Well at HMS seven many people have escaped from cults and I'm happy to say that I'm one of them.

Hi, I'm Dr.

Daniel Lalique, I was once an occult.

Now I'm a sociologist who studies and writes about cults.

Today, I'm here to answer your questions on Twitter, this is cult support at Airy the fairy asked how did Charles Manson even get a cult like you?

Well at Ferry the Ferry here he is Charles Manson and he was a very successful cult leader because at the time, which was the hippie days of the sixties and seventies, you know, people were exploring, they were doing new things, they were living in the streets, Charles could come along and he had a very svengali charismatic appeal.

He would look in your eyes and he would draw you in and also what's important about what Manson did was that he used drugs.

He would often, you know give one of the girls LSD and she would believe that she had some kind of, you know, enlightened spiritual experience and that way she felt even more bonded to Charles, but that is unusual.

Most cults do not use drugs, they don't need to use drugs, they're using basic social psychology at my opinions, man asked what's a movie about cults that in your opinion is a must watch working on something regarding cults and movies and I'm trying to grab every last hidden gem at my opinions man.

I would say in my opinion, the best movie about cults is The Master with Joaquin phoenix.

It's one of the best depictions of the relationship between the charismatic leader and the true believer and it's a very tightly knit relationship that has an imbalance of power because the one with charisma has power over you and that's the rub so that person can pretty much get you to do anything so that you get to the point where you think you can't even live without that person and of course is doubly interesting because Joaquin phoenix himself grew up in a cult at well read Wife asks to be honest with me before I get sucked in is lula roe.

Occult.

Are we just buying our cute cult uniforms?

Lula roe is quite a questionable retail organization at this point and I don't think you want to wear that uniform at beanie blubber asks, why do cult leaders always have to be weirdo freaks that abuse their members?

When will we see a cult leader who's really just a chill guy.

Cult leaders are not going to be chill.

Cult leaders are power hungry individuals who are typically narcissists who believed that the world revolves around them.

They aren't necessarily weirdo freaks.

Some of them may look like a classy businessman.

Remember the leader of Heaven's Gate, This is what he looked like when we saw him on those video clips the night before they all committed suicide, but this is not what marshall applewhite looked like when he was recruiting followers.

He kind of had that professorial look or like you're, you're nice uncle, the cult leader might become a little demented.

Might start using too many drugs, might start looking really weird, but they certainly don't start out that way because who would follow a weirdo at marina C asks, I'm intrigued by the Heaven's Gate cult.

Why the Nike shoes?

There was a complete lack of individuality in the Heaven's Gate cult.

People had to dress in a way that they were completely androgynous.

So they wore what they considered was their uniform.

Everyone had the same patch on their sleeve.

They all went out and bought these Nike shoes.

It was just part of their outfit.

There was certainly no special meaning to it.

But again, it was a way to make them all be exactly the same.

So that they all went along with the idea that they would drink that poisonous potion, put the bag over their head and go to their homeland.

They didn't believe they were committing suicide.

They thought they were choosing life.

In fact, let me read you from.

This is one of their books called Ruffles snacks for Thinkers.

This book was given to me by Dick Jocelyn who was one of the longtime members of the group.

It's dated july 7th 1979 and they all contributed little sayings to this book.

Life is not a time to prepare for death.

Death is a time to prepare for life.

Life is a time for learning to live like the one who came to show us how they believed that they were going to be picked up by a spaceship and taken to what they called the level above human where they were going to live forever in a paradise and the rest of the world and the earth was just going to be shattered and destroyed at tone boy asks neighbors on our street are trying to barricade themselves in are the branch Davidians still a thing?

If so, do they have a twitter account or do I go straight to the FBI?

We have kind of a policy in our country of not paying too much attention to what the neighbors do.

And one of the fallout of that is sometimes we do have a cult next door.

There are still people who believe in David koresh and who actually think he's coming back.

I don't think those are your neighbors.

Maybe your neighbors are just trying to get away from the world, maybe they don't like you.

Three forms are powerhouses, asks who are the Moonies?

The Moonies are the moon organization that was founded by reverend Sun Myung Moon back in the seventies and had a very huge following all around the world.

They were probably best known for those mass weddings that they would have like in Madison Square garden.

He has since passed away and now there are three splinter groups started by his wife and the three sons and some of those groups are quite active, especially the one in America that's run by Sean Moon and he wears a crown of bullets, as do some of the other followers, reverend Moon was quite friendly with George Bush, Daddy Bush and his wife who used to attend some of their gatherings at boomer bats asked, I wonder do cult members join when they are at the brink of insanity or are they already mentally ill or are they perfectly functioning humans that were casually looking for a new set of beliefs to follow and later on lost their sanity in the process?

Ah, at boomer bats, I get this question so often, you know, people have the idea that the people who get into cults have some kind of mental problems and that's absolutely not the case.

First of all, cults want to recruit high functioning individuals.

They want people with money and they want people with connections, they want you to be a good worker, they want you to work very hard.

Cult leaders don't work very much, they're usually pretty lazy, so everyone else has to keep the show going.

Cults aren't going to take care of you, you're there to take care of them.

So they're looking for the kind of person who can perform for them who can bring in good contacts that will lend legitimacy to the group now while you're in the cult, you may develop all kinds of anxiety and panic attacks because of the stress of what you're living under.

But it's good idealistic people who get into cults, they think they're going to change the world or do something important in life and then they're taking advantage of at sarah is sky blue asks what defines a cult, pretty sure you could call anything occult.

First of all, we have the leader who is charismatic and usually a narcissist second we have what I call the transcendent belief system that gives you the answer to everything.

Third are what I call systems of control, things like what you should wear, what you should eat, who you can marry, how many kids you should have or shouldn't have.

And fourth is the systems of influence the cult will be playing on fear, love grief, you know, whatever your emotions are to get you to comply and conform at leona because asks, how do you leave a cult asking for a friend?

Well Leone Acos, here's what I think you should tell your friend.

It's not easy to leave a cult.

It's one of the hardest things someone's ever going to do.

And the most important thing is for those of us on the outside to be that safe.

Haven let the person know that your place that they can come to whenever they want and they can sleep if they want to sleep, they don't have to talk.

So it's just a matter of having some resources on the outside that may help you to build a new life on cider asks what types of cults are illegal according to us law, It's not the cult's per se that are illegal, it's what they do.

So in order to hold some group accountable, you have to have enough evidence of some kind of criminal activity so that law enforcement might get involved.

Many cults will become a religion and hope that they can hide behind the First Amendment atl actual asks, I couldn't help but wonder when does a cult become a religion?

And when does a religion become a cult?

First of all, not every religion becomes a cult and not every cult becomes a religion, cults can be any type of belief system.

It doesn't have anything to do with religion at all.

It can be new age, it can be some kind of philosophy.

A religion may have guidelines for you to live by like be a good person, be kind to your neighbor, don't use contraception.

But in most cases, people from that religion are coming into your bedroom at night to see if you're using contraception.

So that's one of the main differences between a cult and a religion.

In a religion.

You should have freedom and independent thinking at hamza seven asks who has experienced escaping from occult?

Well, at HMS seven, many people have escaped from cults and I'm happy to say that I'm one of them, I was in a political cult it was left wing and we were planning and hoping to make the revolution.

We actually didn't think it would happen in our lifetime.

We saw ourselves as martyrs for the cause.

But what happened is after about 10.5 years, everyone was so burned out, Some of us in leadership realized how corrupt the leader was and just taking advantage of us.

So we called together everybody and we told them what was going on and we had a vote and we unanimously voted to expel her and to dissolve the organization.

And so everyone got out.

It was wonderful.

That's absolutely not a common scenario.

I can think of maybe one, perhaps two other groups that ended in that way at just x asks, how do cults even happen?

Like people really be letting themselves be brainwashed like that.

So at JsX, let me explain how this works.

We all have days when we don't feel so great or maybe we just moved to a new town or maybe we just got divorced or maybe our dog just died and at that point we hear a person up there who's giving us some kind of pitch that's going to change your life now.

That pitch has to appeal to you.

It's not going to appeal to everybody.

You know, I always say, I never would have joined a meditation group because I can't sit still that long, but a political group that was going to change the world.

Well, that sounded fantastic to me, right?

And then you make that commitment.

And often that commitment is made in front of other people.

In my group, we had to stand up and make a pledge that we were going to do this for the rest of our life.

People don't get brainwashed overnight.

This is a re socialization process.

It's changing you to be the person that they want you to be to be the good conforming, complying cult member who will go out and recruit other people and do the work for the cult at nickel or asks why do cults always have everyone wear the same outfit?

Well at nick lore.

Not every cult does that.

The Rajneesh cult back in the day where everyone had to wear orange, some shade of orange.

Here, for example, is a group where everyone's dressed the same.

The reason they do that is to break down your sense of self if everyone looks alike, there's no individuality among you and it's an easy way to get you to conform and comply to the demands of the group at Clover Doocy asked why we're cults so big in the seventies, Y'all.

I'll never get it.

The seventies.

Of course we're a very special time.

New age ideas were taking hold and of course that was a time when there were many communes and so people were living together and that can be a breeding ground for a cult to take hold if you have someone who wants power and takes advantage of that environment.

The seventies was also a time when there were a lot of political cults, it was the end of the Vietnam war era and so people on the left were looking for something to do and a lot of these little groups got started.

You may remember this one.

Patricia hearst who was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army, this is her after her indoctrination where she took the name Tanya and went along to rob some banks including the Hibernia Bank in san Francisco at mob mom asks how did jim jones even established jonestown, it seems unreal.

Here we have Jim jones who was a pastor who had a huge following.

So jones had a very lively quite large church in san Francisco where he did faith healing and other things and And had very loyal followers.

One of the local newspapers was going to write an expose about him and so he had already been sort of planning for this and had already bought land in Guyana.

So he told all his followers to go there and so everyone went their 900 and some people and that's where the tragedy happened.

He took away their passports.

So even if you wanted to leave, you couldn't leave, the Children were brutally punished sometimes hung upside down in wells.

So people were afraid they were afraid for their life and they were there, they were in the middle of nowhere.

Eventually an investigation was called and the congressman from California came to investigate jones had them murdered the poisoned Flavor aid, which is commonly called Kool aid now was made and people were forced to take that the Children were injected first and in the end there was the mass suicide murder that happened of 913 people died and over 200 Children at ca mandatory asks why does peloton feel like a cult?

It may feel like a cult because you're sweating so much, but also there's a sense of accomplishment, a sense of belonging, you're with other people who are also doing peloton and that feels really good.

Of course it's important to recognize that the fitness industry has quite a few groups that are quite cult like.

So it's important to check out what you're doing and be a good consumer at news orbits asks how did hashtag NexIUM become a cult?

Imagine hoping to buy a timeshare brush up your personal skills and getting sucked into sex trafficking.

Well, keith Ranieri was a con artist and he was skilled at setting up sort of pyramid schemes.

NexIUM started out as a kind of multilevel marketing program where people would take these courses and then be expected to recruit other people into these courses.

Some of them were encouraged to move to Albany new york where the headquarters was and people set up centers in different cities around the country keith of course was a pedophile and a sadist.

So he set up kind of a cult within the cult which was called Das, where each woman had a certain number of people below her, they were to recruit other people into this, but the real purpose of it was to feed women to Ranieri for sex.

The other part of it was that he liked really skinny women and so these women were told to be on a 500 calorie a day diet and they were just becoming completely emaciated, they were no longer having their menstrual periods, their hair was falling out, it was absolutely brutal, fortunately some people worked very hard to blow the whistle on this and happily keith Ranieri is now in prison for 120 years at matt Griffith asks what kind of cults are people who sell hair products on instagram, a part of, I'm not sure what you're specifically referring to matt Griffith, but there are certainly a lot of cults and cult like groups within the wellness industry, selling all kinds of products and potions and things to make you feel better at Jessica Evans asks serious question, how many people does it take to form a cult can occult be just two people, Yes, Jessica Evans.