Start a home business, get rich quick, win financial freedom! If you watch late-night TV, you've heard it all before. But what's the story behind these slick pitchmen and their dubious schemes? Enter The Salty Droid, your ornery metal guide to the corrupt underworld of scam-marketing scum. This charmingly acerbic bot (owned and operated by mild-mannered Chicago dog-lover Jason Michael Jones [inter-view, long talk + transcript]) is a valiant crusader against the vile con-men who bankrupt the elderly and the desperate with beautiful lies. Exposed so far: A shadowy "Syndicate" of frauduct-pushing personality cults polluting the media with blogspam and woo-woo talking points. Boiler rooms in the Utah desert where telemarketers farm credit from easy targets with cunning, probing scripts [PDF]. Powerful politicians bought wholesale. Believers left to die in fraudulent new-age vision quests. It's a soul-crushing beat, enough to make one feel like a regular catcher-bot in the digital rye. But somebody's got to do it -- preferably someone with plasma nunchucks and titanium skin.
posted by Rhaomi on Aug 31, 2011 - 47 comments

Oahspe is what might have resulted if L. Ron Hubbard took so much ketamine he time-phased into 1882. The product of an automatic-writing ex-prospector dentist, the 900-page tome includes submerged continents, bizarre dictionaries, and plenty of space travel. [more inside]
posted by theodolite on Aug 30, 2010 - 19 comments

The End of the World Cult is a 2007 documentary about the Lord Our Righteousness Church, aka the Strong City Cult, as they count down the days before the end of the world on October 31st 2007. The film features unusually good access and especially focuses on the creepy sexual relationship cult leader Wayne Bent has with his mostly female followers. If you watch the film and are hankering after justice, you'll be pleased to know that yesterday Bent was sentenced to eighteen years prison for sexual relations with minors. Oh, he also has a blog.
posted by dydecker on Jan 1, 2009 - 38 comments

The town of Shawano, WI claims a local group with a history of controversy called the Samanta Roy Institute of Science & Technology (SIST) profiled in this WSAW TV investigative series (part 1, part 2, part 3 & part 4) is a murderous cult that tried to hire a hitman to assassinate 60 prominent citizens including the mayor, city administrator, city treasurer, city attorney, police chief, judges, investigators & fire commissioners. SIST returns the favor & claims it's the mayor who's running a cult (part 1, part 2 & more), calling her the Minister of Propaganda. As a CBS investigative team found out, things are tense in this sleepy town. The FBI says it's keeping an eye on the situation.
posted by scalefree on Dec 18, 2008 - 28 comments

Reading the January edition of Harper's, about Brasilia, I was struck by a bit about what is apparently one of many cults in around the capital city: the Valley of the Dawn. A Jewish UFO cult? The ultimate in syncretic religions? Book your flight now.They're a lot more open to foreigners than Macumba
posted by kozad on Dec 27, 2007 - 9 comments

Why waste time on playing roleplaying games or writing pastiches when you can actually worship Cthulhu? Join an existing Cthulhu cult or form your own!. They've got a book and everything! (though it may contain big chunks of wiki-plagarism). As ever, the ability to rock a traditionalist shaved-head-and-goatee satanist look considered a plus.
posted by Artw on Apr 29, 2007 - 32 comments

Jose Luis de Jesus Miranda believes he is the Apostle Paul. Or Jesus. Or maybe the antichrist. Many disagree, but he and his purported thousands of followers continue to present their case.
posted by saraswati on Feb 19, 2007 - 37 comments

The Mercy Seat. Described in the book of Exodus, the throne of mercy has quite a variety of meanings. Some contemporary Christians are interested in "reconstructing" an image based on Egyptian and Phoenician culture. In Judaism, the kisei rachamim is part of the narrative of Yom Kippur, as God moves from the seat of justice to the seat of compassion. In medieval Europe, and especially in Germany, the Gnadenstuhl was a perfect representation of the trinity, combining the cruxification, God the Father, and the Holy Spirit (usually a bird), into one image of mournful compassion. Nick Cave used the idea of the mercy seat as the frame for a song about murder, sin, capital punishment, and atonement/redemption, which was later covered by Johnny Cash (mp3 clip). The chair of mercy is even visually alluded to Jodorowsky's Montana Sacra, aka Holy Mountain. (Which have been inspired in part by the Ascended Masters of Mount Shasta, but that's technically another story - the bizarro California cultists story.)
posted by jann on Mar 3, 2006 - 25 comments

Here's an account of conditions and abuse in a Scientology prison camp. Considering Scientology's philosophy, the use of prisons and slave labor (often used for the benefit of celebrities) shouldn't be surprising. (for these links, you may need a good dictionary)
posted by pandaharma on Jun 24, 2005 - 55 comments

The Temple of Hayah: a religion that renders its followers immune to the any laws other than the Ten Commandments. Followers need not pay taxes. But TOH is mad at Wikipedia because Wikipedia hate-crimed TOH. So TOH suggests that you tip off the FBI.
posted by ba on Jan 21, 2005 - 22 comments

Cargo cultists versus Christians. Two religions enter, one religion leaves! Differences have led to murder on an island near Oceania. Many of us learned about cargo cults from Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel. However, it seems that there's more to the story, including a Lyndon Johnson connection.
posted by Mayor Curley on May 21, 2004 - 15 comments

ScientologyWatch.org - a blog that's sure to bug Norwegian fishermen, Brazilian soccer players, Japanese businessmen, Greek artists and Italian educators. [Link via Politech]
posted by boost ventilator on Mar 3, 2003 - 23 comments