Adrianna TanMany Asian vegan restaurant chains have cultic roots (here’s the founder of Loving Hut)
Thommy@skinnylatte I love the food at that place but I kinda don't want to support it anymore because of the cult aspect of it. They always play that channel in her restaurants (except in malls where they don't allow it).
Antipope Superstar@skinnylatte it's honestly wild that so many people go to these restaurants and just like, roll with it. Oh yeah we know it's a cult but can't stop going back
@skinnylatte what I really want to know is why, how did "having a cult" mean also "having a vegan restaurant chain", what was the cultural history there
@julieofthespirits Franchise model: cult followers can easily send money upstream
Restaurant model: easy to launder money
Replicable: make the same shit in every place, costs are fixed, cult followers can provide free or cheap labor and marketing
She even has many peanut pancake stall vendors who run pancake stands for her
@julieofthespirits Lots of people simply do not care. Animal liberation is more important than human liberation to some. So many people were mourning the loss of another SF vegan cult restaurant (Ananda Fuara) recently
7leaguebootdisk𓅽@skinnylatte @julieofthespirits abusive labor law violating, which is why they shut down.
Joel Kin@skinnylatte is it all Ching Hai and Chinmoy or are there more?
@foon More in Asia. Random stall market stalls are also run by other cult followers.
@skinnylatte fascinating! The vegan restaurant cult thing has always been so morbidly interesting to me, but it didn’t occur to me that the whole notion could be “franchised”. Like… how is there a big enough audience? Or do you suppose it’s all about the money laundering?
@foon She doesn’t really need huge followers in the west but she needs to find a way to send money there, where she has properties as her ‘Celestia da Lamour’ persona in florida.
There’s a bunch of Taiwanese UFO cults but doomers and end of world types aren’t interested in making money in business if the world is ending, so i guess they’ve got a different model
@skinnylatte apocalyptic Christian cults in the US seem fairly interested in making money but I take your point!
@foon Apocalyptic Christians (I grew up among them) believe that when the world ends, they alone get raptured into heaven *with their stuff*
@skinnylatte what about that whole eye of a needle business?? I dunno, I grew up Jewish, but I am seeing some contradictions.
All there is is here@skinnylatte @foon can you name some of these ufo cults? I’m very interested in this component of end-times cultures. I teach East Asian societies, specifically Japan and there’s a lot to say about cults in that context!
Ashwin Nanjappa 🐘@skinnylatte Yikes, I liked having the vegetarian food there many times with friends. Never saw them push that cult stuff on the customer though.
@codeyarns That stuff is way more insidious in a Chinese context. It’s very toned down in the west. Their main message is hard to translate to other audiences. It’s probably all money laundering
Akshay | అక్షయ్@skinnylatte They’ve been advertising at that spot for the last 12 years. In fact, can’t think of a time when it wasn’t there.
(Welcome to Queenstown!)
For whom the Taco Bell tolls@skinnylatte loving hut? I used to go to one in NJ. Food was great, I wonder if it’s related
@madrush It is. It’s a cult