#cult behavior

Where Simon challenges The Father. Because!!! It shows he is smart, he’s always been smart. He challenges authority when it he doubts what they are saying.

Do you know how dangerous a doubting child in a cult is??

The Father laughs like he likes the question and that’s the trick because Cults hate questions and doubts and independent thinkers- but they pretend to love questions.

Especially from new members. Simon is a new member (came from Mars- that one conversation with his mother “I don’t want to go- Simon don’t be like that.”) They love to answer questions from new members because it offers them a chance to nip any doubt in the bud, answer with absolutes and half-answers and usually end in humiliating or tearing down the person who asked the question. Not to get personal on main but trust me. You just see their teeth sharpen when you admit to a doubt or ask a question as a kid. They’ll make you feel stupid for asking and if you keep not understanding their half answers (asking more questions) they will get angry at you for persisting.

That’s why I headcanon that Simon has always been a doubter- especially with his monologue later about “what’s more likely? The stars disappeared or a few space stations?” (Paraphrasing) but it’s a very difficult and painful life for a doubting child growing up in a quite literally inescapable cult. But doubting doesn’t necessarily mean he didn’t listen. Doubting doesn’t mean he didn’t fall for the dogma. He can still doubt and be their Butcher. They made him a solider, they made him loyal, and just because he privately thought it was all horse shit doesn’t mean he didn’t learn to not to challenge authority (that he still struggles with). That the belief sank into him like thorns, that he can’t help but feel a religious reverence for the seed despite hating what they did in the name of the Last Tree.

Someone tries to dictate your beliefs and/or practice based on their personal experiences (aka UPG, or unverified personal gnosis).

They claim the gods will punish you if you don't go along with them.

They appeal to conspiracy theories to justify their beliefs. (See also Is the spiritual person a conspiracy theorist? A list of red flags.)

They make big, dramatic predictions (like claiming aliens will arrive on a certain date, or that the ancient gods will return and overthrow the government soon).

They claim to have a big, important role in the grand cosmic drama (like claiming they're the Archangel Michael and they're going to fight Satan, which will lead to the fall of the government).

They are extremely opposed to skepticism, critical thinking, and/or academia. Not merely critical where it's actually appropriate, but treating it like it's all pure evil.

They encourage you to cut off people who don't believe or criticize what they teach.

They are absolutely certain they can use mystical means (like astrology or tarot) to determine whether someone is a good or bad person.

They are absolutely certain they can just sense whether someone is good or bad.

They are absolutely certain they can use mystical means to find out what another person is thinking or doing.

They claim you were connected to them in a past life.

I mean, being abused his whole life everywhere and groomed, since age 11, into joining a cult seems like a pretty good excuse to me.

He was being abused both at home and at school by his father and group of bullies. The kid had no escape.

And they name characters that went through abuse too and "didn’t become terrorists" as their "proof".

The fact those other characters actually had support from their loved ones not mattering to them at all.

Not beating the death cult allegations

No media, no relief only despair and constant doomscrolling and giving to scams or directly to hamas?

Summary: Xiao worships you like a God. You’re his savior, and this sinner cannot stand to tear himself away from you again. So, he begs for salvation, for a chance at redemption from you. He will offer his heart on a platter for you. Do you offer salvation to this poor unfortunate soul within the walls of your stomach?

TW ‼️ : cannibalism, implied smut, cultish behavior, major power imbalance, very lightly implied manipulative behavior (from reader), implied suicidal ideation/actions, implied death, light graphic descriptions, (reader lowkey sees him as a dog)

“My yaksha—“ you cooed, running your hands through locks, soothing the weeping yaksha wailing into your lap. tears rolling down between your thighs. he clings onto your legs with trembling hands, terrified of the possibility of him being accused of trying to taint your flesh by digging his nails into you.

he shakes, he shivers, and trembles beneath you. his karmic debt has been getting worse; it seems like he cannot escape the struggle of pulling against chains like a prong collar, hands of the fallen clawing— gripping onto him. Their screams, their bodies, it haunts him.

you always welcomed him with open arms regardless of his sins. your presence is the only escape he has from the constant torment of his actions. your touch is like an aphrodisiac. a wave of relief washed over his body, as if you were picking out the tension from his muscles by hand. you made his blood flow in moments he thought it had stopped. only your touch could breathe life into him again, and archons above- it was so addicting.

you made him feel like a man beyond his sins. a man beyond the title of “conquerer of demons”, you saw redemption in him where even he could not see. as your fingers lift his chin to face you, he stares up at you with a look of something more than admiration, more than devotion— worship.

“i do not deserve to lay my eyes upon you” he utters, his voice shaking as if he were afraid it would somehow taint this moment. it wasn’t a statement, it was plea for you to keep letting him worship you. he’d kiss the ground you walked on, he’d drop down to his knees and grovel at your feet at a single glance, he would rip the stars from the sky if you so asked. He’d do anything to stay by your side like some lost puppy, gladly giving you the leash to his obedience.

He truly worshipped you, more than anyone. He was your most devoted follower. You were his savior, his God, and he worshipped you as such. He practically melts like putty into your warm hands, a stark contrast from his deathly cold skin. he is yours, to mold, to shape, to save. “Please..” he whispers, voice cracking. You tilted your head, inquiring to what he was whimpering about. He lets his head fall back into your lap, breath captured between the soft plush skin of your thighs.

“Eat me.”

The ultimate act of devotion, to lay yourself bare before your god, let them reach down into your ribs, tracing down your spinal cord. He is yours, all yours. He shamefully hangs his head low, knowing a sinner like himself had no right to ever request something so grotesque from a saint such as yourself.

In his mind, he thinks if even someone as perfect as you would dare to lay a finger on his flesh, dare to take him between your teeth, if you could stomach something so vile and disgusting as himself, then maybe, just maybe, he’d be worthy of something close to redemption.

He couldn’t bear to part with you any longer, even for a second. He just couldn’t. He knew he couldn’t keep you glued to his side, nor could he stay by yours when he was still shackled to his duties of this world.. but if he was no longer part of this world, if he was a part of you then.. he’d never ever have to part with you. he could worship you for all eternity.

he would let you rip him apart, tear him limb from limb, bite and take him piece by piece. he begged you to, actually. begged for any of his feelings to be returned by the sensation of your teeth breaking through his skin. he pleaded with you to let him show his utter devotion and in return he’d strip himself down to the bone for you. he dropped his weapon like an offering at your feet.

he’d let you cut him up with his own weapon.

he loved you, he loved you so much he couldn’t stand not being beneath your skin any longer. he needed to sink into your warm blood, cleanse himself through the blood pumping in your veins. he could never hurt you of course. so the only option left was for him to offer himself up as a sacrifice to you.

He felt every fiber of willpower leave his body, all strength vanishing from him when you leaned down and offered him redemption between your lips. A kiss, warm, soft and archons— he wanted you to swallow him whole right then and there.

you can’t help but feel something more than pity for this wretched thing groveling at your feet. you feel something deeper. something that sparks a desire in even someone as holy as you, a desire to feed.

In the end, Xiao died how he lived, a follower, a devotee, and a worshipper. but there’s no other place he would rather be than inside you.

TLDR: Ziz left the rationalist community 6 years ago and even at the time she wasn’t liked there, the fact she managed to exploit. Her actions directly contradict both hpmor and what CFAR was doing and teaching. Her other affiliations that are no less relevant include being an anarchist and a vegan. You are not immune to cults just because you are not into any particular weird internet subculture.

Cults form from niche subcultures, that’s true enough. But any subculture can form a cult because any culture, even the mainstream one, contains some ideas that can be twisted to an insane degree. And any ideology, even the most niche and scary one, can be approached casually and sceptically. What is actually needed to create a cult is not a special ideology but a cult leader and vulnerable people to follow them. That is the main uniting quality between all cults. Trying to figure out what’s wrong with a certain music band or a certain fantasy book forum is an exercise in motivated reasoning. You will always end up finding something that's wrong.

The rationalist community was trying to prevent the formation of a cult as best as they could. Partly that’s the reason why people like Ziz and others with bad and unpopular takes were often tolerated longer than necessary. To encourage criticism and prevent getting stuck in a positive feedback loop. Because it’s not a high control group! You cannot be simultaneously mad that people are allowed to talk about wacky ideas on forums and also that the group is supposedly very rigid and controlled. Apparently, they could use some control. Not like it would actually stop an aspiring cult leader from recruiting, they’d just go some other place.

Zizians were not mostly trans by accident (what are the chances?). Ziz was recruiting the most vulnerable people who related to her and were willing to trust her (also because there’s a lot of trans women in the community, like a lot). She used their very real and grounded experience of discrimination to convince them that her not being liked is not due to her takes being bad but because she’s trans.

And she had a lot of takes, some of them not being popular enough you actually complained about. You criticised LessWrong for being too pro-capitalist for your taste and then started talking about the Really Bad rationalists and THEY ARE LEFTISTS killing landlords and cops.

Now if we are talking about ideologies that devalue human life, how about some that require actual Class War (guess what people do in wars) or violent mass uprisings? Or some that require assassinations of certain select individuals? How come you hear that there are people on forums discussing the ethics of murdering those directly responsible for destroying our planet and you, as a leftist, do not immediately recognize yourself in it? Nothing discussed on LessWrong is more violent than a communist revolution or even the killing of Brian Thompson.

Why being into rationality at some point and reading hpmor is the only thing you told about Ziz? I think I know why. All the right wingers really leaned into the whole ‘trans vegan cult’ thing. That is not a good look for our side, is it? How amazing would it be to find a scapegoat. Who cares about those AI safety freaks anyway? They are all cishet men anyway! All cishet men who somehow have an offshoot of violent vegan queers, that certainly adds up.

Ziz being a radical vegan* (another niche subculture) corresponds to her actions way better than anything that's discussed on LessWrong or happened in hpmor. In fact, there’s an exact scene you probably skipped. Harry is on a very important and dangerous mission with Quirrell and at some point he is told to hide while Quirrell duels a cop guard at magical Guantanamo Bay – a total pig and an absolute scum who Ziz would kill without a second thought. Harry does share her sentiment, he fucking hates Azkaban. But when Quirrell tries to kill the evil torture cop Harry instinctively protects him jeopardizing the entire mission. And it’s not a random scene. It starts the entire disillusionment spiral where Harry realizes his beloved groomer professor might be a bad guy. Murder of a bystander whose only crime is being a product of his society is not something Harry can tolerate. He does end up decapitating a bunch of actual death eaters in the very end (the bit you probably did read) to save his own life and defeat Voldemort and even then he regrets it and apologizes for it (despite it being the right thing to do and not even comparable to a random cop). There’s an entire scene where Harry bonds with Draco over their mother’s deaths where he expresses that every death is a tragedy, even deaths of very bad people (like Voldemort).

Not to mention the entire immortalism theme (did you skip the entire third book?). One cannot read hpmor and walk away thinking human life is worthless or only super geniuses deserve to live. Timeless decision theory leading to murdering people is not in there**, nothing in the fic even suggests such a conclusion. More about how you got most things wrong about hpmor here.

Let’s face it, those were a bunch of sleep deprived vulnerable people high on all sorts of radical ideas, who were kicked out of every decent movement and that’s why they slipped into a cult.

Any subculture can become a cult. If you ever read a boring preachy fanfic or ever went to a physical meeting with internet weirdos. If you ever felt rejected by mainstream society and went looking for ‘like-minded people’, for a ‘found family’, for a ‘place where you belong’. You are not safe. Touching grass from time to time is not enough. You have to never leave the pastures to be highly immune to cults. And that ain’t you, my friend. That’s none of us.

Previous post about rationalist community.

* Ever heard ‘veganism is the moral baseline’ (sometimes minimum or imperative)? That’s not a slander, it’s a commonplace argument and an actual slogan.