The Disturbing Rise And Fall Of Love Has Won, The First Internet Cult

TL;DR

Love Has Won was the first live-streaming cult, built by Amy Carlson who died at 45 after followers refused her hospital care, believing she was ascending to a spaceship.

Key Points

• 1.Love Has Won was the first major internet-native cult. Amy Carlson recruited globally by flooding Facebook and Twitter with live stream links, attracting lonely users who stumbled in and couldn't stop watching — a model journalist Leah Satilly calls the first cult of the live-streaming era.
• 2.Amy Carlson was a single McDonald's manager who abandoned her family in 2007. She spent evenings on lightworkers.org, fell into new-age forums, met Robert Saltsgiver (Emmeth White Eagle), and walked out of a Thanksgiving dinner to start her spiritual journey across the western US.
• 3.The cult's rapid growth was driven by professional branding from Father God Andrew Pathi. He renamed the group 'Love Has Won,' created logos, optimized social media algorithms, and turned it into a content machine selling crystals, colloidal silver, essential oils, and $44/$77 'angel number' donations — with some followers giving their entire 401ks.
• 4.Amy claimed to be the 534th reincarnation of a divine being with past lives including Cleopatra, Jesus, Joan of Arc, and Marilyn Monroe. Her spiritual advisory council of 'Galactics' included Tupac, Prince, Robin Williams, and Carrie Fisher — with Robin Williams cited as her primary divine advisor.
• 5.Alcohol was called Amy's 'medicine' and the entire group was perpetually intoxicated. Amy was a raging alcoholic who communicated with the Galactics while blackout drunk; Father God Jason Castillo openly used meth, and Andrew Pathi later said everyone was high from morning to bedtime.
• 6.The group's dark side included QAnon beliefs, antisemitism, Holocaust denial, and claims that Sandy Hook was a hoax. What started with aliens and 5D ascension beliefs funneled followers into increasingly extreme conspiracy theories, with Amy's rhetoric growing militant as her health collapsed.
• 7.Colloidal silver, used as a spiritual healing agent, turned Amy's skin blue — a condition called argyria. Despite losing use of her legs, dropping to nearly 100 pounds, and being paralyzed by 2020, the group rejected all 3D medicine; when she reportedly asked to go to a hospital, her inner circle refused.
• 8.Amy died at 45 in an Oregon motel in April 2021, with no spaceship or ascension. Her followers drove her corpse 1,200 miles back to Creststone, wrapped in a sleeping bag covered with glitter and crystals, and placed her in her bed under Christmas lights until a police raid found her body.
• 9.No criminal charges beyond corpse abuse were filed, and former Father God Michael Lamboy cleaned out $330,000 from the group's accounts and disappeared. The cult splintered into offshoots like Joy Reigns and 5D Full Disclosure, with some members still believing Amy successfully completed her 534th divine mission.