Attract people with the true promise of very cheap, simple, communal living, a shared belief system, and/or a common ideology.
Offer free workshops on useful skills like food storage and survival techniques, meditation, prayer, self-sufficiency, trauma counseling and drug and alcohol rehabilitation
Restrict calories by setting meal times and durations.
Make sure there is enough work so that everyone is busy all the time
Restrict movement by having mandatory meetings, meditation sessions, or chores at particular times throughout the day so nobody has time to go to town.
Erode individual identity with common dress, common food, common hairstyles etc.
Identify and keep track of individual weaknesses (Trauma, parental issues, weight insecurity, financial insecurity, fear of failure, fear of abandonment mental illness), key motivations (Financial stability, seeking to be apart from society, seeking happiness), basic desires (financial security, relationship security, being part of a community, sex)
Make extensive use of seed phrases and formal speech rules so that people censor their own speech. EG People cannot speak to children and vice versa without a parent present (very handy if you take in runaways that have no parents), unmarried men and women may not be alone together except when courting, new members must have a guide/buddy/chaperone/mentor/elder present with them at all times for the duration of their probation.
Maintain division by requiring individuals to report non-conformity by others, make non-reporting of non-conformity a punishable act, and make non-conformity a poorly defined and easily applied term, so that everyone is guilty, and you as the leader get to pick and choose who is punished.
Punishments are gentle tightening of above restrictions - more work, less food, less interpersonal contact, less free time, more proselytizing etc.
Reward extravagantly those who recruit others, using free time, more food, more freedom, sex with other members as a reward.
Reward extravagantly revenue-generating activities, manufacturing, labor, producing food, donating money or assets, or illicit income such as burglary and shoplifting .
Enjoy your cult.
Lumiluz@slrpnk.net 1 week ago
Marketing.
But first you need the idea. I’d say leftwing based religious science compatible apocalyptics is an untapped market. So basically make a bunker commune for societal collapse based on climate change and say all the current right wing politicians are demons accelerating it to bring upon hell on earth, and that oil is the devil’s blood.
Just off the top of my head that’s an idea.
RowRowRowYourBot@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
There’s a significant number of Evangelicals who believe “Left Behind” is predictive of the future rather than being a super anti-semitic take on the Christian end times. Those idiots are accelerating the end times in hopes of being saved. You don’t need demons you already have these racist dummies.
Lumiluz@slrpnk.net 1 week ago
That’s already an existing large cult. We were talking about hypothetically starting a new one run by op on this land.
RowRowRowYourBot@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
Im saying you can break off the crzies to form a new cult. You don’t need demons you can just focus on apocalyptic christianity.