Wear My Jammies!

How to form a cult in 6 easy steps:

Cult leaders have a sketchy history. Most of them have a good run for a while, then it all ends in chaos and mayham, or insurmountable shame. Or, if they really go crazy about it, probably both. If this sounds like fun to you, I came up with 6 easy steps.

Step 1: Cultivate an attitude that says “I am going to see how far I can take this until it all blows up in my face.” This is the foundational characteristic. It separates the true cult leaders from, say, a motivational speaker, or a quirky megachurch pastor.

You have to be willing to suggest totally ridulous and bizarre things, just to see if people will believe you, and then when they believe you, see if you can really push it over the cliff by asking them for money. If, for example, it seems like fun to try convincing people that the universe was created by an infinite number of celestial trouts swimming through the primordial mist thereby sparking the big wake – which is the universe – then you are off to a good start.

Step 2: Develop some personality quirk that only a cult leader or an overpaid athlete can get away with. There is an interesting phenomonon I like to call the hit or hug principal. Most people either want to hit or hug people who are different than the norm. The trick, if you’re different, is to develop the skill of convincing them to do the latter.

For example, the very same behavior that made William Faulkner a complete jackass at cocktail parties (ever try to have a conversation with a cubist? It’s like trying to understand your 14 year old niece’s text messages by reading every third letter, backwards) also made him one of the greatest American writers of all time. Why? Because he put it on paper and convinced a publishing company to use their overdeveloped marketing skills to convince everyone to hug him. Metaphorically speaking.

The same thing holds true if you are going to lead a cult. If you are hopelessly normal, then fake it. Practice faking a nasty tick in the mirror. Or always go out in public wearing the same pair of jammees. Or get a crazy beard and goofy hat, and never take it off.

Step 3: Get a compound. This is another thing that separates the motivational speakers from the cult leaders. If you travel from place to place, giving speaches about what people should think, and why they should give you money, then you aren’t a cult leader. You may eventually become a cult leader. But not until you start making them come to you.

Step 4: Demand that you followers do outrageous things. This is where it gets dangerous, and it’s where a lot of cult leaders go wrong. I recomend outrageous things that aren’t actually dangerous. In fact, this is what separates the cult leaders who die rich from old age (and gluttony) from the cult leaders who die young and painfully and whose followers suddenly realize “damn, why was I following that nut? He never changed his jamees once!”

For example, you might demand that your followers memorize the Articles of Confederation. If they succeed, then tell them the trouts won’t love them unless they also translate it into an invented language like Klingon or Esperanto.

Step 5: Get some intelligent yet loyal disciples. At some point, some of your followers will wake up and realize you are just seeing how much ridiculous mush you can stuff into their brains and still get them to come to the party the next day. You have two choices: expel them (which should be terrifying to your other followers, because you have previously made up some horrible thing that will happen to people who are expelled. For example, that a supernatural Liza Minellie will appear at random times for the rest of their lives and sing Cabaret songs at them), or you can make them disciples.

Basically, you explain that you’ve got a good thing going, and you’ll give them a cut, but they have to start spouting the same celestial trouts will stave you stuff that you’ve been spouting. And they have to sound like they believe it. Kind of like Amway, but with funny hats.

Step 5: Incorporate. This is an important step for two reasons. First, it gives you protection from those people who you can’t brainwash, which will be the vast majority of the people out there. Since they are infidels, of course, horrible things will happen to them when the celestial trouts find out. But in the mean time, you need a tax shelter, a way to limit your liability, and, most importantly, that feel of legitimacy that only a “tax free religious institution” can achieve. It also makes it easier to convince people that their money is better off in your hands.

Step 6: Get a house and bank account in Switzerland. If you wanted this to last forever, you would have become a motivational speaker. But you got into this to see how far you could go before it all blows up in your face! So, get a place to go when your followers wake up and realize that, basically, they gave you all their money in exchange for the chance to memorize obsolete documents and hang out in their jammees while trying on funny hats, and it wasn’t a fare trade after all.