My boyfriend and I are watching Blue Eden right now on Netflix which is about people who get tricked into joining a cult. The Blue Eden cult in question targets a bunch of lonely twentysomethings via social media and invites them to their private island for a rave. Then they select a few from that group that they aren't going to boat back to the mainland. They're just trapped and forced to assimilate.
It is a terrifying concept of course but it feels removed from reality to me. Cults do prey on lonely and isolated people, but the horrifying truth is they don't need to trap anyone on their private island in order to increase membership. The ideological, sociological, and psychological hooks that cults have will ensnare people just as well. The people running Blue Eden have money, charisma, and excellent knowledge of social media. Those three things + desire to form your own weird cult society are all a recipe for forming a very public and successful cult.
This idea that cults will kidnap you, that they can be avoided by not putting yourself into obviously sketchy meatspace situations (the level of sketch was legitimately absurd like red flag after red flag after red flag), is part of how cults continue to exist.
