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Everyone else has covered most of it, but another "neat" tidbit: To my knowledge, 4chan's protests and hacktivism against scientology was the largest coordinated action that community has ever taken.
Fucking 4chan. Land of the worst the public facing internet has to offer. Despite all their fucking racism, sexism, homophobia, supremacists... just overall despicableness... they came together in united action against this group.
Some cults are understandable to a degree such as Mormonism, Jehovahs Witness, and Soka Gakkai but I can never understand people who are actually Scientologists.
High end cultists, get her out. NOW.
Get your daughter way from that kid as fast as you can.
| I don’t even understand if it’s an actual religion or one of those pay-to-level-up self-care courses.
yes, at about a ratio of 1 to 8. There's a mythology that these people fervently believe in, but pay-to-level-up is the core tenet. Distilling this down a bit, they believe that any problem you have is a ghost of long dead aliens clinging to you, and with enough abuse they can be scared away leaving behind the pure human.
When first you encounter them they seem to be offering self help courses or books. "Having trouble quitting smoking? Buy our book, join our class." For some these do genuinely help, if through no other mechanism than peer pressure. Then they pull out a bullshit device called an E meter and start talking about alternative therapies to realize your true potential, and then they've got you.
They are a high control group; they're like Mormons on amphetamines. Your life is centered on the church, people are kept in line through threats of destroying their families and support groups. They're particularly vindictive and are well documented to attack anyone critical of them.
Avoid these people with extreme prejudice, they are genuinely dangerous.
A cult
It's an acronym.
The S stands for "Scam".
the rest stands for bullshit.
L. Ron Hubbard was a science fiction writer. He made a bet with another science fiction writer that he could get rich quicker by starting a fake religion, and collecting tithes, than he could selling science fiction stories. Scientology is the resulting pyramid scheme/ cult.
Depends a lot, whether you are in Usamerica or not.
They are the classical gang of cultists who manipulate people into donating all of their money (by buying "courses" and reaching "levels"), and then some more. People who have escaped are seriously damaged, emotionally.
But if you are in Usamerica, they have made some courts grant them full rights like any real church.
Teens can be complicated. I know. I have 5 kids. Youngest two are 14 and 12.
How close is your relationship to your daughter? If you are close, you can probably do nothing other than point out how weird things are, such as they way they won't discuss their beliefs, or the slavery thing. She'll probably eventually exit the situation on her own.
If you aren't close or you are prone to flying off the handle, that can be used as a wedge between you and your daughter.
Either way, this only ends in a few ways:
Scientology is a cult. And not just a cult, it is a vicious cult who take revenge on anyone they perceive as an enemy. People have found themselves surveilled and having their bosses called making things up to try to get them fired. They are extremely litigious.
Obviously I wouldn't want my kids in any cult, but Scientology would probably be the worst one. At least most other cults, if you make yourself available to help when they decide they need to leave, they can escape. Scientologists will literally house them on a prison ship.
Good luck, friend.
We’re close, and both my wife and I talked with her. She says she doesn’t care about religion, she just wants to be with him. She doesn’t seem to be able to understand that both him & his family care a lot about their “religion” though. His family won’t even acknowledge her as his girlfriend. They say “she’s a friend”, even though they’re not even a PDA discreet couple. My wife says they most likely view her as just someone who their son is fooling around with at the moment - they don’t take her seriously or see her as a “real candidate”. Wife believes she’ll most likely get angry about it all once the infatuation ends and break it off with him. The surveillance thing is scary, I wonder if we’ve already been “looked into” due to daughter’s association with this family…
Based on your description, I'd doubt any surveillance so far rises above going through any of your socials they can find. AFAIK, that sort of thing is generally for someone who has really pissed them off. Like if you were to become outspoken about them.
I'd probably just keep the whole affair (pun intended) at arms length and let it blow over. Chances are this will be an amusing anecdote in a few years.
I don’t have much new to offer here, but it’s 100% a cult and please be very careful with regard to your daughter. My impression is that any relationships with people outside of the cult will result in them trying to bring the outsider in and once they’re in, it can be difficult to break them out. They’ll have information on their members that they’ll use against them leaving, and they’ll at best be labeled a suppressive person and then harassed if they try to leave and at worst further isolated from their outside relationships, including family as their sucked further into the cult that drains them of their money and/or basically uses them ad slaves. Since the family is rich, they may have a little more freedom and be a little more laid back about the religion, but if they have slaves working at their house, they’re probably higher up and may be discouraged from dating outside their cult since they seem to place very high value on money and fame and likely don’t want significant others to break those people out of the cult.
His family won’t even acknowledge her as his girlfriend. They say “she’s a friend”, even though they’re not even a PDA discreet couple. My wife says they most likely view her as just someone who their son is fooling around with at the moment - they don’t take her seriously or see her as a “real candidate”. Wife believes she’ll most likely get angry about it all once the infatuation ends and break it off with him.
Oh ok, not an ideal situation under normal circumstances, but it might be for the best if they don’t take the relationship seriously. It might be a good idea to check out some of the resources others have posted in the comments with your daughter just to prepare her. The Leah remini series is a great, comprehensive look at how it affected former members. The South Park episode shows how ridiculous the mythology of their religion is, but from what I understand, most people in the cult don’t even learn about that until you’re higher up and I guess by that point, they’ve invested so much money and resources that they just go with it. There are a few documentaries on streaming services like Netflix and max that cover a lot of it too. It might be worth getting ahead of it in case they start seeing your daughter as someone they can recruit. I don’t see how anyone could join them after watching the Leah Remini series, so that’s probably best.
Oh boy...
Scientology is the very definition of pay-to-level-up. Unless you're famous, then you can stay for free due to the PR. Travolta, Tom Cruise, and many more are sciientologists, and it's reasonable to believe they are shielded from the darker side of the cult.
A doomsday cult set up as a religion so they can dodge taxes.
Read this book, it's the story of L. Ron Hubbard, the god of Scientology and tells you everything you want to know.
Watch this series about life in Scientology and you'll get the idea pretty quickly.
TL;DR/DW: Get her away from him asap
I would just like to note that we’re on Lemmy, the land of 100 different opinions, and yet everyone has said the same thing about Scientology. That should be a huge flag there.
You've already had some great replies, but in case you want to watch something rather than read, in addition to the Leah Remini documentary series, Louis Theroux also made a documentary (I'm pretty sure there were earlier ones, but the current one is dominating the search results and I can't find them on wiki or imdb) that is very good.
You should ask your daughter about Scientology.
Does she explain it like it's ridiculous, or credible?
You might want to show her that clip from South Park if she doesn't realize it's batshit crazy.
Teach her (don't force her, that never works) before she falls in with a cult and you lose her forever.
I asked her (and the boyfriend) and she's just like us, also doesn't get what it's all about, because the guy himself won't "share information with non-members"!!!
It’s probably because he doesn’t really know either. It’s because they lock information about the religion away from the low ranking members and they are discouraged from looking it up online. Members can reach higher levels, known as Operating Thetan Levels, by donating money.
That's probably alright, just keep an eye out. Let her know about the crazy stuff before he eases her into it.
Also, it's not the boyfriends fault. He was raised in it and doesn't know better. Assuming he's otherwise a good kid, talking shit on him will not help the cause.
The fact that a science fiction writer was the one who created it in the 1950s should be enough cause for concern.
It's not really a religion, as much as it is a grift.
I went into one of their "churches" once to ask what they were about, and they literally would not tell me anything unless I either bought a book or stayed there to watch a video along with them.
I just commented something related to this; the boyfriend does this exact same thing!!! He won’t talk about anything.
