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Michael's efforts here appear to be "culture building" in the end effects. Him and his acolytes target people with a propensity to psychosis, feed them lots of drugs, and then break their ontology while they are on the drugs. Sometimes this stabilizes into a cult member, sometimes this breaks the person and they get abandoned. The second order "membership" like Olivia replicates the first part of this pattern, but with no actual cult to stabilize them into.