Scientologists online: Changes between Dec. 2002 and Jan. 2007
| In July of 1998, a letter from Flag
was sent to scientologists asking them to join the "Scientologist On-Line
Crusade," which purpose was "to have 100,000 Scientologists On-line by New
Years 1999." Scientologists were to provide a personal success story on how Dianetics
and Scientology helped them. It has been
reported that this project was to actually
improve the ranking of Scientology-owned web sites
in Google search engine. In 1998, Scientology spokespersons claimed membership of 8 millions. It is thus surprising that their goal for their "Scientologist On-Line Crusade" would be a mere 100,000, or 1.25% of their claimed membership. What is even more surprising — keeping in mind the claimed membership of 8 million — is that only around 16,000 scientologists actually ended up being a "Scientologist On-Line"... And this number has been declining as can be seen below, despite the spokesperson claims that Scientology is "the fastest-growing religion" (as reported in Rolling Stone (2006): "Inside Scientology" by Janet Reitman). List of names has been removed on April 21th, 2012, I didn't see it as relevant anymore. |
 |
Sources:
- Church of Scientology International: "Meet over 16,000 Scientologists on-line"
- Internet Archive: Wayback Machine
- Operation Clambake Message Board
Methodology:
- The count was made by hand.