Where online ‘spiritual gurus’ go wrong

We all know YouTube. YouTube is the biggest video platform on the planet, with about 400 hours of video uploaded to the service every second.

But YouTube, of all the current content “platforms,” is arguably the most fragmented. There’s no newsfeed, so there’s no central place where everyone — or seemingly everyone — is gathering. As a result, communities form on their own, typically around channels or personalities, and they tend to be pretty insular.

One of these communities formed around someone named Teal Swan. Swan is what you might call a “spiritual healer” or at least someone who believes herself to be that. But it turns out she has some very controversial thoughts on many topics, including suicide, and a lot of people think her teachings are potentially damaging — and may have contributed to the suicide of someone who followed her closely. Read more…

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