For years, the two allegedly belonged to a cult started by Sherry Shriner, an online conspiracy theorist. Shriner works through the internet with a website, a podcast, and a YouTube channel. She preaches that a group called the New World Order—made up of reptilians and aliens—is plotting to take over the world.

According to his girlfriend, Barbara Rogers, Mineo was seated on the ground cross-legged in his Pennsylvania apartment when she pulled the trigger of the Glock. Rogers also told police that her boyfriend wanted to die .

Speaking with police, Rogers said that Mineo wanted to die because of a feud with the Shriner and her followers. She said the troubles started with Shriner seeing a picture of Rogers eating raw meat. Upon viewing this image Shriner dubbed Rogers a reptilian and excommunicated the two from the group. The two were then harassed by Shriner's followers for three months. It didn't end until Rogers shot Mineo in the head—Shriner for her part says that Mineo was killed by NATO .

Steve Hassan , the founder of Freedom of Mind Resource Center and mental health counsellor who specializes in helping those in cults, says familiar exploitation tactics are increasingly being applied online. "The younger generation has grown up on the internet, this is the fertile recruitment zone," Hassan told VICE. "They're now more likely to be recruited in social media than in person."

The definition of a cult has become a little bit of a moving target over the years. Perhaps the closest to the definitive explanation was proposed in a 1981 paper , wherein Dr. Robert Lifton, a psychologist known for his theory of thought reform, wrote that regardless of its ideology a "destructive cult" had three recurring themes: an authoritative or all-knowing leader; the existence of a thought control program that breaks down critical thinking to gain undue influence; and the exploitation of its members.

"What I think most people don't realize is how a group can be just totally in the ether," said Rick Ross , the founder and executive director of the nonprofit Cult Education Institute . "People interface with them using social media—using Skype—they don't meet face-to-face."

On her website, Shriner writes long diatribes with titles like "The Coming Alien-Locust-Giant Invasions" and "How Aliens Target, Manipulate, And Control Mankind." While Shriner preaches from Ohio, her videos are used as a global entry point to recruit believers from all over the world. Her website has a YouTube subscriber count of over 6,000, and cumulatively her videos have been seen over a million times.

For every one of these larger, more established groups there exists several small ones like the Divine Truth, Trumpet Call of God, and Shriner.

Major cults such as Raëlism , The Brethren, The Moonies , The Family International all have prolific YouTube presences. Raëlism—a cult founded in the 70s that believes humans were created by aliens—has what they call Rael TV and the Rael Academy where they post videos that are aimed at people who don't know about the group but want to learn more—some of the videos have hundreds of thousands of views.

"It's creepy," said Ross. "You're a parent and your kid is in his bedroom and he's on his smartphone and he's in a cult and he's in your house. You're there watching Netflix and your kid is interfacing with cult members and a cult leader on his smartphone."

Some videos recruit by twisting established religions, while others claim to offer a more secular "truth." Some encourage followers to self isolate and only communicate with other group members online, all while sending money to the leader. A few simply tell people to drop everything to join a compound. While each cult differs in tactics, there is a recurring theme—they can all recruit you from the comfort of your own home.

Two experts consulted for this piece stated that on a purely technical level, ISIS is the most successful cult at harnessing the power of the internet. The radical Islamic terror cell operates an extremely sophisticated network of online propaganda. This propaganda is why it's possible for people to self-radicalize and commit terror attacks without ever physically meeting anyone in the group.

Some of the groups and leaders subsist solely off YouTube. One alleged cult called Fellowship of the Martyrs —who are focused on demonology among other things—is run by a man named Doug Perry who has about 15,000 YouTube subscribers and 1,300 videos posted so far. All the videos are just Perry talking into the camera talking about his religion like he is giving a sermon to a congregation.

"It started off with him talking about anarchy and then he gets into criticizing religion and saying stuff like all the worlds problems are caused by 'bad parenting,'" O'Connor told VICE.

It started when one of O'Connor's friends gave her the name of a bald, pleasantly accented man preaching about anarchism on the internet. This was a subject she was interested in, so she decided to give it a try. From the get-go O'Connor "was pretty much hooked" by Molyneux's long diatribes in which he stares directly into the camera for hours.

"I've been doing this for a long time, and people can embed in such a way that they cut themselves off from reality. There is this self-reinforcing alternative universe they occupy. It's something people can create more and more effectively right now."

"People can cocoon themselves in a kind of alternative universe, you choose who you friend on Facebook, you choose who you follow on Twitter, you choose who you watch on YouTube and you can kinda create an alternative reality," said Ross.

While YouTube is one of the bigger platforms utilized by cults, they will use any tool available to extend their reach, said Ross. This utilization of social media, paired with the platform's ability to allow people to entrench themselves into a bubble is something further exasperating the issue.

"[Molyneux's] theory was that if enough people did this—made this sacrifice—then he would send a message to the world that parents need to treat your kids better," said O'Connor. "So that's what I believed I was doing, I was taking part of this mission to protect children."

Listening to Molyneux for hours on end talking about this, O'Connor convinced herself that her parents didn't really love her and were instead abusive and manipulative. She also learned that Molyneux has a solution for people who end up falling into this line of thinking: deFOOing , completely dissociating yourself from your family.

For almost a decade now, experts and former members have stated Molyneux's Freedomain Radio (FDR) functions as a de-facto cult because of deFOOing—as it results in self-isolation and devotion to Molyneux. The Cult Information Centre in Britain, which has been around for 30 years and offers help to cult victims and their families, has even gone so far as to deem Freedomain Radio a cult, while the group's overarching cultyness has been touched on by outlets like The Guardian and the Daily Beast . Steve Hassan is one of the experts critical of Molyneux. On Hassan's website Freedom of the Mind , it states that FDR utilizes behavioural and emotional control such as excommunicating people who criticize him or the group, and inspiring fear of the outside world to his followers.

You may have heard of Molyneux or seen his face. In recent days, he has garnered attention as a pro-Trump media figure —his work was just touched upon in a New York Times write up about YouTube being the new far-right talk radio. On YouTube, Molyneux regularly gets high profile interviews and boasts about 650,000 subscribers. His videos have been viewed over 185 million times—he also has a subscription service on his websites that can cost his listeners up to $500.

"People like this say three true things and slip in something unverifiable or untestable and the mind, in its shortcuts, goes yes, yes, yes, yes and even though that last one is not a yes, it's a question mark," said Hassan.

A FDR member was actually the first person that Hassan was hired to help who had been "recruited in his own apartment" after spending "hours and hours listening to podcasts and watching videos." Hassan said the political conversations and interviews are the entry point to deFOOing. That people watch Molyneux because he's charismatic, picks hot button issues to speak about, and puts on the image of a man who knows what he's talking about.

In 2008, believing her family was abusing her, O'Connor completely stopped talking to them while distancing herself from friends who questioned her actions—she was convinced by Molyneux that these people were cowards. After about a year, her work life became so strained because she was "so immersed in this other world" that she was fired.

From here on out she was completely isolated, only interacting with other FDR members either through forums or Skype. While money was tight she continued to subscribe to Molyneux's premium podcasts and services paying about $50 a month. Molyneux became the biggest part of her world—she was her hero, her teacher.

"When I was isolated, my whole world was FDR, I would come home and listen to the podcast with a fellow member and we would talk about the podcast and have phone conversations with other people in the group," said O'Connor.

This state of self-isolation lasted for years and was one where Molyneux "had the word, he had the truth, he would tell you what to think about." However, after getting into the inner circle and seeing how it worked, O'Connor started to pull away. While the reasons were numerous, she told VICE the biggest occurred when one of her friends left FDR. O'Connor expected this friends life to crumble after turning her back on FDR—something the group was led to believe would happen—but it didn't, she saw her friend flourish.

So in 2012, after four years in isolation, O'Connor reached out to her family and broke her self-isolation. On the forums she started being critical of Molyneux which quickly led to her expulsion from that segment of the group. O'Connor said that life is pretty good these days and that's she's open about her experience—she appeared on a Showtime doc regarding FDR—but it took about five years for her life become normalized again and that she's now extremely wary of what media she takes in.