Fellow Xennials - were you also raised to be terrified of cult abduction?
Posted by VoteForLubo@reddit | Xennials | View on Reddit | 28 comments
Like it was never a matter of *if* someone tries to indoctrinate you into a cult, but *when*. I think this sentiment was especially extreme when we were growing up.
Hitthereset@reddit
uhhh, no.
BananasPineapple05@reddit
Not. I was raised to be afraid of Halloween candy instead!
ughyoujag@reddit
This! Razor blades! Drugs! Needles! 😭
Individual_Sky_4612@reddit
As an adult, I can now see what a scam this was. “Yes, adults buy drugs with their hard earned money to sneak into the candy they’re giving to strangers”.
Tiny_dinosaur82@reddit
No, I’m Australian. No one was concerned about cults, or where we were 99% of the time.
Fabulous-South-9551@reddit
Yes. I was a little blonde girl and Jaycee Duggard got kidnapped a few hours from where I lived and was my same age. They were snatching up the little blonde girls!
TryTwiceAsHard@reddit
No. Not at all. 🤔
OhTheHueManatee@reddit
My mom make it pretty clear nobody wanted me so it wasn't a concern.
lavasca@reddit
Yes. We were little kids during satanic panic.
AshDogBucket@reddit
Tbh not really... I was Evangelical and I think they kind of avoided all the cult panic in my community because if we thought too much about cults we would have realized we were in one.
Leilani3317@reddit
I came here to say this 😂.
Reasonable-Wave8093@reddit
that was the cult
Responsible_Park3317@reddit
Not I. Grew up in the military. By the time I joined civilian society, the stupid cult scare was long over. Unless you liked D&D, as I did. Then parents lose their minds when you try "indoctrinating" their kids into the ways of "Satanic" TTRPGs..... with Cheetos and Mt Dew. 🤣
iheartbaconsalt@reddit
I lived just ten blocks from the Branch Davidians in Waco in the 10th grade. Accidentally ended up in a few adventist summer camps too, and they believe nothing should taste good, so the awful food would keep anyyone away!
bloomsday289@reddit
Yes. Satanic cults plagued the suburbs of ruralish Ohio. Witches were performing rituals in every empty field
Coitus_lnterruptus@reddit
It's crazy all the dumb shit we grew up believing. Bigfoot, ghosts, poltergeists, Santa Claus, Bloody Mary, Karate, people with their hands registered as weapons, performance chips for shitty cars. We grew up in the era of unfactcheckable bullshit.
Ingonyama70@reddit
As a kid I was scared of Satanic cults, nuclear war, smoking even a single cigarette, and Dungeons & Dragons.
Now I'm a practicing witch in a gay polycule of various beliefs and practices, I take edible hemp gummies whenever I can afford them, and D&D is my second favorite pastime (to learn the first you gotta buy me dinner, LOL).
Still kinda bothered about that nuclear war though.
Doctor_Tyrell@reddit
What? No.
New_Stats@reddit
No, but I was insanely sheltered by my parents. I wasn't allowed to go out and roam the neighborhood with the other kids, unsupervised. I also had extremely lazy parents so I didn't do a lot of extra curricular activities. There were a lot of video games and sleepovers, tho.
When I was grown I started to think back and my parents weren't all that strict. They didn't care about me having sex, they didn't care about me smoking pot, but they didn't want me drinking because they were worried I'd get roffied. So I asked them why they were so strict with me going outside to play and they told me they were worried I'd get abducted. Not necessarily by a cult, I think they were more worried about serial killers.
Total-Swordfish4670@reddit
well, I grew up in a fundamentalist religion that some might call a cult - there was no Jim Jones moment, but it was ultra-consevative and I was convinced that everyone except us was going to the bad place
1radgirl@reddit
Not really. A cult might've had more order and peace than my house!
Withnail_I_am_I_am@reddit
We had the whole satanic panic thing, cults in the woods, but actually being abducted wasn't a thing. I suspect local churches staged that shit a lot because we would come across scenes in the woods where it looked as if animals were sacrificed w/ pentagrams drawn in the sand. Suburbs of Houston, there was still a lot of forest back in the 90's. Satanic panic and HIV/AIDS...
uhhhhhhhh_nope@reddit
I mean I was raised Mormon so...I was already in the cult 😂
catsoncrack420@reddit
Nah, NYC born and raised. It's always somebody's dad or step dad. My school friend got kidnapped. I knew a kid in HS that carried a gun cause his dad was a drug dealer, wanted. My HS school was actually safe.
psilosophist@reddit
Shit I went looking for them after reading Chick tracts instead of paying attention in church.
Never really found any, at least none as cool as the ones in the tracts.
txc13@reddit
I was afraid of sexual abuse or alien abductions that I had no memory of. Those repressed memory stories seemed to be everywhere back then. Super weird.
Same_Bug5069@reddit
No, I was a total latchkey kid complete woth a paper route. I dont think anyone ever really knew where I was.
VoteForLubo@reddit (OP)
Number of times I’ve been abducted by a cult since 1983: zero.