they used to advertise Dianetics on teevee all the time, and my parents had to patiently explain that no, it wasn't a cool sci-fi thing about volcanoes but a scary violent cult

I remember those commercials! I used to wonder when the badass volcano movie was ever gonna come out. It never did.

I remember those commercials

Yeah I thought those looked badass as a kid, though I had no idea what Dianetics was, and I was too young to give a shit

I never knew what it was, but then my curiosity with it faded until the late 90s when the Tom Cruise/Scientology thing was brought up

Grew up near Clearwater and the commercials for Dianetics were non-stop

Scientology is specifically science fiction made bad. Hubbard was a hack and he incorporated all his most hack tendencies into his cult.

my brother and I called and ordered every religious book we saw because we just thought they were free books. our parents intercepted all of them thankfully