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Like any online meme worth its weight in clicks, the Scientology speedrun trend doesn’t make a lot of sense, at least on the surface.
A crowd of nearly 300 young people in Vancouver were the latest to jump on the social trend Sunday afternoon. Videos posted on TikTok and Instagram showed young men gathering across the street from the church’s downtown location, hollering about finding actor Tom Cruise and the alien deity Xenu.
Some wore masks and held toy guns as they approached the front door, which was locked from the inside. Vancouver police tried to clear the area and arrested a 16-year-old after a physical struggle. The teen was released without charges, police said.
“This was not a peaceful visit or lawful protest,” Scientology spokesperson David Bloomberg said in a statement to CBC News. “It was a co-ordinated act involving attempts to breach a religious facility and disrupt its operations.”
So why are teenagers from Vancouver to Los Angeles to New York suddenly trying to gain entry to Scientology offices? Why are they jogging through hallways and stairwells until security kicks them out? And why are they filming the encounters, seemingly pretending to be in a real-life video game?
Many people with answers to these questions fear speaking on the record because of the church’s history of litigation against critics.
“The church is very, very famously litigious. Their best weapon is the legal system,” said Bee Mood, an ex-Scientologist who worked for the Sea Org, the religion’s Navy-inspired management arm, before leaving the church in 2018.
Mood says that some other former Scientologists welcome speedrunners who want to protest the church, but says most of the stunts are unlikely to change minds.
Long before the trend took off, an account called StreetsLA, with about 600,000 followers between Instagram and TikTok, regularly posted interactions with staff outside Scientology property. With popular video titles like “Warning young people about Scientology,” “Recruiter disruption” and “Scientologists run and hide from me,” the anonymous account owner has spent years talking to church members and passersby.
“He has been doing videos for a long time about Scientology and specifically the establishment on Hollywood Boulevard,” said Mood. “That feels like the genesis of the speedrun trend.”
Then, in late March, a teen influencer who goes by the handle @swhileyy, previously known for posting scenes of poverty in L.A., shared a clip of his own dash through an L.A. Church of Scientology lobby. The video was viewed tens of millions of times before the creator said it was reported and taken down for violating community guidelines.
Hundreds of teens gathered in downtown Vancouver on Saturday afternoon to stage their
own version of a viral social media trend, “Scientology speedrunning.” As the CBC’s Sohrab Sandhu explains, the stunt has police issuing a warning.
“The Scientology speed run trend was started by this kid right here — and yeah, that happens to be me,” the creator said in a TikTok video posted on Sunday. He said he’s seen the wave of copycat videos that followed and, for the record, doesn’t condone them.
But by early April, the video had already spread all over the internet, and new stunts soon followed. Some influencers say they’re trying to map out the inside of the buildings to learn the organization’s secrets, but most appear to be chasing views and laughs online. Observers say it follows the blueprint of a 2019 viral meme that encouraged people to “storm Area 51.”
As an ex-Scientologist, Mood says the trend is at times entertaining and sometimes troubling. “Mostly what I see is a group of people yelling.”
Jokes about Tom Cruise and Xenu are “the oldest things that Scientologists have been hearing people yell at them for decades.”
The first speedrun video Mood encountered showed a man hurling insults and doing a Fortnite dance in a Scientology reception area. When they later saw another popular video of a man in a robe and wig — an apparent Jesus costume — leading a crowd of masked young people into an L.A. building, Mood decided to add their own “behind-the-scenes lore.”
Mood told their followers that the crowd had just entered the L. Ron Hubbard Life Exhibition, which is intended for public outreach. “So when they run through there, no one’s really chasing them because it’s open and meant for the public. It’s only when they get into the stairwell that the security guard gets really upset.”
They said above the exhibit is the international liaison office, where Sea Org members from around the world meet. Those doors are locked and secured with keycards, they said.
Mood says they welcome curiosity and criticism about Scientology, but warn against causing damage or clashing with staff. Another speedrun clip in New York showed people knocking over boxes of books and stomping on them. “That would be ill-advised and not something I would condone,” they said. “Things become a lot more murky and dangerous for everyone involved.”
In another video inspired by speedrunners, a crew dressed in Minion costumes performs a scene from Despicable Me outside the headquarters in L.A.
“That whole video — the way it was done, the concept, execution — 10/10, amazing, no notes,” said Mood. “They were on the sidewalk the entire time, they never went on church property. They didn’t touch a single person. It was a spectacle, it was very funny. It genuinely made me laugh.”
Jenna Miscavige, author of Beyond Belief and niece of Scientology leader David Miscavige, has also posted videos encouraging young people to learn about Scientology.
“Your curiosity is wonderful, but I want you to put your safety first,” Miscavige said in an Instagram post on Monday.
Miscavige told her followers about the Scientology practice of “fair game,” the church’s approach to handling critics. She warned speedrunners to pay attention if anyone follows them or calls them afterward. “Cameras tend to make weird behaviours stop, really quick,” she said.
StreetsLA posted on Sunday that the L.A. recruitment centre has been closed to the public for nine days. Videos posted in the last week show the door handles have been removed at several locations.
Mood says it’s not surprising that the church has put up walls to the public. When the hacker group Anonymous targeted the church in the early 2000s, Scientology responded by putting up fake hedges around the perimeter to block out onlookers, Mood recalled.
“They’re going to hunker down. They’re going to do whatever they can to not interact.”
