The reason I made that comment is that I would not in any way describe Scientology as "successful". Most of the stories I know of people who associated themselves with it are people who were leaned on by the organization and essentially forced to remain active. I also don't find myself thinking there are tons of people who are part of the organization, which was supposed to be the entire point of this strategy. I am actually kind of shocked that you say "the organization appears to have been successful after implementing that approach". Like, the idea wasn't just that they'd succeed in tricking people into thinking they had a ton of members and was successful, but that they would actually be successful, and that seems to not be the case.
"That's one Scientologist for about every 12,000 Americans. In other words, the total number of active U.S. Scientologists is about the size of your run-of-the-mill local credit union."
But the fact that many people even have heard of Scientology means that it's far more successful than it should have been in an information based society. 25k is a ton of people for such a radical idea.
