Cult Fiction

What is this story about?

A charismatic yet deeply troubled figure emerges online, drawing thousands of followers through a message that feels, at first, like radical honesty. He speaks of freedom from loneliness. Of communities built on trust rather than performance. Of a new way to exist in the digital age. And people listen — because he is saying what many secretly feel.

But as his following grows, the boundaries between inspiration and manipulation, between community and cult, begin to dissolve. Van Huijstee traces the psychology of belief — why we seek leaders, why we surrender judgment, and what the need for belonging can cost us.

Bold, unconventional, and unsettling in its familiarity, this is a story that holds a mirror to the way modern digital life creates the very loneliness it promises to cure.