Live data from Hacker News

How do the pros get someone to leave a cult?

theguardian.com

21–30 of 145 posts

Re: How do the pros get someone to leave a cult?

#23
post #8

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.

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.)

Re: How do the pros get someone to leave a cult?

#25
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you should! This could also be a guide for how to win elections. But it's a huge undertaking. Learning their mythology and being dispassionately conversant in it is not easy. To completely erase your ego and work only in pursuit of manipulation... Well, it's no surprise to me that it's a job, and that they aren't trying to do it on their own families. It's not clear you should try to do that to your own family.…

I would be curious how these conversations with maga families would go if one truly adopted the methodology of the men mentioned in the article. I liked they philosophy of basically engaging in deep, true good faith understanding of the person's view and group, as well as for the deprogrammer, leaving as much of your personal beliefs at the door, and accepting that you can't really know truth, that truth is more a fe…

[dead]

Re: How do the pros get someone to leave a cult?

#27
post #8

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.

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.

Re: How do the pros get someone to leave a cult?

#29
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

Post reply on HN