The Owen Benjsmin "Bear" cult grew out of the "truther" comnunity (from among his fan base as a former actor and comedian) during the political changes in 2019-2022 that affected many countries throughout the world at that time. It seemed to start as an online social network of like-minded individuals who took a common approach in response to those changes. The members call themselves "bears" and adopt "bear" pseudonyms. I went through this process myself, thinking it was a way to take part in this potentially useful social network. Owen Benjamin was able to garner huge money from his audience to purchase expensive properties of land for his own, private possession. Their ethos was and still is that he would and will voluntarily make the use of that land available to his audience as a refuge for cultural and practical purposes in hard times. He avoided the standard formation of legal religious or community trust organizations. That "means that "bears" lack the protective, legal status as beneficiaries of a trust. They are subject to Owen Benjamin's personal decision and will as to whether they are able to access and enjoy the use of those properties. The "bears" consider their payments to Owen Benjamin to be donations to their land project they call "Beartaria"and don't appreciate that their payments to Owen Benjamin are in reality actually just personal gifts to him. I will continue this thread in another message.

Apart from the monetary aspect, the cultural aspect of relations among the "bears" meets most of the criteria of cult-like behavior listed on the culteducation site. These behaviors are still able to apply, even across a geographically distributed, online environment and using anonymizing pseudo-identities. This was surprising to me. A feature of this cult is the periodic waves of disaffection that occur from among its members who abandon the cult. This cult always needs to replenish its numbers with new members. This cult has trouble retaining members. I think the reason is that the land acquisition project (apart from performative live-streaming by Owrn Benjamin) is currently the main "product" that this cult has to offer. It does not yet offer or deliver online courses, for example. This cult recently concluded an expensive, onsite "festival" in Missouri on one of its properties. The footage of this festival becomes a digital "product" for its members to consume. Now for a word about the themes and topics of interest to this cult. It centres on "truther" themes, sometimes with a libertarian bent, sometimes nationalistic, sometimes racially-centred. There is a kind-of artificially crafted, false masculinity that purports to assert traditional family values and ways of life, including the idea of "home-steading" and self-sufficiency that is able to be participated in mystically. For example, city-dwelling members are told that they can participate in 'Beartaria' by growing a tomato on their balcony. Owrn Benjamin handles these themes in ways that are novel and bizarre, trying to present a kind-of comedic treatment thst is often vulgar and often quite frankly obscene. In fact, my opinion is that the transgressive nature of the obscenity is a tool to pierce the normal, psychological barriers of caution and disbelief whenever one is presented with new attitudes and ideas. Other standard themes include metaphysics that are nominally connected to Christian, pseudo-islsmic and new-age ideas. A strong feature is the villification of ex-"bears" and non-members. In my opinion, the psychological capture by Owen Benjamin of his members has a structural weakness in that it relies on his ability to persuade his members to only access his approved, online content. He is quite effective and skilled as a manipulative persuader (his own father was a professor in media studies and communication, apparently,) but he cannot actually control and restrict the communication devices of his members physically, as he would, say, in a physical environment. His own personal, face-to-face engagement with his members is extremely rare, in fact. One ex-member has made the point that the pseudonymous nature of the "bears," whose real identities are ususlly never known, sllows for a dehumanizing aepect that facillitates for their exploitation without facing real-life responsibilities and accountabilities. Wyy did I leave? Apart from a lot of discomfort that I generally always had, but which I was indoctrinated into minimizing and explaining away, there was a spectacular online debste (regardingg the Christian doctrine of the Trinity) in which he demonstrated shockingly bad-faith and appalling behavior thst woke up a lot of his followers, including myself. However, Owen Benjamin was later exposed in the legal publication of what he thought was a subsequent private phone conversation in which he scurrilously attempted to coerce and blackmail his debate-opponent (by leveraging his public humiliating of the latter's wife) so that his debate opponent might agree to arrangements that Owen believed would mitigate the massive loss of members in response to his poor debate performance. The attempted, secretive coercion and blackmail was extremely shocking. Even more shocking to me personally was his subsequent reinterpretation of the debacle. It seemed to me that Owen Benjamin became clinically manic, hyper-euphoric and psychotic in the way that he tried to reframe and recast the disaster of his failure. For me, he seemed to be extremely unwell, psychologically. Thst fsctor, combined with his scurrilous moral behavior when he believed he was opersting "behind the scenes" of his audience, dispelled the brain-hacking, mental formation that I had succumbed to as a member of his cult. I had thought I was careful and wary of being emotionally and psycholigically manipulated and I thought I had good, robust defenses against persuasive techniques. I am very grateful to realize that I am still susceptible to persuasion snd gullibility even now. Please forgive my typing errors in these posts.

Today 13 Sep 2024, Owen Benjamin was effectively forced, live and on screen, to reveal that some land property that his cult-members paid for is now owned by an unnamed LLC. No further details have been revealed. This is contrary to the agreement that he made with his members that he would maintain ownership of the property as a private individual in a personal, private capacity and perhaps, at his own discretion and will, grant access to his cult members for limited periods (i.e. a day, weekend, a week or so) for extremely high entrance fees, anything from $80, $400, $1000 or even $10,000. No more information is available yet about the Limited Liability Company that owns the land and received the gifted moneys without the givers' knowledge. I expect some "explaining" to occur now that this information has been forced out into the open. I am currently uploading a video with my views on the matter that I will link to in my next post here.

Here is the video explaining my current understanding of the situation:

[youtu.be]

Is this OB's organization?

[beartariatimes.com]

Quote

"...handles these themes in ways that are novel and bizarre, trying to present a kind-of comedic treatment thst is often vulgar and often quite frankly obscene.

In fact, my opinion is that the transgressive nature of the obscenity is a tool to pierce the normal, psychological barriers of caution and disbelief whenever one is presented with new attitudes and ideas.

Corboy note: This behavior is likely to produce information overload, confusion, disorientation and shock.

It is an ancient and effective method to throw people off balance -- and make us more susceptible to whatever sales pitch is part of the verbal bombardment.

Yes. I understand that Beartaria Times is one of the products of one of the LLCs in the commercial network of this group. I understand that Beartaria Times exists as an app and also as a periodical in physical print form.

In the same livestream, the cult leader explains to his members why he did not establish a legal Trust. A very short explanation: "We have a Trust. It's called me!"
[m.youtube.com]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/15/2023 05:07AM by Beehive.

This cult has a phrase "to pay the gay away" which is what Owen's cult-members call it when they pay him money. His streams can be extremely descriptive in an obscene way. Graphic images are created in his listeners' minds. In order to expunge those images, the ritual is to pay Owen money. Owen openly admits that this is what he is doing as way to generate income:

[m.youtube.com]

He is currently 'gaslighting' his cult-members over his reason for not establishing a legal Trust and he is very quiet about a secret and mysterious LLC that he quietly established instead of establishing a Trust. Here I treat his 'gaslighting' in a humourous way:

[youtu.be]