this is baked even into several mainstream religions, if you
| only open your eyes.
|
| What is good, at least, is that, like viruses, cults/religions
| generally evolve to be less harmful to their hosts over time.
| (This is over time scales of multiple human generations. Within a
| single generation, a cult may do just the opposite, as it becomes
| marginalized from society and increasingly normalizes deviance,
| e.g. Aum reacting to humiliation in Japanese elections by
| releasing Sarin.)
|
| Examples of this "taming" process: Flayed prisoners of the Aztecs
| are now dancing skeletons, "local color", used in America to sell
| tacos. Likewise the Abrahamic religions are an evolution of
| animal sacrifice cults, themselves echoing earlier human
| sacrifice cults; they are still shaking off frankly-insane
| practices, but could be worse. The history of LDS provides a less
| dramatic example, but one recent-enough that early stages are
| still well-documented in the historical record.
|
| And if all this sounds New Atheistic, note that I am actually
| quite sympathetic to (almost _apologetic_ for) certain aspects of
| religion (though I increasingly do wonder whether it is religions
| that teach goodness, or whether it is goodness that religions
| must attach themselves to for legitimacy, mixing it with other
| content). (For example I have pushed back, here, against
| characterizations of Christianity as "right wing", as that is
| not at all the content of the New Testament.)
|
| One thing is certain: If a religious identity has bound itself to
| a person, then attacking the person will only strengthen the
| identity. The memetic parasite and the human victim must be
| clearly distinguished. Failure to do this results in violence
| against people which only strengths the meme. Blood for the blood
| god.
|
| I suspect many of these memes can be tamed to the point of
| decency over multiple generations. Though they always carry the
| risk of reversion to older forms. Somehow the "DNA" is still
| there. So I'm not sure. They have to be stabilized to their
| nondestructive manifestations.
|
| I also wonder about "non-religious" cult dynamics, e.g. those
| attached to political movements (both MAGA and woke), or
| financial/moral/credit systems, e.g. crypto.
|
| One of my concerns also is the way that Silicon Valley leaders
| may study these methods not to defend against them but to
| exercise them in the formation of totalizing company cultures.
| Theil and Karp have been explicit about this. It distresses me:
| You should read about the scapegoat mechanism to destroy it, not
| to start using it.
| dboreham wrote:
| Religion and Cult are obviously very similar things, if not in
| some cases just different names for exactly the same thing.
| dfedbeef wrote:
| Yep
| delichon wrote:
| cult (noun): A religion or religious sect generally considered to
| be extremist or false, with its followers often living in an
| unconventional manner under the guidance of an authoritarian,
| charismatic leader -- American Heritage Dictionary
|
| Without the "generally considered to be extremist or false" it
| would be quite hard to even identify a cult. It's mostly used as
| way to slur a disfavored group. It's an element of a Russell
| conjugation, like I am part of a spiritual awakening, you belong
| to a religious sect, they are in a mind-control cult.
|
| I was raised as a Jew. I consider that to be a cult, if one of
| the milder religious ones. My peewee football team was a cult. I
| belonged to a cultic political party, and worked for a startup
| that closely met the definition.
|
| So getting someone to leave a cult is going to be the same as
| getting them to forsake any other community, just with the added
| coercion of social acceptability. There's no magic, no brain
| unwashing, it's the same kind of persuasion used to sell a vacuum
| cleaner.
| nkrisc wrote:
| > Without the "generally considered to be extremist or false"
| it would be quite hard to even identify a cult.
|
| Well, yes, if you remove the thing that distinguishes a cult
| from those other things, then it is hard to distinguish them.
| exasperaited wrote:
| To my mind that definition lacks any accuracy because it
| doesn't speak about control. It's difficult to leave cults,
| and not because of belief (apostasy). It's difficult to leave
| cults because they destroy your outward connections, as a
| principle of operation.
| simonw wrote:
| I quite like the term "high-control group", though
| interestingly it doesn't have a Wikipedia page.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| > Without the "generally considered to be extremist or false"
| it would be quite hard to even identify a cult.
|
| The extremism is an integral part of what makes folks regard
| something a cult. Would anyone have cared that NXIVM was
| running dodgy self-improvement seminars upstate, if they hadn't
| also been coercing and branding women?
|
| > I consider that to be a cult, if one of the milder religious
| ones
|
| Various sects within the various organised religions certainly
| qualify as cults. I think a fair case could be made for many of
| the milder ones as well, on the basis of how they tend to treat
| women/children/etc (restrictive rules about
| clothing/education/personal-freedom/etc)
| exasperaited wrote:
| Extremism is separate from coercion. It's entirely possible
| to have a coercive cult that has non-extreme beliefs.
|
| Jonestown was, in several ways, a cult with non-extreme
| beliefs. They did have a charismatic and dangerously mentally
| ill leader (who did not start out by any means as an awful
| person).
|
| But they collectively isolated themselves, rather than
| cutting off ties. And they did initially because of quite
| radical small-L liberal beliefs as well as politically
| socialist beliefs. Things that non-cult people think now.
|
| It did not become truly coercive as a power structure until
| quite late on, mostly when they had isolated themselves and
| in many cases become physically ill, and in part it was still
| a collective delusion.
|
| Even then, in many ways, Jonestown beliefs were not
| particularly extreme in a broad evangelical sense (rather
| than a US white evangelical sense, which is now a culture
| that could be defined largely non-religiously) if you
| specifically put aside their individually extreme devotion to
| Jones.
| toasterlovin wrote:
| > I belonged to a cultic political party
|
| Minor thing, but I prefer 'cultish' to 'cultic' for your usage.
| In academia, 'cultic' means anything to do with worship and
| lacks the association with cults as discussed in this thread,
| whereas 'cultish' is how I usually see people adjectivize
| 'cult' in the way you are doing.
| pton_xd wrote:
| > It's mostly used as way to slur a disfavored group.
|
| I generally agree. The divide between religion and cult is just
| a distinction between what's deemed acceptable behavior by
| society. Obsessing over a person who died thousands of years
| ago? Totally "normal." Obsessing over a single living person?
| Totally a cult.
| exasperaited wrote:
| > The divide between religion and cult is just a distinction
| between what's deemed acceptable behavior by society.
|
| This is misconception. It's not about the extremism of the
| belief. It's about the mechanism of control.
|
| Take the "cults" of the moment: Qanon/MAGA, for example,
| operate like a personality cult in many identifiable ways,
| but are not actually cults, because you can leave without
| much difficulty if you set your mind to it.
|
| On the fringes US politics encourages ostracising family
| members who do not agree, but these movements do not have a
| mechanism of control (financial control combined with a
| commitment to cutting off family members).
|
| There may be cult sects within MAGA/QAnon that get close,
| perhaps (just as there are at the fringes of all strange and
| mainstream religious beliefs)
| pton_xd wrote:
| > It's not about the extremism of the belief. It's about
| the mechanism of control.
|
| > but are not actually cults, because you can leave without
| much difficulty if you set your mind to it.
|
| By that definition Islam should be considered a cult as it
| calls for severe consequences for apostasy, ranging from
| social ostracism to the death penalty. However it's not a
| cult, it's a mainstream religion.
|
| Same with Judaism; interfaith marriages are highly
| discouraged (re: prohibited) by Orthodox Jews, which is
| another mechanism of control. But again, not a cult. Why is
| that?
|
| My argument is it has nothing to do with the beliefs or
| mechanisms of control or anything, really. It's purely
| what's normalized by society vs what is considered aberrant
| behavior.
| exasperaited wrote:
| > By that definition Islam should be considered a cult as
| it calls for severe consequences for apostasy, ranging
| from social ostracism to the death penalty. However it's
| not a cult, it's a mainstream religion.
|
| I make the distinction elsewhere that it is not the
| belief structure (e.g. apostasy) that I am talking about.
|
| I am talking about how a cult cuts you off from non-
| believers entirely, and that is combined with financial
| control.
|
| Islam, Judaism, they do neither of these things, at an
| individual level. And Islam really lacks "cult control"
| mechanisms because it has such a limited concept of
| hierarchy of faith or obedience to any non-family
| authority.
|
| Cults work at the deeply personal, individual level.
| stevemadere wrote:
| It's definitely a cult for elected officials who join
| (according to your discriminating criterion)
| exasperaited wrote:
| That is an interesting concept. But actually, even in
| this extreme situation, relatively few Trumper officials
| have no friends on the other side of the aisle; that will
| change over time as things become even more impossible to
| defend, but the "it's just a gig" aspect of it has not
| entirely faded.
|
| There is definitely more "control" at the executive
| branch level: FBI people have literally been told they
| will be fired if they don't cut off contact with former
| FBI Trump critics.
|
| But even so, being told you will be fired is small beer
| compared to how proper cults deal with dissent, and the
| level of control (you won't get a job in this town) is
| different to the level of psychological control a proper
| cult wields.
|
| They will get there over time, I think.
| exasperaited wrote:
| This is not a useful definition of a cult, though it is a short
| one.
|
| The primary characteristic of a cult is that adherents find it
| difficult to leave, not because of the specific beliefs of the
| religion (e.g. Islam) but because of the mechanism of control.
|
| "Unconventional manner" doesn't really cut it.
|
| The key definition of a contemporary cult from the perspective
| of someone who has seen people join one is that the cult turns
| people inward to the cult and encourages them to cut off not
| just friends who question their belief but ultimately all non-
| cult friends and family.
|
| In fact you could argue that the primary quality of a
| mainstream religion is that it points itself outwards towards
| non-believers and does not condition receiving its care on
| belief itself.
|
| For example, the Unification Church is on a slow trajectory
| towards mainstream religion. The University Bible Fellowship,
| absolutely a cult and quite a scary one, is not on that
| trajectory.
| komali2 wrote:
| I think most definitions of cults are too brief. To truly be a
| cult I reflect on the cults I've read about.
|
| For example, cults have a tendency to make members feel safer
| as members of the cult, which can be done by making "outsiders"
| seem hostile and "insiders" seem safe: see for example Mormons
| and Jehovah's witnesses sending people out to bother people
| door to door, which results in them getting yelled at by non
| Mormons.
|
| Cults often require one's entire social circle to be cult
| members. This comes with the threat of total social isolation
| from friends and loved ones if you fall out of the cult and are
| made incommunicado. Thus while I like to cheekily refer to
| religions as cults, most major religions these days don't fall
| into this category in this highly diversified world.
| rboyd wrote:
| wait a minute here..
|
| HN:
|
| - asks you to self-assign a new name upon joining
|
| - has a leader
|
| - has a hierarchy (rating system)
|
| - esteemed texts which promise by adopting a strange method
| (Lisp) that you can achieve higher levels of wealth and self
| actualization
|
| should I be worried?
| cj wrote:
| First sentence of the wikipedia page for "Cult":
|
| > Cults are social groups which have unusual, and often
| extreme, religious, spiritual, or philosophical beliefs and
| rituals.
|
| HN is definitely a social group with unusual and often extreme
| philosophical beliefs that often aren't mainstream. (And that's
| why I keep coming back!)
| chinathrow wrote:
| > should I be worried?
|
| No, you can (ok, I admit: try) to leave any time.
|
| /etc/hosts 127.0.0.1 news.ycombinator.com
| TiredOfLife wrote:
| Good old "how to stop smoking?" "just stop smoking"
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| What if there's a forward proxy listening on 127.0.0.1
|
| I don't run mine on 127.0.0.1 but that address is a very
| popular default
| hexaga wrote:
| 127.0.0.2
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| You're supposed to use 0.0.0.0 for site blocks.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0.0.0.0
| xg15 wrote:
| If you go that route, at least change the password to some
| random string to lock yourself out.
|
| But that's not leaving either. Your posts are still out
| there, and so is your account. In fact, no one except you
| would know you left.
|
| There is a reason why the EU mandated the right to deletion.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > If you go that route, at least change the password to
| some random string to lock yourself out.
|
| I do that once in a while when I find myself wasting too
| much time participating here. It increases the friction
| quite a bit, but eventually I cave and recover the
| password.
|
| If you really want to be serious about it, have to change
| the email address first, then toss the keys to that.
| dogleash wrote:
| >should I be worried?
|
| If you read Hackers and Painters without realizing you're
| getting conned, yes. Very much so.
| invalidOrTaken wrote:
| for several years now my resume has labeled me a "Software
| Cultist"
| TrainedMonkey wrote:
| People want to belong. If you do not belong to anything that
| looks like a cult you operate outside of society.
| stevenjgarner wrote:
| Okay I'm going to ask. Is anybody else here playing Living
| Colour's "Cult of Personality" while they read this? [1]
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xxgRUyzgs0
| stevemadere wrote:
| Why did the original post for which these are the discussions
| disappear from HN? I cannot even find it with a word search and
| it should not have been displaced from the top 30 yet.
| Thorrez wrote:
| It's #36 right now. That's on page 2.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/news?p=2
|
| This search also shows it:
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=last24h&page=0&prefix=fals...
| skeezyjefferson wrote:
| i stopped after reading these two were taken in by promises of
| levitation. i dont care how attractive the cult is, youre an
| idiot to believe it
| GoToRO wrote:
| fun fact: if you get some chronic illness, you have good
| chances to become an idiot. Every time your body stops working
| in some major way, your thinking is also affected (you become a
| de facto idiot).
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| Otherwise intelligent people think software is sentient now.
| People believe weird things. We need to have compassion rather
| than write them off as idiots.
| lawn wrote:
| Even the most intelligent people in the world are susceptible
| to the mind control techniques that eventually make you believe
| the unbelievable.
|
| You're simply uninformed if you believe otherwise.
| energy123 wrote:
| I posit that those podcasters and streamers in the modern media
| environment are like cult leaders. It's a spectrum from
| journalist to entertainer to cult leader and we're tilting more
| towards the latter. The market finds a way.
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