At least in the United States, the religious cult is a topic of intense curiosity and manages to consistently capture the imagination of large swathes of the public.
There are many forces at play here. On the surface it is made explicitly clear that the sordid deceptions and violent catastrophes that often accompany these highly charged phenomena make for high drama and sound entertainment.
There are elements of this curiosity that go less touched upon however, and for good reason. The cult offers the glimpse of spiritual ecstasy and radical collective belonging - at least initially before the deceptions come out and the shit hits the fan - which to the average modern denizen comes with not a small amount of envy.
It is the going bad, and the catastrophe, that frees the viewer from the suspicion that they may be missing out a little bit. After all, this is just what happens if you try to reach for the sublime in a society that posits the sublime as so much superstition, when it isn't celebrating the sublime in the exercise of warfare and competition.
