Vice's "Why So Many Celebrities Joined NXIVM, According to Cult Experts" is one of the most illuminating of the many articles available online. And it does get close to The Real Good Reason. But fails to go all the way.
A curious (but suspicious) dabbler in the Church of Scientology, Jose Silva's Mind Control seminars and the Eric Morris Acting School, and far more than a dabbler in Werner Erhard's est, Richard Corriere's Center for Feeling Therapy, and the Nathaniel Branden Institute (not truly a cult so far as I could tell at that time), I spent much of 1973 to 1980 getting a feel for not only the Pyramid Cult-ure of the Human Potential Movement Gone Awry, but the easily definable personality drawn to it.
And suffice it to say that personality is pretty much this:
Compensatory Narcissistic, and
Things are no different among the HPM cult aficionados in Seattle, Cali's Santa Clara "Silicon" Valley and the 101 Corridor, Manhattan, Miami, or DC (yes; DC). Anyone who knows the look, the lingo and the moves can spot them all over Media City Burbank, Studio City, Hollywood and Beverly Hills. They're fame-power-&-fortune-obsessed YUPpies looking for network connections and the promise (a.k.a. the bait) of moving beyond the Consensus Trance.
They'd do a lot better to read the book first.
NXIVM is still around -- though considerably disgraced -- along I-5 and Cali 134. What the Vice article failed to get into is just how "big" the deal was there until the trial. All one had to do was hang out at any Starbucks on Burbank or Lankershim Boulevard and listen carefully. NBC, ABC, CBS, Disney, the WB, Universal, blah, blah and further blah. Or drive down to Sony and hit a 'Bucks on Venice or Culver Boulevard near Overland.
Not to worry, however. If there's anything one can count on in "Greater Hollywood," there will be a Next Big Thing.
If sufficiently -- or obsessively -- intrigued, you're welcome to browse through A Free online BOOK on How Cults Work.
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