Exploring A Reddit Cult

[Music] it goes without saying cults are infamous for a very good reason they are known to indoctrinate people manipulate them and use them as a collective for the goals of an individual cult leader or a harmful belief system in many cases they target individuals that are very vulnerable as they're generally more likely to look for leadership desperate people tend to look for desperate answers and tend to not use their better judgment take for instance the story of the miracle mineral supplement that claimed to cure just about anything from Alzheimer's to autism and as it would turn out not only did it not cure any disease did not help any disease but also contained bleach cults thrive when followers of an individual collective prescribe themselves to blind misinformation with all of that being said today we're gonna dive back into retracing the digital footsteps of one such cult this is the story of the now-defunct Retta cult of cantle mo ism [Music] my encounter with this bizarre topic first started when I was looking for more internet mysteries to do videos on and I was on another popular subreddit called the reddit Bureau of Investigation and I found a post that read the following super unusual subreddit where every post is gilded an absurd amount of times here is ISS gold the subreddit in question I'm pretty positive they're all bots but why circle-jerk thousands of dollars into gilding onto these posts for no reason at all there has to be some reason why at the time I had first checked out this subreddit it was still up but as of now has been made private in a nutshell there were countless posts on this tiny subreddit that contained a vast amount of reddit gold and silver at first it appeared like some sort of test subreddit something very similar to the YouTube channel webdriver torso while I couldn't find any proof this was a test subject what I did find out from a comment was what led me to this topic a user had commented this could have a possible connection to our saj cantle no ism which dropped me right into one of the most interesting stories I've ever come across on reddit trying to access our slash cantle no ism you'll notice that the entire community has been banned what's interesting here is that reddit actually took notice of this community and banned it altogether keep in mind there's an AR scientology subreddit that is wide open so what was so bad about this one that reddit had to take action I will note the reason for the subreddit being banned is listed as for being unmoderated but I highly doubt that as you'll soon learn more details if you trace this entire situation back this all starts with a Reddit user by the name of Chris CGC whose real name is Chris cantle Moe who became notorious on reddit for giving away upwards of $70,000 in reddit badges which was calculated by his own mods on his own subreddit if you look into this guy's background you'll learn that he owns a medical company called GL sciences as well as a few other companies in the past to which he made quite a bit of money just to make sure if you're unfamiliar with reddit badges they're used as gifts from one Reddit user to another and are displayed on posts they're usually given out as a good job award for being particularly funny or helpful reddit silver is the cheapest reddit badge you can put on a post the next tier is reddit gold which gives you one week of reddit Premium lastly there is reddit Platinum which provides one month of reddit premium if you're unfamiliar with reddit Premium essentially it is just a membership that unlocks variety of features with reddit including the option to turn off ads moving back to Chris CGC he became well known as I said for randomly gilding posts on the are teenagers and are / dank memes subreddit keep in mind this guy clearly targeted a younger demographic by going for those sub reddits for example in this individual post it would cost about three hundred and fifty dollars which features 69 Platinum badges and it would equate to 69 months of reddit premium for the user who posted this this was common behavior for Chris as he would basically be handing out money every single day in fact this was even so common that they created an entire subreddit called children of Chris dedicated to people who were gifted gold by him at first glance this seems entirely harmless this guy was being generous with a lot of money and was reported to be spending thousands of dollars a day on gilded reddit posts as you can imagine many people didn't have a problem with getting free read at premium memberships and it got to a point where people just passed this guy's name around and say message Chris he'll send you gold as I said at first it seemed rather benign it seemed like this guy simply had a bunch of money to go around and was willing to pull stunts for the sake of entertainment but as time would go on he would reveal the actual motive behind these gilding sprees as a result of this guy gilding almost any post that was in his way many people were curious about the man behind the gilding 'he's a lot of people looked up to him because he was very generous however in an interview done by insider meme trading after he gained some attention he is questioned about his motive regarding the mask gilding sprees to which he responds saying he wanted to get the message out that DMT cured cancer in case you're unfamiliar DMT is an incredibly powerful hallucinogen DMT or a dimethyltryptamine has been studying in the field of cancer however there is no consistent peer-reviewed evidence that would suggest this in any way and let's be real here if a cure for cancer was found do you think a guy would have to do a publicity stunt on reddit spending thousands of dollars to get the word out in the months to come he still found some notoriety and started to gain a following as a result of his generosity and something I want to note here many of these followers were not in it for the sake of his teachings however they were a byproduct of being a Tim nonetheless a portion of people stuck around and did listen to what this guy had to say and there are former believers of cancel Mo ISM and as time went on and through the help of cantle Mosin exposed a subreddit we will get too many people started to outline the potential symptoms of a forming cult as I said earlier looking back on this situation is incredibly difficult as all the original threads surrounding the R / canceled MO ISM subreddit have been deleted not to mention Chris CGC himself was also banned from Rhetta in fact chris has been banned more than once people collectively created a comprehensive list of alternate accounts that Kris was creating and most of them are banned what remains is a subreddit called cantle no ism exposed in which we get a full understanding of the situation the sidebar of this individual subreddit reads the following cantle no ISM is a cult of personality centered around Chris cancel Moe who came to prominence on reddit through his mass gilding sprees the cult espouses a form of psychedelic new-age pseudoscience ranging from innocuous beliefs too dangerous self-harm and is targeted members of our / teenagers for recruitment we are here to aggregate information about cantle no ism and help people make informed decisions to avoid further recruitment among the pin threads in the subreddit we find one called outline of initial concerns with cantle no ism here we learned quite a bit about this whole fiasco the thread reads the following I'm interested in whether or not any true cults have ever emerged on reddit I've been following Chris CGC and a sub cancel no ISM I started out participating for the awards I had five years of premium after a few days of participation but once I had more than enough gold I continued to participate out of interest for what is the strangest most cult-like sub I've ever seen today it is starting to get more renewed interest by the reddit community as a leader Chris CGC has been suspended by reddit for three days and it was mentioned in a popular and just deleted ask reddit thread described as a really weird cult-like subreddit run by a guy who guilds literally all the posters he talks about how he has terminal brain cancer and that he's cured it with DMT and believes DMT can cure literally everything and and the users seemed to agree for some reason my personal take is that he's a schizophrenic but I have no proof without going into too much depth here's a few ways in which it seems like a cult mind-altering practices such as meditation chanting speaking in tongues denunciation sessions and debilitating work routines are used in excess perhaps the main tenets of the whole cult is that DMT is a perfect and godly substance with no bad effects that everybody should be using and that it cures cancer and AIDS in fact he has gone as far as saying that radiation and chemotherapy are torture and make patients worse not better which is extremely dangerous advice to people who have cancer he has also urged his followers to stare directly into the Sun every day saying that we have been tricked into fearing the Sun to make us dumber the leadership induces feelings of shame and/or guilt in order to influence and or control members often this is done through peer pressure and subtle forms of persuasion this is a textbook and egregious example especially when it turned out that the user yawns easy didn't actually do anything wrong and the cult members refused to accept it the group is elitist claiming a special exalted status for itself its leaders and members for example the leader is considered the messiah a special being an avatar of the group and/or leader is on special mission to save humanity here's how he described himself to a doubter while he was proselyting another sub the leader Chris CGC is constantly referred to as God he believes that he has special knowledge of the spirit world and wants to use the knowledge for the express goal of world peace the group is also preoccupied with bringing in new members monetary rewards are gifted with participating in the sub the group is preoccupied with money he spends thousands of dollars a day guilding members with reddit money and he also is increasingly paying members real money and offering to pay for their plane rides to visit him in total he has spent over a hundred thousand dollars recruiting followers with a main focus on recruiting teenagers and here are a few examples of some of the outrageous things he has said but I think that thankfully most of these are not taking completely seriously by his followers his most devoted followers definitely still believe him though it seems like reddit is starting to catch on and get worried as count was just suspended for three days for telling people to call me or visit me to experience DMT as anti cancer treatment he encourages schizophrenia and believes that it's caused by excess DMT and that hallucinations are completely real as the poster of this thread starts to update it he goes into one of the podcast episodes that have now been deleted edit three I just listened to Chris most recent podcast episode and I can finally understand what people see in him as a leader and why his followers seemed to love him I'm almost convinced that he's an amazing but insane human being either that makes him less threatening because he's not the type of person to start a dangerous cult or more threatening because he is the type of person that could convince enough people to pull it off the first half is just a normal conversation which establishes trust in him before he transitioned to the crazier second half we learn how chris befriends the homeless and lets them come into his house whenever they want to bathe and he wishes he had enough space to let thousands of them sleep in his backyard he does have over an acre of land which would be enough to start a commune sashko on a smaller scale then in the second half he starts talking about DMT albeit in a far less in the same way than he normally does he then makes some apocalyptic prophecies that he previously talked about on reddit he talks about things such as a recession worse than the Great Depression being imminent and world war three between us Iran and Israel being imminent as well however he does say that those two things will actually be good for everyone except the rich next he tells us what his ideal society looks like he wants something beyond communism where money is made illegal it's not too big of a stretch to say that he might consider implementing such a society on a smaller scale if he gains enough devoted followers lastly he talks about suicide at first he said he thinks the people who commit suicide go to a better place and are better off this is obviously a very scary idea when you look at how common mass suicide is in cults he seems to be aware of this as he quickly changes his tune to say that he really thinks that people who commit suicide have to start their life all over again which would be boring overall there were some Jonestown vibes but mostly he just seems like an extremely mortal charitable and crazy person his followers fall in love with him for his morality and charity missing out on the crazy side and that's where I think the danger lies all right now as I said previously many of the links are dead however going over to his website we can't in fact see many of the claims in the beliefs held by this guy and they still stand under the discovery section of the website while it might be insane to think that many people even remotely entertained this guy he made examples out of a few of his devoted followers and even paid for their college in some cases up to fifteen thousand dollars as a result many people sucked up to him in hopes of financial gain but at the time read it turned a blind eye as they were getting paid through the nose by this guy I personally believe as well as many other people that most of his so-called followers were just in it for the sake of money and when they're stopped being handouts on a daily basis almost all of his followers started to turn on him for not providing evidence of his claims at first some people were willing to be patient since Chris had never provided any proof towards his claims regarding DMT he came from a scientific background and would constantly post about his upcoming research being published however that obviously never happened at another point in time one of cantle mo isms main followers got a restraining order from chris which led to him getting doxxed this led to death threats for leaving the group and ultimately this situation was starting to spiral later on death threats would flood into basically anyone critiquing the group however many people noticed that in many cases it was just Chris on an alternate account in an effort to keep some of his followers on the hook without any financial incentives Chris became desperate and would make alt accounts pretending to be news outlets stating that they were working on a story about his research however obviously people saw right through this up to this point even the most devoted followers started to not be able to turn a blind eye towards his childish behavior in many situations he resorted to name-calling like a five-year-old and in other cases he even told a person with cancer that he was an idiot as a result his own subreddit turned against him it read the following this is a place for a very mentally ill man named Chris cantle MO to post his craziness please get this man help and don't support him he has no money left no family left and nothing good in his life so that leaves us closer to today we're around a month ago this reddit community as a whole has been banned I can only imagine because reddit wasn't getting paid off nearly as much while crystal remains online on his other platforms he's still trying to recruit members in person but his digital footprint still remains even his own discord turned against him and one of his top followers has now taken over from an outsider like myself looking at this entire situation in my opinion I definitely see how this seems quite premeditated I can see the angle a lot of people have mentioned regarding this guy being mentally ill as well however it seems like from the very beginning this was calculated towards creating a cult this guy comes from an educated background he graduated from Yale he set up a website he targeted impressionable people and he used one little sliver of attention and was vindictive towards anyone who didn't agree with his beliefs thankfully however the situation has been avoided to a large degree something else I should note is that I also believe to a certain extent chris has been experiencing a degree of psychosis I don't believe this guy to be mentally stable due to the constant drug use here we had a guy with a great livelihood and a good life and he was well off then seemingly out of nowhere in the later years of his life after being an atheist for 56 years he becomes ultra spiritual as a result of taking DMT and other drugs in excess he refers to himself as a god and all of his teachings point to obvious delusions and psychosis that being said I don't think talking [ __ ] directly to this guy helps whatsoever as a result anyone watching this video don't go harass this guy his brain obviously processes information differently and even though what he attempted to do was terrible it won't stop him from continually doing what he's doing this guy needs professional help instead this video stands is something much more effective to the situation than directly talking [ __ ] to him at this point if anyone comes across this rabbit hole or topic on the internet they have a reference point to which they can understand how this group came to being and avoid it with that being said I thank you for joining me here today as we looked at one of the weirdest stories I've ever seen on reddit this is barely sociable have a great night [Music] you

Channel: Barely Sociable

Views: 1,812,689

Rating: 4.9236379 out of 5

Keywords: Reddit, reddit stories, best reddit posts, best of reddit, reddit top posts, reddit story, r/, scary stories, true stories, cult, mystery, reddit cult

Id: _OzpODjTISc

Length: 16min 25sec (985 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 02 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/davidrevilla311]

I remember seeing this around Reddit a while back. It truly is crazy. And Chris Cantelmo was indeed mentally unstable. He took his own life not too long ago if that provides any closure for this whole fiasco.

[u/esPhys]

What's that background music during the beginning few minutes? I recognize it from a movie or something but can't think of what.

I remembered: It's the silent hill movie flashback music
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulwVN4LkgaI

[u/AdamsOnlinePersona]

I think this is a very low quality video. Low quality in production value and low quality in original effort. It's a guy just reading screenshots of work other people have done.

[u/Deathcrow]

what was so bad about this one [subreddit] that it had to be banned?

I feel like the author should've done more research about Reddit. Since their policy changes a couple of years ago, Reddit is handing out subreddit bans like candy. A particular subreddit being banned isn't much of anything to take note of on its own.

Doesn't feel like much original research has been done here.

[u/Automaticus]

just so you know, DMT is a pretty decent experience imo.

Doesn't cure anything that I'm aware of except maybe depression for some people

[u/ElOliLoco]

r/conservative

[u/FreiherrVomStein]

4chan has a thing for it going, and that's the lack of these unspeakable gold, silver, award crap.

[u/TheMrNashville]

exploring /r/politics

[u/ifuaintdripugottadip]

Barely sociable has really nice content tbh and be positive too. Their internet mystery and rabbit hole videos are litt