My attempted cult recruitment
dynomight.net
dynomight.net
They're so personable that you're thinking oh nice, I have a new friend and agree to have coffee. Then the second steps and on as the author mentions happens where they start to ask personal questions like if you're happy in life, what would it be like to not have any debt, retire early, etc.
This all happens over two-three meetings where they then start to talk about they have a group or mentor they work with that can get you going with your life goals.
We never made it into the actual meet the group / mentor part as we knew at this point something felt scammy about it and broke off contact after that.
IMO, serendipitous conversations are a key part of a healthy society. Few things have as strong of a humanizing effect.
This, unfortunately, is EXACTLY what high pressure religions/cults/MLMs use to their advantage.
I was a mormon missionary and one of the things we were taught to look out for is things to humanize ourselves. Literally "If you see toys in the yard, ask them about their kids. Are they washing a car? Ask if you can help. Was there a death in the family? Talk to them about mormon heaven." etc.
The key, here, was all about conversion. You find an opening and then try and wedge yourself in (with the ultimate goal of getting a new convert, because you are "saving" them).
Other cults are certainly worse (NEVER go to a "private" meeting!), but it's something to realize. Cults are successful because they try and use genuine humanizing effects to bring in new members.
I deliberately went to a private meeting to see how all of this worked, and it was me and two recruiters with a huge picture of the cult leader.
Super awkward. We asked each other a lot of questions.
One of mine was "Are you sure you're not a cult?"
"Oh no. We're definitely not a cult. Why would you think that? Ha ha. Oh dear. No."
As cults go, I didn't get the impression they were very successful.
They even try to sound crazy, to discourage well-adapted people.
Like a Nigerian scammer who deliberately uses bad grammar so the only responders are people with dementia.
My experience with cults comes from being part of a large, mainstream church that had cooky and predatory groups operating at the margins of the congregation.
They would target new members who had severe issues: drug abuse, mental illness, having been trafficked.
I’m not sure if the Mormons have anything similar. I read about extreme fundamentalist Mormon groups, but they don’t seem to be recruiting mentally ill/drug addicted mainstream Mormons.
Many people drive cars. Some people kill others with theirs, sometimes intentionally. We should not then assume every person driving a car is on the warpath.
The issue is that cult interactions are crafted to specifically play on social norms. They are HIGHLY manipulative. I'm not saying that you should assume everyone is a manipulator, but you should at least have a little caution while talking to strangers.
I had a college roommate that invited me out to pizza with him and another roommate. I accepted (what could be more normal) and he drove. It was a fucking "pesticide salesman" pitch. That was the last semester I roomed with them.
What is a "pesticide salesman" pitch?
Aptive Environmental looks to be the pesticide MLM.
So you’ve never been to Boston
I was in Boston a while back and I came to a crossroads. There was no stop sign, no light, nothing. I eventually just had to... go. I got to my hotel and I asked about it, and the concierge was like, "oh, its just like that". I asked how people are supposed to know to stop (or not to) and he replied, "you just know". It baffled me because _clearly_ you don't just know.. because I was there and I didn't know. What happens if two people just drive through the intersection at the same time.
I get it that crossroads exist like this in the open nowhere. But... in a city? It was mind-boggling to me. Plus... the street layout in Boston was done by throwing pounds spaghetti at a wall and then trying to match the pattern that stuck.
In Boston, even though everyone drove aggressive, they were predictable. So I felt fine.
Whereas in San Fran, while not as aggressive, other drivers were just random. So I was terrified.
I'm older now, with much reduced acuity and reaction times. My recent visit to El Paso was the most nervous driving experience that I remember. Way worse than LA. I felt like a dog trying to paddle upstream, surrounded by river otters playing.
YMMV.
My comment was a response to ‘I asked how people are supposed to know to stop (or not to) and he replied, "you just know". It baffled me because _clearly_ you don't just know.. because I was there and I didn't know.’
When I got my license in New York I studied for the written test from a booklet that the DMV gave out. This exact situation was in there. It’s not complicated. But you’re right, there will be accidents, because, even though there are still driving tests, people drive around with “red means stop, green means go” as the only rule that’s stuck in their heads. At least in the US.
I don't know the traffic accidents stats, but overall the system really does rely on people knowing the rules as opposed to signalization, and it (mostly) seemed to cut down on time spent waiting.
You got there without incident didn't you?
Those sorts of intersections get treated like N-way rolling stops in practice. If there's someone who'll obviously be there first everyone adjusts speed so everyone can roll it without stopping. If multiple vehicles arrive at the same time negotiations ensue.
In Europe you give way to the car to your right and that's it. In the rare case where there's a car going in every possible direction, you just honk it out or light signal until one goes first.
For example, in the UK, roundabouts will be perhaps signposted as coming up - but when you get there, you just yield to the cars already in it, because that's the base law. In the US, roundabouts are less common, and they have a yield sign at every entrance.
Boston is, however, a deviation. Many roads date to the founding of the city and are much like older European cities in terms of layout, but lack any modern signposting.
ORS 811.275
(1) A person commits the offense of failure to yield the right of way at an uncontrolled intersection if the person is operating a motor vehicle that is approaching an uncontrolled highway intersection and the person does not look out for and give right of way to any driver on the right simultaneously approaching a given point, regardless of which driver first reaches and enters the intersection.
I'd expect they exist in most places in the US.
Yes, it does. But getting permission to drive is cheap and easy in the US, and many people don't know the rules of the road.
> There are essentially no intersections that are not controlled at all by either specific signs or lights.
There are lots of intersections without signs or lights, IME (admittedly, I haven't driven everywhere in the US.)
If I encountered an intersection with no signage at all, the default expectation would be four-way stop.
The US has the concept, but it's not (in California, at least) the default rule for an uncontrolled intersection. For a regular uncontrolled intersection, it is treated as a four-way yield, only a blind intersection (one with less than 100 foot visibility in any direction in the last 100 feet of approach) is treated as a four-way stop.
Still have to say though that this is less of an issue recently. Many fewer missing traffic signs than there used to be. I don't care for it :)
And a friend was stopped when driving on the wrong side of mass ave (a divided road with a barrier). The cop stopped us, give us both a stern talking to, and then let us go on our merry way.
* She is a physicist and her defense to me was “I was only driving in one direction”
A looong time ago, after the business part of a phone interview, I was chatting with a recruiter who'd moved from Boston to South Florida and he asked me 'Is traffic ...different... here?'
I gave him Dave Barry's explanation: "Everyone here drives according to the rules of their country of origin."
Which reminds me of Sao Paulo. I've never seen more aggressive driving or been gladder that I wasn't driving than in Sao Paulo.
I’ve had friends joke about going into the scientology temple in Hollywood as a joke. I always warn against it; cult recruiters are practiced and you are not.
However, I've also done some backpacking on the Appalachian Trail several years ago, and it's far more socially acceptable to start up a conversation with random people you meet along the way. It's understood that we're all strangers but we have a shared goal of hiking the trail, and what else are we going to do when we stop for the night other than chat a bit with the other people in the area?
Had almost nothing but positive experiences speaking with random people while hiking, except for one nutcase (trail name was Mountain Lion) who was carrying a firearm and disclosed to me that he was kicked out of the military for mental health reasons (got to appreciate his honesty, though). I made sure to put as much distance between the two of us ASAP. Later found out he ran out of food, tried to steal from other people, and had to get airlifted out after getting injured. Good times.
I think what it boils down to for me is this: the world is full of loons. If we don't allow ourselves to be open to spontaneous interactions, the average spontaneous interaction we have is more likely to be one involving a loon. Those memories also tend to be more salient because of their negativity, so we need to be intentional in remembering all of the lesser but positive experiences we've had with strangers.
the vancouver area was plagued with the "because I'm a girl" charity muggers for years downtown
I had one accost me and launch into her long spiel without me being able to stop her. When she finally paused to ask me something, I had to tell her I didn't speak Finnish.
(Of course she spoke english but didn't press after that. And now that I think of it, and on-topic I had a similar thing happen with mormons pitching me in German in the Köln area. When they found out I couldn't understand them, they - as Americans - switched to English and we had an interesting conversation between strangers about why we were all there. They did not try to further sell me on the religion other than some very fleeting "if you're interested" as we parted. Overall it was actually interesting to meet them. Maybe it would have been different if I'd got the German pitch, we had a few really awkward approaches from these kind of religions people (evangelizers?) in university that were not as pleasant, I don't know what faith though. )
Completely blows my mind, but they have all been super nice people.
I bought a somewhat rarer car a year ago and it has been a similar experience. It feels very wholesome sometimes. Like as a nerdy guy sharing a thumbs up and a smile with someone who by all appearances is full-on gangster and very much far opposite on everything. But there's a common interest in cars and suddenly it doesn't matter as much. There is a lesson in there somewhere about judging people by their appearance.
I just couldn’t deal with it again and it’s one of the rudest things I’ve probably ever done. I feel bad but it was an entirely unconscious reaction. I know almost nothing about cars and I really don’t care about them at all.
He moved shortly after (hopefully unrelated lol), so nothing more ever came of that.
Roberto Benigni type people are real, they might just not be around where you live. Consider moving. Whether you move away or towards where these sort of characters congregate is of course entirely up to you.
If you would like to know which places to seek out/avoid feel free to chime in.
P.S. - Please don't go to Rome and expect it to be filled with Benignis.
It's just part of Austin's hippy music fest heritage and is the best part.
Do you have a group where you meet up to discuss this kind of stuff privately? /s
ₜₒₒ ₗₐₜₑ
It’s not limited to Austin or the south. :)
You can’t tell from the news but Americans are generally friendly and helpful in person. The Borat film was supposed to show how deranged Americans are but the half I watched was all about people trying to be nice to him despite his antics.
Precisely my reaction
Parents bringing their kids to playgrounds, that have not much to do except talking to other parents. Being at a playground with their own kid filters out most mentally unstable or interested parties.
Very easy to strike conversations if kids have the same age. Lots of opportunities for new and sane friendships, with who you can then double-date when their kid come home to play with yours.
My best friend from college -- 25 years still -- is someone I met on line, waiting for lunch.
I get pretty annoyed with MLM sales pitches, but I dont think we should close ourselves off to the world with strict policies on social interactions.
I remember in my late teens some guy on the street saying “Hey man! I like your shirt!” My Jimi Hendrix shirt? He must like Jimi Hendrix too. So I started talking with him and in a few minutes he was asking for money. Weeks later I’m wearing a different shirt and I hear “Hey man! I like your shirt!”
Once on a commuter train a guy struck up a conversation with me about a book I was reading. It was an interesting conversation. We kept talking as we exited the train and kept talking on the platform as all the other commuters went to their cars and drove away. Now he’s getting kind of excited and raising his voice. And I’m now aware of how large he is and how we are the only two people left at the station. I managed to politely get out of there.
Over and over again this kind of thing would happen until I just made a policy to not engage.
That sounds sad. You remind me of a friend (probably on the spectrum), that is too open/polite and just doesn’t know how to filter out abusive people.
Unfortunately, the good people that are really really worth talking to, can often read that you are closing yourself off, so they politely won’t interact with you. The “bad” people will ignore your social cues. Perhaps there is a certain amount of channeling.
Most women (and plenty of men too) have been on the receiving end of excessive unwanted attention at some point in their lives, and they learn how to read genuine worthwhile friendly approaches, versus predatory unwanted approaches. Spot your friends with that skill, and then try to learn from them?
The friends I know that have the skill end up meeting worthwhile people in most any situation they are in; even in predatory environments.
Location makes some difference, of course. I have travelled a lot, and some countries or towns everybody is trying to grift, while other places everyone is genuinely open and friendly. Or pubs where everyone is welcoming without pressure, versus other pubs where everyone is trying to use or scam you. Your own context makes a difference: if you are with dogs or kids, more people will default to thinking you are okay (modulo other cues) etcetera.
Disclaimer: I’m not great at the above, but I try to learn to improve. The friends I know who are great at the above get awesome opportunities - they also tend to be good people themselves. It is like a secret split in society where kind people recognise each other via unobvious protocols. If you don’t know the protocols, then you end up grouped with users and grifters, which is self-reinforcing and hard to change.
When we get unsolicited communication over phone, text, email, IM, etc., we consider it spam. It's almost always someone trying to get you to give money to them or their interest group.
As someone who spends most of their day online, it's not hard at all to see why I might start thinking that way about in-person communication from people I don't know.
Some of the people I have met online make the two wackos the author met look like saints in comparison.
A totally random person walking up to me and starting to talk? No, that's weird and I'm immediately at yellow alert at minimum, if not searching for the nearest exit.
Well said. I’ve been thinking about this idea for a very long time. Like another user said above, the negativity bias has a large role to play here. I live in a small town and talking with strangers is considered normal and healthy.
To be fair, I don’t lead with “have you ever done therapy?” or “what does it mean to be alive?” haha
Where I draw the line is when strangers try to push a conversation beyond clear boundaries, or try to push a conversation in a situation where the boundaries aren't clear and they can try to manipulate them. That's what would have put me off in the "First Contact" episode in the article.
For me it probably also helps that I'm an introvert and I have no problem just ending a conversation and going back to whatever I was doing. For example, at the point where the woman started asking follow-up questions, I would have said something like "I'm not really familiar with those places, sorry", and gone back to what I was doing.
Please don't take this as a jab at you as it certainly isn't intended to be.
That said, you express a really transactional view of human interactions. That seems to be a sad way to view the rest of your fellow humans.
Transactional interactions are a normal part of life but, at least for me, I will interact with people, including strangers, because I like interacting with people, not because I want something from them.
Obviously, when transacting with a cashier, a shopkeeper, a waiter, etc. it's transactional.
But in other circumstances, and even sometimes in those circumstances (if that's not inconveniencing them) I will engage others without any expectations or intent to manipulate or use those folks.
Sure, there are folks out there who will engage with you because they want something from you. In my experience, however (and I've lived most of my life in NYC and travelled quite a bit around the US and less around the world) most people are decent, kind people who aren't out to get something from you or trying to scam you.
It turned out we went to the same college (Berkeley) and he graduated a year before I started. He was on the football team and knew my old roommate, who was also on the team.
He definitely was a bit weird. Visiting SF from Alaska after his wife’s death, but totally friendly and not creepy. Interesting enough that I felt like I had a story to tell without being creeped out. It’s been a long two years, and I missed these sorts of small interactions with people very different than me.
I operate under this assumption any time I'm somewhere in a big city, unless I'm attending an event where people are specifically mixed together and expected to talk to each other (professional conference, etc)
in a small town of 200-300 people/very rural area, I take a different approach of course
Hell, in a town that size, you know the mentally unstable folks and might even enjoy chatting with (some of) them if you see 'em at the feed store.
At a party, it’s no problem.
Not all strangers are that bad and(but?) this is Germany!
It took me a while to put my experience in perspective, or even explain it, but after a while I found out there are several of these mentorship/get rich schemes roughly based around the ideas in "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" that involve basically recruiting strangers to form an MLM like downline. The basic pitch is: "If you had all the money in the world what would you do? [insert conversation here about what you'd do] We can give that to you if you follow us!". Obviously I'm not going to follow someone who fell for that!
Fortunately, I abruptly left this conversation mid-sentence because I was started to get freaked out by intrusiveness of it all. Very weird, and definitely an exploit on peoples willingness to be accommodating and friendly to strangers.
Eventually he invited me out to some fancy bar with the secret intention of trying to get me to invest in his wacky financial bullshit, which was immediately obvious after about five minutes of conversation. He kept asking about my investments and I kept giving him completely contradictory answers as he kept buying me drinks, pretending to agree with me, and telling me about some "zero risk" opportunities. Eventually when he started trying to press me for a more direct answer, I was like "nah not interested" and left, got a free meal out of it on top of the free drinks lol.
Later I brought up the experience to a couple of my friends who were around when I met him and they weren't sure who he was either, apparently he was unrelated to the other guys. Never saw him again.
I'm part of the way through Better Call Saul, so I'm sure I'll run into it eventually.
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Squat%20Cobb...
I had a guy twenty years ago ask me to join their stock scheme. The plot went something like this - someone (at the top I presume) would start a company, sell stock, we (pawns I guess) would buy stock in that company, which would indicate a higher demand meaning increased stock value, and we would by extension all be richer! Zero risk, fool proof, badabing badaboom.
At the time I thought it was creepy - years later I'm like... aww, poor kid. He must have been so nervous!
She clearly had something very important to say. I was very interested, of course! She was a hottie.
"I have something to ask you...", she started, nervous and flirty-like. Is this what it's like to be hit on?, I'm thinking.
"...have you accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior? You know He loves you very much."
I've never before or since been whiplashed like that. I smiled politely, lied about my acceptance of Him and made an excuse to move somewhere else. Had I been thirstier, I might have joined the church just for her :)
I was pretty good at sales, especially with older people, as I truly listened and tried to bridge the gap between a person's needs and what we sold, and without being too pushy.
An older couple came in and asked me about (at the time) the Compaq computers that we sold. He was in a wheelchair and smelled vaguely of urine. They were sweet and asked a lot of questions about the computers and what they could do, which I was happy to oblige. It was feeling like a real solid sale potential since we had talked for so long and they had asked so many questions.
After a bit, they offered me a business card and mentioned that they too were in the sales business. We agreed to meet sometime. I don't recall if I met just the two of them a second time or we moved straight to the third guy, but he was invited along. He was a bit older than me, dressed "fancy" but in a sort of shabby way, i.e. a three-piece suit that he seemed to have gotten at a thrift store. He had thick glasses and an air of desperation about him that I could recognize even as a naive kid. I think we met at a Wendy's.
He soon brought up Amway. I don't remember how I got out of things, but I do remember everyone all around being pissed and implying or outright saying that I had wasted their time. But honestly, I wasn't interested. I truly wanted to continue working at Radio Shack while working on my side businesses and getting through school. I had enough going on.
A co-worker and casual friend had gotten involved with it (which I did not know). He called me one day and asked if I could meet him at Wendys to talk about "an opportunity" and I said sure. When I got there, he was with some guy I had never seen and they started pushing Amway. I listened and though they pressured me to get on board said I would think about it and left.
MLMs are usually shady but are technically legal. Pyramid schemes are always illegal.
I'll still engage if a stranger talks to me and try to be affable but will maintain a healthy level of distrust. Because sometimes people just like to chat with a stranger in hopes of friendship. Have a friend who made friends with the lead singer of a somewhat popular indie band. Didn't even know who he was until after several months of hanging out :D
To the OP: Interesting and enjoyable story. You already said your gut instinct alarm bells were set to red alert, but you were not following them. Why? What did you hope get out of this interaction that let it go to four rounds? There's one phrase that sticks out from a training on social engineering we had here recently - "you can't con an honest person". And that means a person who is honest with themself. All this time you are thinking about "what did they want?" Maybe the question you should be asking is what did I want? To get back to work. But you didn't.
If the answer is really "nothing" then a genuine friendship might be in the offing. Otherwise, one or both of you is playing a game. Test that by pushing away - not just politely playing within the polite parameters of normalcy - a good con artist will already have those exists mapped out. Chuck in an unexpected dirty or ridiculous joke. Humour throws a swerve-ball that should reset the power relationship. If you get back "psychoanalysis" instead of a belly laugh, take a walk.
At some point, it segued into talk of financial independence and envisioning what that would look like for me, and it was suddenly clear to me what the psychological intent of the exercise was. I politely heard him out, suggested I'd get back to him once I'd had some time to think it over, and did so the next day, obviously declining.
I hope he got back on the right track.
I told them as much privately and I wasn't bothered by it again.
The cookies they offered were delicious though.
Now that I'm older I wonder if being part of that would've taught me some of that charisma the people there exuded. They just seemed so likable and I wish I could at least emulate that.
didn't go much further after that.
(actually, my actual word was "scamway", lol)
It sounds to me like the author approached these interactions from a place of insecurity, which is exactly what ultra-manipulative types look for in a target. If you don't have a clear idea of what someone wants from you when they ask for your time, it's on you to speak up for yourself and get that clarity. You don't have anything to prove by deciding to continue talking to people that don't seem interested in developing a genuine relationship.
> But they walked into that cafe, looked around, and decided I was the easy prey.
Given that the author agreed to meet with them four times with an open mind, I'd say that the recruiters found a pretty good target, even if it was ultimately fruitless.
[0] so social contact makes a good lure
[1] so sex makes a good lure
[2] juicier target
[3] which means he can almost talk himself into anything
[4] less likely to recognize he's being conned/manipulated
As someone who used to work in financial services and has interacted with many of these kinds of people before, it struck me as odd that at the beginning of the story, the author doesn't even list "they want me to give them money" as a possible reason for the approach, even though that's the single most common reason strangers approach folks like this. He really thought that these strangers might want to have sex though? Ok.
The whole piece has a really naive tone to it, trying to intellectualize people that were most likely just trying to bilk the author out of money, which the author isn't even convinced of at the end.
> So why did they do it? Maybe they were totally cynical, and just thought I looked like a gullible fish they could exploit for money. But I doubt it.
> Most likely, they thought they were doing something good. (For me? For their organization? For the world?) How is it possible to convince yourself that being this manipulative and this misleading is a good thing? It makes me re-evaluate what people are capable of.
It took one set of interactions with cult/scam/whatever kind of recruiters these were to make the author re-evaluate what people are capable of? Really? We've lived through decades of senseless war, a declining standard of living and a future that feels less and less certain by the day, but this is what wakes the author up? That sounds like a pretty sheltered life to me.
It doesn't take much to notice this vice in a person who has it. Most people pick up on it rather quickly, even if subconsciously.
This is very hard for some people (I am not being facetious here), but cult weirdos or not, it’s really important to be able to say something like “Thanks for chatting but I’m going to work now.“ No apology is necessary. Nothing equivocal in the words they can grab onto and argue with. No lying, polite or or otherwise.
You may need to practice this in the shower or the car. You may need to practice it on people even when you don’t necessarily need to go. But you need to practice it if you are a born and trained people pleaser like me.
I regard not being able to do so as something close to life-threatening, because when you are raised to put other people’s interests before your own, you can spiral into incredible depression and self abuse.
People who are experts at imposing on other people's time will latch on to any crack you leave open. Don't give reasons. You might think "I'm sorry, but I don't have time to get involved in that" is clear, but they will counter with "it won't take much time at all." Just say "no, thank you, but I must decline" or something that doesn't leave any room for further discussion.
It's not an expert thing at all. It's a standard sales technique.
1. Make your pitch;
2. Go for the close;
3. Deal with any concerns/objections;
4. Go back to step 2.
When I was still just a kid (~18), I took a B2B sales job and that was one of the primary strategies they pushed for closing deals.
- "this is none of your business" or
- "because I want to".
If they're extremely manipulative, they'll follow up with more "why?"s but you just keep repeating these two until their why's are exhausted or you leave with a "So... bye"
This technique is called the broken record in the book "When I say no I feel guilty" which talks basically only about these types of interactions.
Your friends may mean well, but they may also be a bit dumb. You really don't have to interact with people that you don't want to if it's entirely voluntary to begin with, especially if things feel "off".
It's easy to claim so in a hypothetical, but I still like to believe that had you asked me, I would have said something like "if it feels so off, don't do it".
This is different from being anxious over, say, ordering a pizza over the phone (that I've seen in a few friends), where I would recommend pushing over your anxiety, because that is almost certainly guaranteed to be a short, professional, and, most importantly, absolutely un-intimate conversation.
> Determined to prove that I was capable of normal human interaction
Yeah, this isn't.
Don't get me wrong, I shut these sorts of people down at the first conversation because I hate dilettante philosophy with a passion and have a strong distaste for any hint of spiritualism. But there are underemployed folks at all my regular coffee haunts who are always chatting up willing patrons and will ask to exchange numbers if someone is patient enough to engage. But AFAICT they aren't nefarious, just bored and weird. One hocks CDs of his bad garageband compositions, but again, he's harmless.
How did you jump from "cringe" to "cult"?
Again, I'm in material agreement that talking with weirdos is generally a losing proposition for any number of reasons. But I don't understand why he's so certain these people were in a cult. They could've been in an MLM. They could've also just been weirdos with a private discussion group. Heck, the "sex" possibility listed at the beginning isn't even proven false. We don't know. The story has an inconclusive ending, which is odd given the title of the piece.
The bait-and-switch of the title gives me the same bad vibes that the author got from the people in the story. And the end of the post feels... forced and perhaps even dissonant. I dig deeper and the guy has a formula for the good life. A personal subreddit (?!) and a substack that all appear to be about nothing in particular?
Does this guy want something from me or is he just a harmless oddball who likes talking into the void / to his small audience? Probably the latter. Most weirdos are harmless and I'm glad they exist even if I don't want to engage with most of them. In fact, maybe he's aware that he sometimes comes across like this and that's why he wrote the post? And the title is, I guess, pretty mild as far as clickbait goes. No harm, no foul.
It's kind of funny that I get the same vibe from him as he got from these people. And even funnier that I'm commenting on a post that gives me odd vibes claiming I never engage with people who give me odd vibes :)
In any case, I remain unconvinced that these people were definitely recruiting for a cult. But maybe that's not even the point of the post.
Some of the other points in their interaction do heavily hint at cult, though. Could just be a group that does recruitment differently than I'm used to. I did missionary work in a cult once (not going to name which group, because I don't want to derail this thread arguing over whether this particular group is a cult or not), and the described behaviors and conversation topics certainly ring a bell.
Maybe they've been taking lessons from online marketers and have found out that striking early gets them in the first meeting, but the churn is too high and they started a drip campaign instead ;)
It's kind of interesting knowing that if you can get a few people to do a thing that other people will go along with it because that seems to be the thing to do. For instance, if you and a few other people start regularly working out in a park there's a good chance regular passers by may ask to join in at some point.
I'm not so obviously desirable to be in a group that someone with no social connections to me should be inviting me in. It'd be different if the invite comes with context, but a cafe has little context; most people eat, and a lot of people drink coffee.
Anyway, on the subject of cults, if you want to join a quality death cult, that's stress free, with no social obligations, might I suggest the Internet Death Cult of Fun, https://deathcult.fun/
Often times we pick up on subtle cues before we consciously process them.
Your evaluations as someone present override what your non-present friends think based off your verbal accounting.
One of the funnier ones ended something like:
Me: So what exactly would I be selling? Or doing? That part isn’t clear yet.
Him: Ok, let me ask you something. If I told you that you had to shovel cow manure for two years and then you got to retire with a good steady income for the rest of your life, would you do that?
Me: does the job involve shoveling manure?
Him: No. That’s an analogy.
Me: Oh, so it’s not shoveling manure, but it’s like shoveling manure?
Him: No no no it’s nothing like that.
Me: Oh ok, so what would I be doing then…?
And on and on…
But, over time, you start to notice subtle tells, and can even see it as they’re walking across the parking lot. “Those folks are going to try to recruit someone into their MLM today!” I really wish I could nail down what exactly those tells are… but even years later, I was sitting having a coffee and my scammer alert went off at a couple walking across the parking lot and sure as shit they spent the following hour trying to recruit some kid.
Edit: actually, to your point, is that little things are off. When they do actually talk about business, they use business words but they don’t mean quite the same thing they normally do. Or in the couple from this weekend, they were dressed up like… a stereotype of a “business couple”. Like if you learned how business people dress by watching TV. Just the details were off. He was wearing an expensive looking shirt with a decent tie, but with a spring (not suit) jacket that didn’t match the look, and dress shoes that were simultaneously too fancy to be comfortable on a Sunday afternoon and also too cheap looking to be something you’d wear to the office every day.
She had the same kind of thing going on. Fancy frilly black dress with her hair done up (not something you’d normally just wear to Starbucks on a Sunday), but wearing very plain black flats that just didn’t match the fanciness of the dress. And something about her gait… like walking like someone who was trying to look confident?
Weird stuff. I dunno.
They make me feel like I have an IQ of about 60 . . . although I also believe you need to have some ability to even be aware of the truly skilled, so maybe I have some latent talent!
I grew up in an abusive alcoholic household. I had 18 years to really refine my "subtle cue" radar to try to guess whether or not it was going to be a calm night or a wild night of yelling and screaming.
It's often not as conscious of a process as the situation this past weekend was. As a brutal example, I had a partner a long time ago who, as it turned out, was having an affair. I started having anxiety attacks but couldn't explain what they were about. In an attempt to try to figure it out, I kept a journal of my thoughts every time it happened, but I couldn't find any kind of correlation. At some point the attacks just stopped and I was happy...
When the affair was finally revealed and after the dust had settled a bit, I pulled out my journal and we sat down together and put together a timeline. Every single anxiety attack lined up with one of the times she was out with the other guy, and I think we worked out that there was only one time they had been together where I didn't have an anxiety attack. Pretty much perfect correlation, but I had no clue _why_ it was happening until ~6 months after they had stopped the affair.
At any rate, yeah, you're spot on about the tuning. It's definitely tough to rationalize what's going on sometimes, and it does definitely come from deep inside the subconscious. I'm just torn on whether I like it being characterized as a "deep subconscious intelligence" or whether it might be better called "a powerful survival mechanism refined by two decades of (mostly) verbal and (occasional) physical abuse"
Perhaps you are exceptionally talented (smart) in that area. Is there a standardised test? How can you judge yourself against others? How do you go to a course to improve?
I think of intelligence as the ability to integrate subtle information and come up with a correct answer. Intelligence is usually seen as something rational, but I certainly see it as mostly subconscious. I try to be broad minded when looking for smart people as some of the smartest don’t appear to be on the surface (hidden/crypto smarts): the skill to recognise subtle fashions, the skill to correctly read complex human situations, the skill of pruning, etcetera. Usually the skills are not taught, instead a brain just picks it up.
If I wanted to get better at reading people, what do I need to do to get my brain tuned in? I know that the usual routes we are taught are poor: e.g. reading a book about how to ski.
Just like your questions about learning how to be better at reading people, I have absolutely no idea how to teach someone to think about software the way I do; I’ve been asked many times!
To further complicate things with learning or teaching any of these, I also was diagnosed with ADHD last year at age 37. Retrospectively, that makes perfect sense based on teacher feedback, report cards, getting 50s and 95s in the same semester… I’m sure that that also contributed to how this weird brain all got assembled, but damned if I can explain it.
Edit: thank you for this! I don’t think I’ve ever really made some of these connections before!
Don't ignore it.
Also, the "gut" is where things like racism are rooted.
That said, this definitely wouldn’t have happened to me, given how cold and unapproachable I am. This is great for avoiding scams and people who want to take advantage of me. However, I suspect such standoffishness has denied me many opportunities for social connection. Someone like the author is more likely to stumble into a cult, but also more likely to meet new people. So I guess you take the good with the bad.
Regardless of what you think of Trump politically, his is an example of the unrelenting assault of certain personality types, likely of the hypomania category.
I have known possibly two or three hypomaniacs in my life, thankfully lacking sinister ulterior motives, but nonetheless the experience can be overwhelming.
Thus I can shut down this kind of interaction long before I feel obligated to meet people for brunch even though it feels awkward.
I'm defective as a person. Because of that most people are able to pick up that there's something wrong with me on some level in short order. So for me, anyone approaching me unsolicited without a clear objective is already a warning sign. Not necessarily of ill intent, just something unseen and unknown to me.
Someone like you I'd assume as some sense of normalcy of being a functional human being. And I'd guess that's probably why some people would find you approachable and why someone would strike a conversation with you randomly.
Nobody who knows me in real-life has ever accused me of being "normal." That being said, there certainly are different levels of "weird vibe" that one can give off so I won't say that your weirdness doesn't trump mine.
Also for interests of full disclosure, I'm above average height (182cm) and blonde haired, both of which probably help to tilt things in my favor for a first impression.
I (female) met my husband by striking up a conversation with him at a bar. I didn't (and don't) have any ulterior motive for starting that conversation. I didn't even want to date/fuck him when I started talking to him, just was being friendly.
Sure, stay very vigilant about scams, cons, non-genuine people, manipulators, and attempts at recruitment, but it's simply not true that every single female stranger has ulterior motives.
Practice enforcing boundaries: If what you really want is to get to work, then there's nothing rude in signalling likewise (e.g. by turning back to your laptop) or saying so directly. What is rude is people who ignore such cues and continue to try talking to you.
Listen to intuition: If something/someone feels slightly off (even if you can't articulate precisely what/how), then feel free to distance yourself immediately. You can later ruminate on why at your own convenience.
Recognize you don't need to justify feeling disinterest in or even active dislike of someone on sight. They might even be perfectly good people but if you're not drawn to engage, then that's your prerogative. You certainly don't need to prove or disprove their decency/motives by continuing to engage.
I find the final questions interesting... bc for me, it is obvious that there is no clear-cut line, just degrees on a continuum which is healthy on one side and toxic at the other extreme.
Human attention is the ultimate currency - we literally spend all of our conscious time allocating it to different uses at a constant rate, and anything that we do to catch the attention of others is asking them to divert part of that use towards ourselves for a benefit.
For me, it is a moral duty to make sure that any such interaction is geared towards producing a win-win situation. This is why I consider intrusive advertising to be morally abhorrent - not just for being annoying, but because it is taking away our most valuable resource from us, without even asking for permission. Advertising should be confined to appear on limited, pre-agreed channels where you don't mind finding the occasional relevant ad.
In the near future I expect that personal attention managers will supplant the dreadful Skinner boxes that social networks have been built on, and instead provide applications that serve our interests - not those from an outsider.
Now I have this little private group to discuss this kind of things, wouldn't you be interested in joining? ;-)
My ultimate goal is founding a religion that transforms the way of thinking of mankind, making the differences between points of view sacred (ha ha only serious) - which would imply building rituals (and code!) to find common ground, and agree to disagree in a civilized manner when that's impossible.
Imagine talking to a guy who's trying hard to sell you a used car. It's like that. Really pushy and manipulative.
They focus their recruiting efforts on teens, children, college students. They have a private kindergarten/gradeschool.
Years ago I read an FBI list of standard psychological manipulation techniques used by cults. Then I saw them in action at their local coffee shop. Hey, they're "Love Bombing" that person!
I was talking to one of their members. Sure we're a "cult". Sure we practice "mind control". Then he proceeds to tell me their special definitions for cult and mind control. That's called "taking control of the language".
They use their members as cheap labor at their businesses. And send the profits to their headquarters in Bangladesh where they have some schools, businesses and an orphanage.
The leadership has very nice cars.
My friend was in it for a few years. Then the "Murshid" (top guy) ordered my friend to send his daughter to their special school in Bangladesh. He noped out at that point.
Are you kidding?
The difference was glaring when (and why) they asked you to go private.
You want to teach people facts about humidifiers and then (hopefully) see if it stand up to independent inquiry. You changed your approach so that others wouldn't simply dismiss your evidence out of hand.
These two would have eventually removed your ability to independently inquire.
If you went to a private place with them, there would be a guru whose entire goal would be to use your insecurities and skepticism against you in order to disorient you to such a degree that you become highly suggestible. Could be with lighting, trance music, scented candles, $foo, chants, group games, or anything that pushes your physical and emotional boundaries past what you'd normally be comfortable with, etc. You get a warm feeling, then-- bam-- the guru attributes it all to $foo. Now all your reasoning abilities are fighting against the possibility that there might really be something to this $foo thing.
Probably anyone whose been involved rescuing cult members will confirm how dangerous they are. But also consider your own evidence-- how many times did you profess even the mild kind of skepticism that litters HN threads here? From what I read, it seems like you didn't even explicitly mention your intimacy schedule or other red flags as you experienced them. In fact, your only pointed question seemed to come at the very moment they tried to rope you in by asking to go private. In other words-- you gave them time to make their entire cult pitch to you, and only really put up any noticeable friction at the last moment.
The lesson is decidedly not how we're all a little bit like cult recruiters. It's that you were close to becoming indoctrinated in a cult. Remember the shot of adrenaline when the sirens started shrieking for you? Now imagine that happening while being surrounded by a room full of those people, with a guru looking directly at you waiting for you to explain the feeling of receiving $foo. And all it would have taken was one more innocent thought about wanting to meet a few more friends.
I just realized how alarmist that last line is! I mean, do go and meet more friends. Just not ones in cults. Since you avoided this cult, just remember the feeling of them slowly pushing your boundaries, and use that as a filter in the future.
They're definitely not a crank, even if they've arrived at a wrong conclusion, which I doubt.
But TFA never confirmed that it was a cult. Suspicious circumstances, yes, but people who meet to discuss things privately doesn't mean cult. It could just mean they get very deep into certain topics and want to pre-screen people.
OTOH: TFA was clearly uncomfortable with this couple. He was perfectly within his free will as an adult to discontinue the relationship.
1.They wanted to be friends.
2.They wanted to have sex with me.
3.They wanted me to join their religion."
I would add the following to that list:
4. They wanted to sell me something.
5. All of the above.
> They wanted me to join their religion.
based on what I know of "new age" cults these two things are not always mutually exclusive
ask anyone from an older generation who lived through the late 1960s/early 1970s as a young adult...
in the modern era I'd wager there's some degree of venn diagram overlap between MLM recruitment and "open relationship" people too
actually as I recall an example of this was shown in entertainment media in the 1999 movie "Go" where a cop and his wife are also running a MLM thing and try to recruit/sleep with one of their targets
Were they:
1. Trying to sleep with me/you/us?
2. Trying to get us to join their church?
3. Trying to get us to join their MLM scheme?
And that conversation always turns into “well maybe it was two from the list? Or maybe even all three!”
We’ve definitely met MLM swingers and MLM church people, but I don’t know that we’ve ever met the trifecta!
Some kind of scam, I expect. It seems so retro for a scam. You can scam so many people online for so little investment that a labor-intensive scam like this seems obsolete.
But they also don't sucker you into giving away your money or guilt you into doing things you don't want to do.
Honestly curious, how does one do this? I hear this a lot, but when I have tried to actually advertise legitimate services online, the ROI is insanely bad. I can't imagine a cult leader would get better results, so why do people claim this is easy online?
Here's the pitch deck for Bored Ape Yacht Club.[1] Aimed at large investors, not the suckers.
[1] https://twitter.com/LeonidasNFT/status/1505058932758360064
They left “trail magic” food advertising their establishment, which was pretty tasty, especially to someone with a strong case of hiker hunger. And they’d be very friendly with you while you are at the cafe.
Their flyers were completely over the top. Made for some entertaining reading for a day.
The ethical thing to do is whatever you think helps other people. If you think people reading your article are trying to learn true, useful things about humidifiers, it's good to write the article in whatever way is conducive to that. If instead you wrote it in a way designed to make you look the best, or to sell humidifiers, that would be a problem.
I think about this a lot in terms of argument graphs. Imagine a DAG where premises are on the bottom and the conclusion (or conclusions) are on top. And, like most compelling arguments, the premises are unsurprising and widely held, while the conclusion is wildly counterintuitive. Finally, pretend that the argument is actually valid and true - it's legitimately something new.
In what order should you communicate the argument? Do you start top-down? The author tried that with humidifiers and it didn't work at all. Do you start at the very bottom, with the uncontroversial friendly stuff? Well, that's pretty much what the cult did.
I prefer a blend of sorts, but it's difficult to systematize. Basically, you're kind of starting at the bottom, but with little spoilers and hints of where you're trying to lead the presentation.
I knew somebody who was a pretty seasoned cult member and she explained to me that apparently there is a lot of competition between cults to recruit and poach high performing zealots, just like headhunters in tech.
What they do is that they will have a short activity to get people to sympathize with their cause (asking to write made-up pet's name to vote on what necessities is important to it), then they will describe that they are doing CSR work for its company in association with the charitable organization. They will conclude the conversation by asking us to purchase products, and some salesperson outright saying that it's a donation (when in fact it isn't). They fix a minimum price of their stuff at $15, but they will try to get a bundle of $60, and when I say I don't have that much, they will keep dropping the price, as low as $3 (no stuff). With the minimum wage here is $10 a day, whatever they're trying to sell is just too expensive.
Youngs, is this still a thing on college campuses?
I ended up going to their church a few times, but I felt weird about it considering I'm an athiest
We met in the basement of an unfurnished house. There was an American Flag on a free-standing pole. We said the pledge of allegiance and I think there might have been an ambiguous prayer. Then we watched a video of some sort by the founder of the podcast.
The experience was very weird. It set off my “this is weird” alarms which made me step away from it.
The founder eventually went to prison for running a Ponzi scheme.
I think people very much want to belong to a group, and be told that the way they view the world is right. And there are plenty of people who are happy to tell you you’re right and you belong if you’ll just offer yourself up to them.
2. People can collectively hold views that seem radically different to the average person. Things like common religions, major political parties, etc don't fit in here: people may disagree with ideas in religions or politics, but the ideas themselves aren't radically different
Individuals of #1s and #2s cling to their beliefs and sometimes define themselves by those beliefs.
I'm assuming cults fit in #2, but are there #2s that aren't cults?
Anon should first cutoff contact with those creeps then he should cut off contact with his friends.
Hmmm, reminds me of the spectrum of the "Pickup Artist" tricks...
May he looks like a guy who is easily led.
4. They want to sell you something.
>2. They wanted to have sex with me.
>3. They wanted me to join their religion.
I may know someone who writes like this. Very interested in how someone converts online comments into having sex with readers or getting them to join a religion, presumably one in which they also have sex with readers. They need to know how not to do that so they know what to avoid.