Shredder, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, 1990Welcome to Tales of the Cult!
A new anthology series for Warrior Funk where I’ll regale stories and events from my time in a cult-like organisation. The aim is to tell the honest truth—both good and bad—while shedding light on the practices of these kinds of groups.
These pieces might not be in any particular order; however, I’ll do my best to provide context or link to other articles to build a clearer picture.
I’ve written about the leader of this organisation, MJ, in this post about his stint teaching us Jiu Jitsu. Shockingly, the bloke's manipulation and abusive traits were honed and polished in this setting—martial arts was just another avenue for him to take advantage of people.
When I joined the group, it was via a free seminar advertised to me on Facebook. The ad listed a bunch of things that often afflict men in this age; self-hatred, self-doubt, unworthiness etc. Every single one of which I was feeling in abundance.
I wasn’t in a good place. I’d stopped myself from jumping off a cliff at the start of 2020 and made a deal with myself to give it one more proper go at turning my life around. If I failed this time, I would kill myself.
The stakes were high, to say the least.
I couldn’t afford therapy, I didn’t call any crisis lines for help as I figured they might be sick of me (how delightfully British), I was too embarrassed to reach out to any friends or family. I felt like I didn’t have many options until this advert popped up on my phone.
I’ll probably write more about the beginnings of my journey, but the point I want to make is that this free seminar was full of compassion, empathy, and love.
It was these qualities that attracted me to continuing with the group; the men I met were caring. They listened to me and they understood what I was going through. I was in a room with other men battling similar demons and I didn’t feel alone anymore.
This nurture and understanding would continue through the first four or five months of my time with the group. This would soon begin to change into something more nefarious. We were the proverbial frogs in the pot, and the water was beginning to boil.
MJ had a knack for talking to people. He was able to cut through some of the macho bullshit we as men bring to situations and pinpoint exactly what was going on. Importantly, he was able to do this with grace and humility.
As time went on, the grace morphed into hubris. Humility into unchecked ego.
MJ once told us that men have a unique ability to be able to deliver hard-hitting home truths to each other with a dressing of humour. Or, as most would understand; ‘banter’. I do believe this for the most part, it's why a lot of lads value the ability to banter in the women they pursue.
However, what would unfold in this cult dynamic was a far cry from banter. Any semblance of light-hearted jabs was replaced with cold spitefulness.
MJ dubbed this home-truth delivery system “shredding”.
Around the time of this method being introduced, I was ‘training’ to become a facilitator with the group. These volunteers would put extra time and effort into sitting with the men, helping guide them in conversation with themselves to help process trauma.
I had experienced facilitation first hand and it was transformative - having a trusted person to hold you through reliving some of the worst shit in your life was invaluable. It allowed me to explore terrifying emotions in a safe environment, accept them and ultimately, be able to move on.
Having reaped the benefits of this myself, I wanted to help others.
The word shredding was first presented to us via the inner circle; MJ’s most trusted people. Turns out, he’d been experimenting on them first. We were at a meet-up one evening held at a University, MJ wasn’t in attendance, but the lads had been instructed to test it out on the rest of us.
Instantly my guard went up. This didn’t sound very loving or caring. I knew a lot of our boys had suffered bullying and abusive relationships. This shredding thing ran the risk of dragging those terrible experiences back up for them.
The inner circle sat up front and asked for a volunteer.
I raised my hand.
I didn’t want to. But looking around the group, knowing these boys personally for a while now, I would rather take one for the team and not subject my mates to something that could be upsetting for them.
My shredding was rather tame. The inner circle, despite following MJ blindly, had yet to develop the cold-heartedness to cut too deep yet. I remember not enjoying it, having another man lay into what he perceived as faults with my personality was confronting and uncomfortable, but I’ve had much worse happen to me in my life.
From then on, we began to see shredding in every aspect of this group. Every time people met up there seemed to be a moment dedicated to shredding, and it started to become clear that some of the inner circle began to enjoy the process more than others.
There was a clear line being drawn between the guys who didn’t want to do it, and the guys who absolutely relished it. I observed that the people who had experienced violence in the past were very against it, and the guys who hadn’t—and usually the ones who’d experienced being at the lower rungs of the social ladder seemed to be really quite enjoying it.
Gary, a young lad who I witnessed transform from an outgoing, hilarious guy into a personality-defunct ‘yes man’ seemed to be especially loving the chance to bring people down. This was directed at me eventually, but that’s a story for a different time.
Over the years, I’ve learned that anyone who claims to be ‘brutally honest’ usually enjoys the ‘brutal’ more than the honesty. This was no different. All I could see were people delighting in administering violence (and that’s what this was) to people they were meant to love and care for.
It was fucking disgusting.
I personally witnessed MJ absolutely tear his so-called ‘best mate’ to pieces in front of a group of twelve blokes. It came out of nowhere, completely blindsiding the poor man all under the guise of doing him a favour. Textbook abusive behaviour.
Another time, MJ tore into another bloke he knew really well - making fun of his podcast, laughing at his low listener count. What on earth was this meant to help with? It was fucking rich coming from MJ too, who’s own podcast was utter tripe which no one listened to. I saw him poke fun of a guy’s inability to satisfy his partner, and take digs at people’s jobs and how useless they were.
I was told a story of one of the guys completely breaking after his shredding - literally running out of the building he was so overwhelmed from the bullying.
You couldn’t bite back. You were expected to just sit there and take it, in front of everyone.
Shredding wasn’t productive, it didn’t teach you anything about yourself or inspire personal growth. It left vulnerable men shattered, ready to be rebuilt in MJ’s image of the ideal masculine and ultimately hand over more of their money into his greasy palms.
The final straw came during an event called The Container - something I went through myself - a three day virtual seminar which allowed you the chance to share and work through your trauma in the company of other men. Usually with strict adherence and commitment from everyone not to judge, or ridicule. My experience was extremely supportive and instrumental in moving on from my horrible past.
This time I was involved as a facilitator rather than a participant, and was looking forward to helping. MJ had a friend who ran a successful charity teaching young boys in school about preventative mental health and emotional literacy—a really great cause. MJ had convinced his mate to bring his entire crew to this Container, likely with the intention for them to ditch their methodology and incorporate his instead.
I was placed in the breakout room with these lads from the charity and it wasn’t going well. Some were responding really well to the process, others were staunchly not vibing with it. Which was fine by me, there isn’t a ‘one-size fits all’ for self development, if only one person got something out of it that was a victory in my eyes.
Not in MJs, however.
After reporting back on the progress of my group, I was instructed to shred them. Hard. Just to be clear, they wanted me to abuse guys who spent all of their time helping school children.
I refused.
Instead, one of the inner circle joined and took over the shredding while I sat back and watched. He was literally shouting at them—some of whom he knew personally—and he didn’t shy away from using that knowledge against them in this tirade of verbal punches.
I decided I was done there and then.
The next day, I sent a message to the group chat of all the boys training to be facilitators, explaining that I felt we did more damage than good that weekend, and that intentionally breaking people down was something I wouldn’t be a part of any longer.
If any of those men are reading this, I’m sorry I didn’t speak up sooner. I’m sorry I stayed silent when you were being viciously attacked. I’m sorry for the scars reopened, and for new ones created.
I don’t blame or hold resentment for any of the guys who got caught up in this whole thing. They, along with the rest of us, were duped and manipulated by one person who holds sole blame. A person who, despite preaching the good word, could not move beyond the wrongs done to him in the past and instead used his newly emerging power to enact his revenge by proxy.
The scum rises to the top.
Wake up babe, new Warrior Funk just dropped
MJ 😡