I Could Have Started a Cult
(Capitalism Just Got There First)
I could have started a cult.
Not the scary kind. No robes. No bunk beds. No desert property with a suspicious zoning history.
A nice cult. A modern cult. A cult with a newsletter and a merch drop.
I wouldn’t have done crimes.
I wouldn’t have isolated people from their families.
I wouldn’t have made anyone drink anything they didn’t want to drink.
But I would have been rich.
And honestly, if you’re uncomfortable with that sentence, you’re going to hate the rest of this essay.
Cults Didn’t Go Away. They Got Terms of Service.
When people hear “cult,” they think of the loud ones.
The ones with documentaries.
The ones where everyone speaks softly and the music tells you someone is about to die.
But those cults didn’t disappear. They just failed to pivot.
Modern cults realized something crucial:
Isolation is bad for growth.
Compounds don’t scale.
Algorithms do.
Why lock people in a commune when you can keep them fully employed, emotionally exhausted, and spiritually hungry — and still monetize them?
The compound didn’t vanish.
It moved into your phone.
And it has push notifications.
Welcome to the Social Media Compound
Joining is free.
Leaving is… emotionally complicated.
No one stops you. No one confronts you. You just quietly stop being seen.
Your posts get fewer likes.
Your stories get fewer views.
Your absence is noted in a way that feels personal but remains deniable.
Classic cult tactic.
Now with better UX.
Belief System (Flexible, Vibes-Based)
Every cult needs beliefs, but not ones you can argue with.
Ours would be beautifully vague:
Growth is good.
Visibility is value.
Discomfort means progress.
If it’s not working, you’re not doing it right.
These beliefs are incredible because they never fail.
If you succeed, they were correct.
If you fail, that’s on you.
That’s not ideology.
That’s customer support.
The Self-Help Wing (Trauma, Now in Installments)
We would absolutely have self-help content.
Your trauma would be validated immediately — then gently converted into a revenue stream. Courses. Challenges. Journals. Guided audio. A workbook that looks suspiciously like homework.
Healing would always be happening.
Completion would be discouraged.
Because if you ever felt done, you might cancel your subscription.
And if something didn’t work?
You weren’t broken.
You just weren’t ready yet.
Or you skipped a module.
Or you didn’t buy the premium tier.
That’s not exploitation.
That’s scalable empathy.
Philosophy Wing (Ancient Wisdom, Modern Fonts)
We’d teach philosophy too. That’s how you sound serious.
Stoicism would become productivity tips.
Buddhism would become mindfulness for burnout.
Humanism would become “values-based leadership.”
Everything ancient would be stripped of context and framed as a framework.
No one would need to change their life.
They’d just need to feel like they understood something.
Which, let’s be honest, is most of the internet.
Political Action Wing (Urgent Forever)
A modern cult needs a cause.
Something righteous. Something urgent. Something that feels like action but never actually resolves.
There would be hashtags. Statements. Calls to action. Fundraisers. Reaction cycles.
Nothing would ever be finished.
Finished is dangerous.
Finished sends people back to their lives.
The goal isn’t change.
The goal is engagement.
Leadership (I Wouldn’t Call Myself a Leader)
Every cult needs a leader who insists they’re not a leader.
That would be me.
I’d say things like:
“I’m just sharing my journey.”
“Take what resonates.”
“Be careful of cults.”
I would constantly warn people about manipulation while standing at the center of a highly optimized influence machine.
That’s not hypocrisy.
That’s branding.
Power works best when it pretends not to exist.
The Capitalism Wing (The Honest Part)
Here’s where the joke stops pretending.
The product wouldn’t be belief.
It wouldn’t even be community.
The product would be people performing belief in public.
Followers are inventory.
Authenticity is a marketing asset.
Vulnerability is a content strategy.
Community is a retention model.
No Kool-Aid.
Just affiliate links.
Why This Is Uncomfortable
I’m not special.
I’m not uniquely manipulative.
I’m not a mastermind.
That’s the point.
The systems already exist.
The incentives are already aligned.
We’ve decided that as long as nobody is locked in a room, it doesn’t count as coercion.
We replaced authoritarian cults with subscription-based meaning.
Same hunger.
Better lighting.
Why I Didn’t Start One
I didn’t start a cult because I don’t actually want power over people.
I want meaning.
Connection.
Understanding.
To feel like what I’m doing matters.
Capitalism just figured out how to monetize those desires faster than I ever could.
Which means the real question isn’t whether I could have started a cult.
It’s why so many of us are already in one —
and still calling it normal.
