It began, like so many modern presidential campaign stories do, as a joke. Sarah Marilyn, a 28-year-old Brooklyn social media strategist, didn’t bother to watch the first Democratic debates in June. She was only vaguely aware that they were happening until the memes began cascading onto her phone. She chased the best jokes, fell into a kind of Photoshop fugue state, and emerged as the co-founder of a Facebook page dedicated to the candidate with the most stimulating content: Marianne Williamson’s Dank Meme Stash.

It took only a few hours for her ironic interest to bloom into something more. Was it just her, or was Marianne Williamson actually kind of making sense? Somebody tweeted that “Marianne Williamson just needs 2 or 3 hot Bushwick witch girls to run her social media and she will absolutely run away with this,” and Marilyn decided that she would be one of them.

As Marilyn waded into the campaign, she met resistance from Williamson’s old-school supporters, the kind of people who sincerely seek her spiritual self-help content. When Marilyn shared a meme featuring the candidate in a meditative pose that said “Re-Align America’s Chakras Again,” somebody called her a “hater.” Others worried that mocking memes would undermine Williamson’s claim to a serious run. Williamson herself seemed a little spooked. “I am not a cult leader,” she clarified on Twitter. “Why do people make crystal jokes?” she pleaded to The New York Times. “I don’t use crystals!”