Activist fandom and the defanging of the anti-Scientology movement

When activists become fan objects and history becomes narrative, the cause becomes secondary.

It is the redemptive aspect of anti-cult activism that drew me to it. Those who are actively seeking to expose destructive cults are usually former members and have usually both experienced cult-sanctioned abuse and doled it out. Normalizing such behaviour is par for the course in destructive cults, and recovery involves coming to terms with that.

The tireless and decades-long efforts of the anti-Scientology crowd have made it of particular interest to me, and it’s one of the spaces where many of the people who have spent years speaking up were executives and worked within the organization. Their history has been part of their public personas, and it’s not something that’s been shied away from.

So I was on board with the takeoff of what would be known as SPTV. Short for Suppressive Person Television, the creation of SPTV spawned a network of former Scientologists speaking up.

Veterans Marc Headley, Aaron Smith-Levin, and Mike Rinder started regular live streams to discuss Scientology in December 2022. It was an effort to amplify their message and bring a focus on exposing the church. They were also on the board of the Aftermath Foundation, which is dedicated to helping people leave Scientology, and an active presence on YouTube would help spread the word.

It was in the comments/live chat to one of these streams that someone dubbed them SPTV, and the brand took off.

In an “if you build it they will come” moment, the number of SPTV-affiliated channels multiplied. The SPTV umbrella was a safe(r) place to process and share what they went through. Some people were returning to the public eye, some were newcomers, and all were welcome into the fold.

The SPTV network's growth felt like a success in and of itself; Scientology has a track record of trying (and succeeding) to silence former members, and now so many of them were public. The avalanche of information and the more frequent updates about what was going on provided a promising outlook on the future of the movement and the takedown of Scientology.

But SPTV wasn’t going to be spared from the consequences of living online, occupying fandom greenhouses where idolatry and tribalism flourish. The tech interface conditions us as an audience to form attachments regardless of the source material.

The flattened landscape permits representations to become fan objects, all you need is a community dedicated to it. The process of creating a networked community gives rise to a networked audience by default.

Conflict is par for the course when people are involved, and it gets amplified online; SPTV wasn’t going to be spared because it was a good cause. It’s hard enough to stay on mission without being crowded by an audience that is emotionally involved and ready to pounce.

Dominic Pettman explained the impact of social networks on discourse and the participating audience in his book Infinite Distraction,

That nebulous indignation which constitutes the very fuel of true social change can then be redirected safely around the network, in a manner akin to the energy companies with electricity around the country, avoiding any dangerous surges. So instead of “hypersynchronization,” we might want to call this strategic phenomenon hypermodulation. Or, less of a mouthful, deliberate dissonance. Productive delay. Staggered distraction.

This hypermodulation can be witnessed firsthand in the SPTV community these days.

Just over a year later, there are massive divides among the participating channels and the audience has coalesced into your standard stan factions. Personal grievances have become warpaths, others’ trauma is a cudgel to make accusations and demands on individual participants.

Is the mission to expose Scientology, or is it to destroy perceived enemies and be upstat online? It seems to be the latter for a large amount of invested audience members. True social change is hard to achieve when the wins are amount of videos, clicks, likes, and subscriber growth.

There is little difference between this type of thinking and the stans who proclaim their fave “outsold” whenever someone else is discussed.

Comment on a drama channel’s Youtube community post. AMF is The Aftermath Foundation, which seeks to support those who wish to leave Scientology.

I noticed how fannish the landscape had become in August 2023, when Jenna Miscavige was teased as an addition to the cadre of former member channels. Miscavige is the niece of current leader David Miscavige and left the cult in 2005, publishing a book about her experience in 2013. Aside from the standard publicity circuit around book release, she’s stayed out of the public fight, so her joining the SPTV line-up was a big get.¹

Her "welcome gift" was going to be a high subscriber count as people were directed to subscribe to her channel in anticipation of her participation. When her first (and only) interview was posted viewers were urged to watch it on her channel to increase the logged watch hours, pushing her towards monetization.

This type of encouragement wasn’t new to the scene: live streams were simulcast on all participating channels and people were encouraged to “watch” all of them to distribute their support equally, the cross-promotion was consistent and added to the supportive aura of the movement. It’s an easy call to action and it results in the satisfaction of getting something done.

Asking for the audience to assist in getting to these milestones is not ominous or suspicious: it’s playing by the rules. It is straightforward, and asking for like-subscribe-comments participation is a necessary part of establishing a foundation on social networks so that you can have an impact. If you want more people to know about the abuses of Scientology, you need to be favored by the algorithm.

These types of rituals are also how attachment is engendered.

Live chats and direct interactions with the people involved also trigger attachments and fuel donations of super chats, merch sales, and Amazon wishlist fulfillments as well as just sending in homemade gifts. The effort, time, and money that people spend fuels the asymmetrical relationship between fan and fan object, and it allows for idolatry to flourish.

As soon as idolatry is in the mix, crises of faith are on the horizon.

Content farming trauma

It didn’t take long for my YouTube home page to be littered with drama channels that were “reacting” to SPTV content and pitting people against one another. This is how I learned that interpersonal conflict was being farmed into content and flooding the frame.

Considering my aversion to such channels in general, I can only assume it was the high engagement that pushed these videos my way. If there’s an audience, there will be plenty of people willing to cater to them, and over time there has been an increased amount of personal conflict brought into videos.

When schisms develop within fan communities the spaces they occupy become battlegrounds. In this case, it’s YouTube, which means wins can be measured in social stats and SocialBlade rankings.

With the flattened digital space, discussions about tangible steps to address the root problem—Scientology itself—share the same space as horizontal conflict. The opposition is a malleable target, and it’s easier to feel successful when the mission is on a closer front. And it’s cathartic, at least temporarily. Righteous anger is mobilizing, and for an already invested audience, it’s incredibly easy to slip into offense.

This fight for the public narrative is also more noticeable when looking at how fan communities are being treated by the fan objects themselves. There currently are multiple channels that have switched from targeting Scientology to targeting each other.

A Discord server has become a nemesis to some of the involved pundits. It has been referred to as a “cesspool” and individual users have been called out in videos, accused of various offenses brought on by games of telephone.

The infringement on a space that is intended for fans to converse is a redirect of attention that makes little sense in the grand scheme of things. All I can think is that it’s an exercise in intimidation towards any resistance and a cog in the wheel of productive work.

It is strange to see the Discord server be pulled into the fight when it doesn’t operate in opposition to anyone and has a wide array of perspectives represented. I joined the server because of its centralized RSS optionality, which combined notifications across platforms in one place. It has some former Scientologists and some never-ins, some of the streamers participate here and there, and server rules are implemented consistently. It’s not a nefarious space.

It’s not a private server so every time it gets called out there is an influx of new members. Some are well-intentioned and interested in discussion, but many come in hot and demand a level of response that is unrealistic. If they are uninformed, they want to be informed, not do some back-reading.

This means discussions will consistently stagger and be repeated ad infinitum, as we are hypermodulated. There is no way to organize effectively because there will always be interruptions and demands for obedience to any given dogma. It is demanded that you take a stand, or else you’re part of the problem.

None of that works towards dismantling Scientology, educating about Scientology, or promoting action that can support those goals. It also doesn’t reach people on the inside who are looking for a bridge out. If anything, it may make the outside world appear volatile and keep people locked in.

There have been multiple cycles of drama and intensely polarized discourse over the last six months or so. Presently, the chopping block is inhabited by Mike Rinder and the Aftermath Foundation². Secondary targets are being accused of covering up his crimes even though Rinder has disclosed plenty of past abuses himself.

That is what is the most befuddling to me.

Mike Rinder has long asserted that working against Scientology is his amends, so pointing out he did bad things seems…counterproductive.

No executive from Scientology has clean hands. Many of them have perpetuated abuse and doled it out because that is simply how destructive cults work. And since many of those speaking up were higher-ups, of course, they have sullied track records.

Many atrocious behaviours have been disclosed, and there have been multiple confrontations shared with the public, but many of those predate SPTV, and living in the perpetual present means the past is irrelevant unless it can be used as a weapon.

The demand for accountability and transparency isn’t a problem in and of itself, but it can’t be achieved in the public sphere.

It’s perfectly reasonable that people who feel they were victimized by Rinder and others have grievances against him, but turning it into a public spectacle has no endpoint, and cannot be counted on for closure.

Once your private life becomes grist for the mill, it’s no longer yours alone. Once the audience digests personal disclosures they become co-opted, and the justice that is sought is no longer something that can be achieved because the process has been blown out.

In one way, the fandoming of the space is also the mainstreaming of it. It’s attracted enough people who want drama and high conflict without being invested in the context and history of it all.

What started as a fight against Scientology has transformed into a fight against the main character of the week, diffusing the motivated indignation against the big bad into negative attachments to the people who have become fan objects.

The mission isn’t to take down Scientology anymore, it’s to keep those stats up.

1. To this date, Jenna Miscavige has only participated in one stream and it’s the only one on her YouTube channel. The subscribers she amassed remain in waiting.

2. At this time, the Aftermath Foundation is the only one dedicated to helping people leaving Scientology.