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How I lost my friends to a cult + tips to identify a cult

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Content warning: This post contains descriptions of psychological manipulation, cult dynamics, abuse of authority, and mentions of violence and emotional trauma.

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Hi everyone! The other day, I remembered a story that happened more than 10 years ago, back in 2015. I thought that sharing it might be helpful for people who could be going through something similar, so I decided to write about it. I hope you like it and find this post helpful.

Main story:

As I said, this story goes back to the year 2015. At school, I had my group of friends, which consisted of 3 girls, two other guys, and me. We used to be good friends until one day some other students came into our classroom, started looking around, and chose to get closer to my friends and me. These students started talking about a group they had, in which you could talk about your problems, make friends, and have awesome experiences, all while getting “closer to God”.

Something seemed fishy about them, so immediately I said, “No, thank you”, but the 3 girls in my group didn’t see the red flags in the speech those other guys were giving, so they started to have doubts about joining that group or not (nobody knew yet that it was a cult). So they went to the school counselor, who told them to join, that it was going to be good, that they needed to be close to God, etc., etc. She also told them that they should stop talking to their friends who weren’t going to join, because that would harm their relationship with God.

Strange thing to say, right? Well, later I found out she was part of the cult as well, but I’ll get into that later. The thing is, she managed to convince them. Those 3 friends of mine joined the cult that day because “they had to live it” to understand, to give it a chance, so they could see the “true love of God”. Immediately, slowly but steadily, they started to cut ties with their friends (me and the other guys in the group), classmates, and later even family.

The cult started summoning them to reunions in which only cult members could attend. Their family and friends couldn’t know where they would be staying until after the session ended. These reunions used to last between 2 and 3 days, in which the older members would “initiate” the new ones, making them expose their secrets, their problems, their family issues, everything, to later be used against them. They made them write letters about how bad their family and friends made them feel. They would cry together, pray together, and claim that they were now “a new family”, and that “they didn’t need their old families and friends anymore, only this new family and God”.

They repeated those rituals constantly until the end of the reunions, getting up early in the morning and sleeping late at night until all the rituals were done.

When the reunions ended, they would get close to their “old family” and old friends to give them the letters they had written before, tell them how much they had hurt them, and explain why they chose this “new family and friends closer to God”. After that, they would partially cut ties with their families and friends unless they “wanted to know God as deeply as they did” and wanted to join the new family.

Thanks to these tactics, this cult started to become somewhat prominent in my city, but I won’t address its name in this post for safety reasons.

After cutting ties with their relatives and friends, the new cult members would climb the cult ladder to a new level, which implied being “closer to God”, getting more tasks to try to get people to join, while not being able to talk to outsiders for anything else. They would be summoned to those reunions way more often than before. They would get a wooden fish necklace that the cult members made to help identify themselves among outsiders when outside the cult walls, and they would avoid interaction with other people unless it was for conversion purposes only.

My non-cult friends and I tried to talk to the girls about what we were seeing and the danger they were facing, but the school counselor always got in the way, telling them not to talk to us because we were outsiders, that “we wouldn’t understand”, and that we would “undermine the beautiful relationship they were building with God”.

Later, the counselor would never leave the girls alone. She would come and pick them up after every class so they wouldn’t talk to outsiders. They were often locked up with the counselor, praying and confessing sins to her, while crying and “making the new family ties stronger”.

At this point, you probably think this was some kind of “teen cult” with some adults involved, but you’d be wrong. This was a full-on cult with people of all ages. They would always try to recruit their members when they were young. The young members would have the mission to talk to young outsiders and get them to join the cult.

As they got older, depending on how many people they recruited, they would climb the ladder according to their “accomplishments”, receiving special treatment from the cult. The main leaders were religious older men (priests included) who lived double lives. In their “main life”, they were local religious leaders, and in their “second life”, they led the cult.

Back to the story: obviously, all of this led to my group of friends getting destroyed. One of my non-cult friends left school after the cult started to gain too much power over it (he was trans, so the cult especially disliked him and made him a target, ordering cult members to try and attack him only if no one else was watching). The other one tried to join the cult but got rejected for “pretending to be close to God”, which led him to be ostracized and later leave school.

After seeing everything and being left alone, I got mad and started to investigate this cult as much as I could, collecting evidence and trying to free some of the members. This made me an “unpleasant person” in their eyes, who needed to be avoided at all costs. I really tried to free my friends (or those I used to consider my friends) from the cult’s brainwashing, but it was too late. They were too far gone, so I chose to only investigate, hoping that someday I could have my friends back again (that never happened, the cult destroyed them as individuals until years later).

Later, I gave up. There was nothing I could do to free my friends. I left the school as well and never tried to talk to them again. Five years passed, and one of my ex-friends looked for me. She told me that the cult leaders were being searched for by the police. They had fled the city and left the cult to die.

The leaders told the members that they “needed to look for good souls to save elsewhere as well” and left them waiting for God to take care of them. After that, they disappeared and never came back.

She told me she didn’t know the police were after the leaders, and when she found out, she didn’t understand why. According to her, they were doing nothing wrong. With time and the absence of the hierarchy, she started to realize how fucked up everything was. She realized what she had gotten into and chose to leave.

That’s when she thought about reaching out to me. She needed to say she was sorry. She didn’t expect me to forgive her or to be friends again. When she came to see me, she was still wearing the wooden fish necklace. I told her I understood what had happened and what she went through. Even though it was hard at first, I had already forgiven her, but I didn’t want to be friends anymore, not after everything that had happened. She understood, and that was the last time we met.

About the other two girls, I only know they managed to leave the cult as well and tried to rebuild their lives, but they never fully became themselves again. It’s like something inside them died in the cult. I know that if the cult came back someday, they would join it again, since the girl who reached out to me said that openly and proudly. From an outside perspective, it feels like they never truly learned anything from that experience, which is honestly sad to see.

Sadly, to this day, I remember them as best as I can, with the sad certainty that those friends will never come back, and that even if I wanted to get close again, it would be too dangerous for me.

The reason I wanted to write this post is that back then I didn’t have enough knowledge to face that situation alone. I knew it was a cult, but I wasn’t able to do anything to save my friends or to clearly point out the manipulation they were under.

For a long time, I felt guilty for not being able to protect them. That’s why I wanted to write this—just in case someone is going through a similar experience. Know that it’s not your fault. You can’t save people who don’t want to be saved.

And if you are the one getting into a “new group” that promises to complete you, beware. Not everything is what it seems. Be alert. Don’t be naive. Be smart. Don’t be gullible.

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How to identify a cult:

1.- Progressive isolation:

A cult will try to distance you from your family, friends, and support networks. They don’t do this instantly, but they begin discrediting with phrases like “they don’t understand you”, “they hurt you”, “they drive you away from the truth”, “only we can help you”, “you need us and no one else”.

If a group tells you that your external relationships are a problem, it’s not a coincidence, it’s deliberate.

2.- Recruitment of emotionally vulnerable people:

Cults will actively look for people in hard situations or a fragile emotional state. They would look for people who face loneliness, depression, family conflicts, identity crises, or even grief. Anything works for them as long as it means you’d be easy to manipulate.

They get close to people with these characteristics not because they want to help, but because vulnerability facilitates control.

A healthy group helps without asking for dependency. A cult needs you to be broken.

3.- Forced trust and use of personal information:

They’ll ask you to tell them your trauma, your mistakes, and speak ill of your family and friends. And later, they’ll use that information to inflict guilt on you, emotional blackmail, and enforce control over you.

If what you share stops being confidential and starts being used to blackmail you, pressure you, or make you comply, get out as quickly as you can.

4.- “Our new family” narrative:

Cults often replace your ties for a “new family”, “the chosen ones”, “the superior ones”, “the spiritual family”, etc.

This is useful for them to justify making you abandon your previous relationships, create an emotional dependency, and make it harder for you to escape the cult.

No healthy group will ask you to give up your family or friends to belong.

5.- Us vs. Them logic:

For a cult, the world is divided into “the ones who understand” and “the ones who don’t”. Those who are outside are “ignorant”, “dangerous”, “a threat”.

When a group dehumanizes or invalidates outsiders, they are closing a cage. The least amount of contact you have with outsiders, the less you’ll question authority.

6.- Unquestionable authorities:

They can be a leader, a counselor, a spiritual guide, a priest, but you shall not question them, they are always right. If you doubt, they’ll accuse you of a lack of faith, compromise, or label you as a traitor.

If asking is forbidden, leave immediately.

7.- Commitment climb:

Each step you take on their ladder requires more of your time, requires you to dedicate yourself to more of their tasks, to get more isolated, to give them more of your loyalty, and so on.

Getting out gets harder the higher you get in the hierarchy, because you have already invested too much to leave.

This is progressive entrapment.

8.- Manipulative emotional language:

Phrases like “if you leave you’ll be betraying us”, “it’ll break our heart”, “it’ll bring you further away from God”, “God would be disappointed”, “you are nothing without us”, “you need us”.

Those are subtle threats, that is not love or belonging.

9.- Identity reduced to the group:

Your personal value starts to depend on how much you do for the group, how many people you recruit, how obedient and compliant you are, etc.

You disappear as an individual, if it’s not you anymore, but a member of X, then there is a serious problem.

10.- Guilt or blackmail when trying to leave:

If someone leaves, they’ll get ostracized, shunned, seen as a traitor, defamed, labeled as insincere, and so on.

This is used to scare the others, to prevent them from following the example of the deserter.

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Remember: It’s not your responsibility to save someone who doesn’t want to be saved, but now you’ll know how to identify a cult, so you won’t fall into their grasp.

I hope you found this post helpful or entertaining in some way. I trust this post will find those who need it, I’ll entrust that to the universe. Have a wonderful day, and don’t forget to comment. I’d love to hear your stories as well. Goodbye!

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Please do not repost or claim as your own. Sharing with credits is welcome.

#cult #cultAwareness #psychologicalManipulation #religiousAbuse #trauma #personalStory

consecuences

neozlicembe

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sustancy

neozbiljno

recaption

Avoidance behaviors in the LGBT population due to early trauma.

This post addresses sensitive topics related to personal experiences, mental health, and challenging life situations. Reader discretion is advised.

In this entry, as the title says, I'll talk about avoidance behaviors many LGBT members (mainly gay men) experience because of early childhood trauma, its roots, and consequences. All of that based on my observation through people I know, people I worked with, and my own experience dealing with trauma of this kind.

Many gay men, especially those born between 1995 and 2005, have experienced some unique forms of trauma. It's not as strong as the generations that lived before them, but it's subtle, present, and it eats them from the inside out. This can have multiple effects that can follow a person through the years, well into adulthood. Many of the gay men who were raised during these years or decades were insulted and labeled as "gay" even before they knew what the word meant. The world taught them that it was something wrong, bad, and that they must be kept away (if other people noticed that they were gay) or that they should stay away from gay people, almost as if this last group carried a contagious and dangerous sickness (in the case that they didn't know the person that they were warning was gay). In either case, this caused a lot of pressure on both groups of people. The first group, "The known gays", developed a way of thinking that they were wrong the way they were born, that they were a mistake, or various other hurtful labels. And the second group, which I'm going to label as "The not noticed gays", were developing a belief that they could never be themselves or show who they really were, or else they would suffer the same consequences that the first group was suffering every day.

In the long run, these thoughts altered the way their personalities developed, causing them to overcompensate or to escape the pain through some not-so-safe methods, such as excessive alcohol use, parties, intimate relationships with unknown men, substance abuse, involvement in adult services, among other dangerous ways of coping. Even if the roots of this trauma were different for both groups, they both face the same struggles, difficulty accepting themselves, difficulty with being open with who they are, anxiety about how the world, family, and friends might perceive them, and how their inner circle would react if they knew, leading many young gay men to struggle with their identity for years, some even their whole lives, in the worst scenarios, leading them to harm themselves.

Not every outcome is bad, of course. Many people are able to break from this cycle. Most of the time, it is only when this trauma can be overcome or learned to live with that people can begin to live peacefully. The problem with this is that many people get lost along the way, many people get hooked on addictions that shape their lives, enclosing them in a cycle they would hardly ever escape, and this reality is what led me to write this post.

As a gay man myself, I've dealt with this kind of trauma, and even if I haven't engaged in addictions to cope with it, I developed an avoidant personality and some strong anxiety as a direct consequence of the gay childhood trauma. Unfortunately, some people I know haven't been so "lucky" as I, some people I know fell into alcoholism and/or substance abuse. Others fell into the addiction of having intercourse with people they barely know. This last group I observed seems to be the "healthiest" on the outside, but on the inside, they struggle with a lot of insecurities, anxiety, and doubt about how much they can keep the "successful" facade. Even if on the outside they seem like the most social and outgoing people, some have confessed to me how much they suffer because they don't want people to know who they are, that they would even be willing to live a fake life, with a fake wife and family, just so their friends wouldn't know the truth and cut ties with them, leaving them to face a loneliness that they are scared to go through. It's tough, and not everyone realizes that they must get out of those dynamics before it's too late.

All of the above leads me to tell you: if you are struggling with a situation like this, seek help. It can be professional help if you need it, or help from someone you trust. You are strong and able to keep going if you are willing to do so. Get away from toxic groups of "friends" that would reject you for being who you are, those are not real friends, but you might find real ones in the future. Don't let others dictate the way you must live. Free yourself, enjoy, and don't feel obligated to explain yourself to anyone. You deserve happiness, love, and respect.

Stay strong and stay safe.

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This post was informed by my own experiences and by research exploring substance use and addiction risks in the LGBT community, including:

Substance Use and Misuse in MSM.

A systematic review of mental disorder and self-harm in lesbian, gay and bisexual people.

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Please do not repost or claim as your own. Sharing with credits is welcome.

#mine #lgbt #mental health #gay #repost #spacehey

I feel jealous of the new generation's freedom to love (in a good way)

Warning: This post contains references to homophobia, bullying, sexual violence, and trauma related to growing up gay in early 2000s Chile. Please read with care.

For context, I grew up in the 2000s in Chile, it was a completely different country from what it is today. Back then, if you were a gay child or gay teen, your childhood would be hell. People would treat you as less than human. They would harass, attack, bully, sexually assault, and in some cases, even try to murder you only because of your sexuality. It was hard. All of that was treated as normal. People would blame you for the things that happened to you, or that others did to you, including themselves. They would justify attacks against you because "Well, you are gay, what do you expect?" and "Gay people deserve to live like that". From a young age, I learned that I deserved everything bad that could happen to me just because I'm gay. It didn't matter if I hadn't done anything wrong or hadn't hurt anybody, in society's eyes, I deserved the worst of punishments. But outwardly, everyone would act as if nothing happened, like they were doing nothing wrong at all. Schools were accomplices to terrible acts, covering up everything, including crimes committed against you, only because you are different, because being gay meant being the perfect target of all kinds of sick or evil people, and they were "justified" for their actions in almost all cases, nobody would support you, sometimes not even your own family, in some cases your own family would act against you, and in others, they would turn a blind eye.

This is the Chile I grew up in, every aspect of you would be questioned, every aspect of your identity was dissected, judged, criticized and used against you, trying to make you hate yourself as much as possible for no other reason than you being gay, people would feel free to be the worst they could be towards you with no consequence at all, and behave completely differently when they interacted with you and when they interacted with others, the only way to be safe was to not be noticed, nobody should know you were gay, or else they would turn your life into a nightmare. Every day was a different struggle, being a gay child or teen in the 2000s was honestly the worst that could happen to a person.

But someday that changed, I don't know when exactly, but society started to change, now they would point out the people that were doing the evil instead of the victims, they started pointing out the accomplices, the crimes, and slowly changing that mentality of "Gay people deserve to suffer just because they are gay", to a mentality of "Gay people have the right to have a peaceful life", and yeah, it was a slow process, but now life in Chile for gay children and teens is way better. I still think people haven't really changed their mentality, but at least they don't enact their dark thoughts on innocent people anymore, because of the fear of actually having to face consequences for their actions. But on the bright side, at least the new generations aren't being raised with this hate, and I do have faith that they will grow up without this hate mentality of the past.

And that takes me to this post's topic, I'm jealous about this freedom to love and to be who you are that this new generation has, I really wish I could've had that back in my childhood, life would have been so much easier for me, and with a lot less trauma, that's why I want to finish this post by saying, be who you are. Love who you are. You deserve love, happiness, and respect. Always fight for your rights and never take them for granted. Fight for the lives of future generations, so they have a better life than the past ones, grow up in a safe environment, and never live in fear or guilt because of being who they are. Unlike past generations, who didn't get that chance. Never give up the wish for a better future, because sadly, there will always be people who will want to take away your rights and make you, your family, or your community a target for their hate and misery.

Spread love, be strong, be happy, and never back down. You are worthy of a good life. Never let anyone tell you otherwise, no matter how hard they try to deceive you.

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Please do not repost or claim as your own. Sharing with credits is welcome.

#lgbt #chile #life struggles #gay #love is love #mine #spacehey

Dead Internet Theory - How the Internet of today feels soulless compared to the past

I still remember the day I got my first computer. It was the year 2010, I had used a computer before, but I didn’t have my own until then. This opened a new world to my eyes, more games to play, more people to meet, more sites to browse, more ways to communicate, new ways to create, new ways to learn, I was so fascinated by this, but I didn’t know how to use anything, everything was new to me, so I had to learn each day to use the computer properly and find new ways to have fun with it. The internet of the past is completely different from the internet from today, I remember the first time I ever used a computer, it was the year 2008, and the web was so full of stuff, some of it cool, some of it dark, but everything felt so organic, you could be on a random website that you used to navigate on, and in the other moment, you found a completely different site, with way different content or purpose, that was the charm of the old internet, but that’s what made it unsafe too.

Today’s internet feels infertile, sterile, hyper-polished to a point where everything is boring, almost nobody is real, and everything is controlled by the same companies, it’s hard to find something new or something worth it, creativity is dead and hard to find, the good thing is, this internet is safer, you don’t stumble upon weird sites by accident no more, and even if that’s good, it makes things boring. In the old internet you could be on a gaming website and the next second on a completely inappropriate site, a weird dude would try to talk you into things, and even if it was creepy, you could always learn from that to be more cautious about where you click, where you get into, the sites you visit and so on.

I remember the countless times I accidentally got into dangerous sites, saw things I shouldn’t, but at the same time, I remember the multiple times I got to know marvellous things, awesome indie games, awesome platforms, different ideas and people who made the internet magical, you could find the most incredible website ever, and it felt like finding a diamond in a bunch of dirt, it was dangerous, yes, but definitely worth it and satisfying to do, it made everything feel so special, like you cherished every time you found something cool to visit or to create, you could visit and be part of niche communities maybe not many people had heard of, and everything was only one click away.

There were moments you needed a program or a game, maybe even a show, and you had to look in different sites to find it, they didn’t have ads or the wrongly called “link shorteners” that only make navigating on the web annoying, if you needed something, you looked for it, you get it ad free, and everyone was happy, there were trolls as always that would upload the wrong stuff on purpose, but since it wasn’t that tricky to find things and to get where you wanted to get, this wasn’t a big problem at all.

There were spaces for everything, spaces for everyone, spaces dedicated to children, others for adults, spaces for mystery, some creepypastas made by the community, fueled by them, some user-made sites that hosted the most incredible content you could ever find, and now, all of that is gone.

I’m not sure when it began to happen, but it started with “link shorteners” making navigating through the internet an awful experience, then the internet hosts owned by big companies began shutting down the user-made websites, driving them to extinction, the big tech companies monopolizing the use of the internet and its sites, and everything being confined to a couple of platforms, completely drained of identity and freedom. They started slow but steady, killing the internet from within, adding more restrictions, more ads, silently shutting down the sites that had previously managed to escape their grasp, and now, we are here, navigating in a dead internet, where everything that’s good needs to be hidden or it will be taken down, where communities struggle to survive, where there is no connection anymore, where everything is monetized and there is no humanity anymore.

Today’s internet is sad, lacks purpose, lacks identity, lacks profundity, it has lost everything that made it special, and now we are not users of it anymore, it’s the other way around, it uses us to make the rich richer, while they kill the internet and leave us to be lonelier each passing day. They’ve made the internet a sterile environment, hostile to new ideas, hostile to creativity, and allergic to humanity itself. The great digital world that we once had is now gone, and sadly, I doubt it will ever come back, the ones that got to experience it earlier than me are the most fortunate of all, I got a taste of what it was, and got right on time to see it fall and crumble in front of my eyes, leaving me with the nostalgia of what it once was, and the ache of what I didn’t get to experience in time, along with the daunting feeling of watching the monster that it was becoming, without being able to do anything to stop it.

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Please do not repost or claim as your own. Sharing with credits is welcome.

#dead internet theory #mine #blog #spacehey #internet #nostalgia

lonely-coconut

Blinkie.World preview!

Here is a preview of Blinkie.world, my blinkie collecton site! The goal here is to collect every blinkie on earth (but only if they're free to use, and can be credited). They're all sorted into these color pages, and also sorted into tons of sub categories on other pages (like food, animals, holidays, etc etc). This is what some of the color pages look like now! Once I have at least 300 blinkies in each color, then I'll consider the site full enough to go live! I'm aiming to get it online by Art Fight (aka by July this year).