You're listening to? Serious inquiries only.

Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries only. This is episode 257. I'm Thomas and this is part two about cults with Lindsey Osterman.

What makes them work? Why did people choose to go into them? Why do they stay in? And is QAnon a cult? Is Trumpism a cult?

All those questions and more today. So why don't we just get right over to it? Here is part two. Make sure you've caught part one, which was last episode before you listen to this.

All right, here we go.

So yeah, so I was just so they that was the first hook for Sarah, right? She shouldn't have kept coming back.

But she talked to Mark and he was like, just stick it out. You've already paid the money. You're already there.

Well, I think about two, sorry to cut in, but like how I think that prays upon people who are probably have less, you know, because like say you're wealthy and you pay $3,000 or something.

You're like, well, this is clearly bullshit, whatever. But what if that $3,000 was like incredibly hard to come by and you're a struggling actor or whatever you might be?

I think that psychologically, it's probably even more pressure to make it into something and to not feel like horrible that you wasted this hard earned what you know, very needed money that you have.

Whereas if you're some wealthy person, you're like, yeah, whoops, blue $3,000. Oh, well, whoopsie.

And yet it did also work on the Seagram's ears.

I thought they were like kind of behind it, though. That's what I didn't get. I don't know. So there's more to this.

And it might be like how Scientology has one face that they show to you or I and another that they show to Tom Cruise.

That's a good point.

So it could be like that kind of thing.

Yeah, that's true. They might not have entered through the ESP seminars.

Yeah. That's probably for somebody else. But yeah, I mean, the thing that you're talking about, I mean Sarah, like explicitly says that.

She was like, don't ridiculous to pay that much money. I was, you know, living in a basement apartment or whatever.

So yeah, that probably made it a lot more powerful for her.

So yeah, so I think that sunk cost at least in the experience that she had was a big part of what got her to stay for like the full first five day is what they called that.

But then you have to convince people to keep coming back, right?

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