So if you’ll recall, last week I discussed ”mad man charisma” and crank magnetism, and how that often leads people to join cults. Being that I find this topic fascinating both from a historical standpoint and a business standpoint, I want to discuss how cults operate, the tactics they use to ensnare people, and how you might be bale to use this for the forces of good.

First of all, let us talk about common misconceptions: Cults do not always target shitty people and losers, we think that as the stereotype, but that’s not always the case. Obviously, gullibility and weakness help, but a lot of times people who think they’re too smart, too cool for school, doing well, will be targeted by cults that use particular tactics to target them, with corresponding tactics to recruit losers. After all, why wouldn’t a cult want to recruit successful people? It makes them look better!

With all that being said, the targeting of losers can be seen in one of the most common tactic that cult leaders (As well as myriad other scammers) will use—the cold read.

You’re probably familiar with the cold read as the modus operandi for every fortune teller and charlatan in every two bit carnival in the world—it’s not a magical power, but it is a skill that can be learned—the skill to give one glance at somebody and make a series of educated guesses about somebody’s health, desires, self esteem (or lack thereof). These educated guesses are often right, as most people are not particularly complicated (think of the NPC meme if you will), and sad to say, stereotypes exist for a reason: they’re more often than not true-ish.

Cold reading is a skill that desres an article for itself in the future, but for now just know that a lot of huckers use it—fortune tellers, cult leaders, and pick up artists: many of them will use it themselves and advocate that their students use it.

The second technique, which can affect anybody no matter their status, is “love bombing”, which is to say overwhelmingly showering attention and affection upon somebody. In addition to cults, abusive spouses and pimps will often use this one as well.

(It’s worth pointing out that the Unification Church created this term—they have no illusions about what they’re doing).

If you’ll recall, this is very similar to the “warmth” facet of charisma, and thus this can be very easily used for good as well as for evil. As long as you can [pretend to] give somebody lots of love and affection, and make it seem like you’re not faking it, people will more often than not listen to you—and if you turn love bombing into “flirty fishing” (which is vaguely similar, except you bang them and then proselytize your views)

From there, most of the cult tactics are not exactly ethical or legal—blackmail, outright hypnosis and brainwashing, and the like. But the two above can serve you well for a variety of purposes.