0:00

After the podcast, please feel free to email me your thoughts, opinions, or concerns atAustin@ramblerlive.com, or go get the companion media guide at ramer media club.substack.com. It'll tell you what inspired this chaotic episode. Thanks, when I start my cult, I'm starting with the real estate. Mistake number one for most potential cult leaders is they focus on the message, change the world, blah, blah, blah. A cult is started in vibes, the robes, the lighting, the beard. Think of the biggest cult failure you can, they're hole up in some dusty nowhere town with the main attraction being gentrified. Grain silos. You wouldn't catch me dead in some dead peat place like Waco. No, no, no, no. The land would have to preach before I ever rope in my mouth. There would need to be natural beauty hills rolling like they're stretching water that reflects back at you in a way that makes you feel deeply reflected. Somewhere I could see myself raising kids with my many many followers, a place that makes isolation looks sexy. I didn't come up with this, honestly. Ever seen a small Mormon temple? No ever seen a crappy Scientology building? No. If you can't compete with the aesthetic pool of the Vatican, or even at and t Stadium, you have no business attempting to be a spiritual leader, basically, I need to take people's money and then show them how well I can spend it if I really want them to give me more money. I have the taste of an apex man, and let's be honest, their money will be better spent with me. A place where a crowd of individuals can gather to see one another in their highest form. A cathedral without calling it a cathedral. Think like the capital of your home. State columns, clean lines. Something that says What we're doing here is important, even if it's just a committee meeting about taxes. Architecture really is theology and concrete. If the ceilings are high enough, people assume the ideas are too baby. I wouldn't hide the place. That's amateur hour. I'd put it right where tourists already go. Let them wander in, accidentally let'em feel like they discovered something. People love discovering things that are put directly in their face and easy to find extra points if there's a marketing budget. Now, once the land is secured and the cathedral is gleaming in the golden hour, I would turn to the membership requirements. Still not talking about theology. Now you want everyone to stroll in, but you can't just have anyone joining. That's how you end up with, uh, allegations. Membership must be just hard enough that you don't want to give it up and go through it again. Think about fraternities. It's tough. It's really the meaning. You don't wanna talk about whatever it is you went through because it's embarrassing, and that's how you keep a secret if you quit. Everyone will ask why, so you stick to it. For the vil of Secrecy, brotherhood provides leave the brotherhood and a secret of what you did. With openly gay brother Jacob May just become public. That is the perfect balance. Maybe there's an interview process, a weekend retreat test of endurance that is framed as clarity. Nothing to be considered, you know, hazing, just inconvenient enough to forge identity group identity. People don't value what they don't earn. If you let'em in for free, they'll leave for free. Once we finish the whole requirement to join process, we'll have a beautiful public initiation for them. Something to invite, you know, your previously single lonely friend to something you dress up for, something you can retell at a dinner party. If for whatever reason you were to be let off the compound. Oh yeah, I made a blood pledge while a blood moon set in the sun of a new era, rose, you know, something beautiful with some cool imagery or something. You see now they're selling it for me. Now that we're on it, let's, let's talk about rituals. Rituals are the subscription model of belief. You need people coming back and back and back again. Weekly at a minimum. Thank you. Now, the Lord's Supper gathering every Saturday to watch a game, a daily workout class. We're creatures of rhythm. If I can sync your calendar, I can synchronize your loyalty. There would be a gathering, a shared meal, a fun little saying that feels awkward the first time, and relaxing and pleasant even by the fifth. Oh, and there'll be music, always music, uh, corporations even understand this, something cinematic that makes people feel something. I think to feel touched by my spirit every time my forties speakers turn and blast them. Rituals don't have to be mystical, they just have to be consistent. Same time, same emotions. You walk in stressed, you sit down. I come in off an ego, death and shrooms and talk confidently about your meaning. Give you something that feels productive. You stand up lighter than when you arrived. You shake hands. You promise to return. It's a template I'm stealing. The only difference is it's in the branding. Branding, but of course need to create lore about myself and my top henchman. Every movement needs stars. You can't have a faceless bureaucracy. People need characters. There'd be a founding story, probably humble. Mm, probably not humble, but almost tragic. A near miss, a moment of revelation at the edge of burnout. It would be relatable, uh, but it kind of elevated, you know, refined the guy who almost quit the world but instead decided to fix it. It would suck having them. Marty one of my closest friends, but, hey, doesn't everyone wanna leave a legacy? The rest of my inner circle would have specialties. One, it's the intellectual, the book guy, he references obscure philosophers and makes our ideas sound footnoted. Something that, you know, thought leaders have had before. A publicist, if you will. He was an English major in college and still has no job. It should be easy to get him to join. One is the operator. Calm, efficient, the one who you know, makes the trains run on time, kills the people that need to be killed, buries the body that need to be buried. He actually had a successful job before this, um, but he's gonna make a lot more money with me, so I'll have him there too. And then one is the emotional center, the one people cry to, the one who hugs, they actually believe in the cult. So there's that. You build the mythology slowly. You, you let this story circulate. Hey, did you know he didn't actually want to let other people into the compound? But when they lost bill to the world, he knew he had to, you know, he actually skipped across water once. I won't bring up or acknowledge any of these little myths, uh, because certainly they're not true and I'm not a liar. But the propaganda machine will make sure they're repeated enough amongst the people. Stars, give people someone to orbit. We would of course, sprinkle a little, a little good with what we're creating. You have to, you can't just hoard vibes. Maybe we create a charity arm, a group that goes out and alleviates issues inexpensively, emphasis on inexpensively, canned, and or dried food drives, manual labor cleanup days, mentorship programs with no scholarships. Major key. We blast it in a inspirational sentimental movie trailer way. Nothing recruits like visible to virtue. The public sees smiling volunteers and matching shirts and thinks and thinks, hmm, they seem organized, they seem happy, they seem to care and the members feel proud. Pride is sticky thing. Of course the charity arm. Primary focus is to get others to donate towards us. If you love serving today, imagining doing it every week, you know you don't nudge. Last and foremost would be finances. Finance. Finances would be the primary concern, but the members would never know it. We would add a little donation request to the end of everything we do. You can't build a Vatican on lemonade stands for goodness sake. There will be tears of giving. Not mandatory, of course, just, you know, recommended to receive your full blessing. A culture of generosity, if you will. It helps the missions we talked about earlier, testimonials from members about how sacrifice unlock abundance. Truly, I would probably preach sacrifice. What's, what's mine is ours, you know, light communism esque, which sounds beautiful and it is. But someone has to decide where ours goes, and that's someone, as we discussed, would be me, maybe diplomatically a council chaired by me. Transparent transparency is important, but selective transparency. You show them the new wing of the building, the scholarships funded, not given the charity vans, but make them unlock the next section they get to experience. You can't see behind the curtain until you've donated the curtain, you know? Expansion is inevitable. If the model works, you scale it. Satellite locations, solitude retreats, merchandise, maybe a podcast, I don't know. Just really pump some content out there. The tricky part is maintaining mystique while increasing access. Too exclusive, and you stagnate too accessible and you dilute. That is where the devil himself comes in. Every great movement needs a devil. A heel to die on an antagonist that sharpens the edges of your identity. I don't know who I'd make the devil be, but I would be sure they don't like me. It could be a vague concept, the culture, the machine, the noise, something amorphous enough that members can project their frustrations onto it. Maybe a specific ideal ideology, rival institution, a group that I'm having openly critique us. Conflict clarifies commitment. Nothing bonds like a shared enemy. No one understands this more than the army. Think you know the blood's in the Crips. Wouldn't it be crazy if my best friend started a rival colt? I mean, it wouldn't be that hard. We could probably still holiday together and we'd be twice as rich maybe off feeding a divorce or something. The hill to die on. Must be noble. Maybe we're anti cynicism. Maybe we're pro discipline. Maybe we stand against apathy. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what it, as long as it demands a little courage to defend when someone questions us, members should feel a flicker of protectiveness. The flicker of loyalty. Loyalty is the currency, baby. I have your loyalty. I have your money. Now here's the hard part. If I were to start a cult, I'd have to keep myself from believing it myself.'cause if all these people believe the same thing, who am I to disagree. You can build the building, you can choreograph the ritual. You can engineer the scarcity and the lore and the charity and the devil, but eventually the quiet of your own office overlooking the rolling hills and the flattering sunset water with all your loyal, with formally wealthy followers below you. You kind of wanna be a part of the group too. Most leaders don't really start off wanting to be manipulated. They start with an idea that felt true at 2:00 AM when they were tired and pretty desperate. Then people show up. Then more people show up, and suddenly you're not just a guy with a thought, you're a symbol, and symbols are hard to retire. If I had started a cult, it'd have to be a cult where people could leave if they felt they need to. That's the twist. Maybe. That's exactly why God makes us choose him to get to heaven. The best proof that something as real as it doesn't trap you, it doesn't just happen. It doesn't isolate you. It doesn't demand you burned your old life to the ground. But if you're going to gather people, if you're going to ask for their time and their money and their belief, you better build something beautiful. You better make the rituals nourishing, nourishing. You better ensure that charity is real. You better ensure there's some sort of charity involved. You better choose the devil carefully and you better remember that land no matter how stunning, it's still just dirt. The real estate's the opening act, the real cathedral is what happens when people show up the next week.