• @Serinus
      link
      English
      2
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Their tactics are pretty good and could get a lot of people, really. They do what’s called “love bombing”. One of them will befriend you, and invite you somewhere. You won’t realize you’re being targeted for recruitment. For that outing, the goal of nearly everyone there will be to make sure YOU are having a good time and feel accepted.

      They’ll try to draw you in deeper, maybe try to get you to go to a Bible study (even if you aren’t religious.) If you have other friends, they’ll either try to draw them in with you, or they’ll do what they can to distance you from them. Even something as simple as hearing you have plans and then inviting you somewhere else on that day.

      Eventually they’ll push a little harder on trying to get you to conform. If that goes well, they’ll try to get you to move in. At that point it’s a lot harder to extract yourself. They’ll try to keep you so busy with activities that you don’t have time for anything else.

      During all this, they’ll try to get you to share personal things. It’s okay to talk about your sins, that’s how you get past them.

      Past that point, if you try to extract they’ll start to use those things against you. Did you tell them about child abuse or pictures or something about a boyfriend/girlfriend? As discouragement from dissidence, they’ll hold meetings where they discuss those things as a topic. They have spyware on your phone at this point, so they may share anything embarrassing there they can find. They’ll threaten to tell your parents all the sins you’ve admitted.

      It’s pretty insidious.