Tuesday 28 June 2011

Join Me: Founding Cults

Just finished Danny Wallace's 'Join Me'.
Somewhat disappointing on the 'how to get your followers to sign over all their worldly wealth or at least enough of it for you to live in luxury' aspect of cult founding, which was the aspect I really fancied learning about.  I suppose I'll just have to read up on the real experts like Frank Buchman (for the history of how the ideas of this rather odd evangelical have somehow become medical orthodoxy in the21st  Century I'd recommend 'the Orange Papers'.) or, of course, the original 'Holy Roller Collector'.
There's not even much on 'persuading your followers to give up their days jobs, spend all their money on spurious "how-to-fly" courses and work for you sixteen hours a day'.  Very thin on 'how to convince the punters that in your role as Messiah you're obliged to shag as many of them as you physically can', either.
And as for organising mass suicides - well this book leaves you completely in the dark.
Wallace never gets to grips with the bread and butter, day to day work of exploiting your followers - which, let's face it, is what, if anything, draws most of us t the idea of founding our own 'New Religious Movements' in the first place.
Instead he lets the side down by concentrating on fripperies like being nice and doing good deeds which most serious cults forget the minute they get your credit card number.
So if you're looking for a step-by-step guide to persuading mugs to chop their todgers off on the promise of a one way trip to a passing comet this is NOT the book for you.
Not even colossal, a mere giant.
If, on the other hand you're looking for a bit of self-deprecating whimsy about a bloke who inadvertently sets up a rather nice organisation and encounters eccentrics like Joinee Cobbett, who's really fond of giant squid [I take that back: there's nothing, and I mean NOTHING wrong with being interested in top end Cephalopoda - who can resist a giant squid and as for a Colossal, well
...], Dennis M. Hope, President of The Galactic Government who becomes Wallace's mentor on 'how to be a guru' and Doctor Spacetoad while alienating a remarkably tolerant girlfriend, then you may well have a good time with this.
But I needed  to know more about how to get them to sign over their property, let me father huge broods of children and organise a mass suicide: surely that's not too much to ask?  Anyone got any recommendations for 'organising cults for beginners'?  Preferably with chapters on 'It's your duty to shag the the Messiah' and 'Going out with a bang:  tips for arranging a mass suicide'.
Though the book did teach me a fascinating Norwegian saying:  Alt går, sa den gamle damen, hun var steke en frosk i brødristeren.
PS I've since found what this book is missing.  The link is so lovely I feel I must give it in full:http://knowledgefiles.com/categories/mind-control/the-illuminati-formula-to-create-an-undetectable-total-mind-controlled-slave/.  Once I've read that I'll have my cult up and running in no time! It's all beginning to fit together:http://vigilantcitizen.com/musicbusiness/lady-gaga-the-illuminati-puppet/

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