The Jehovah's Witness Protection Program

[Tonus]

Really, though, all those rules look like what a cult leader would dictate to his members.

Because that's what it is. I was raised a JW, and the idea is to insulate and isolate the membership. If the only information you get is from the organization, then it's pretty easy to keep you in the fold. You may not be happy (I actually was, but I have always been the happy-go-lucky type) but you believe that it's much worse outside of the walls (an attitude you can see from some theists here from time-to-time).

It may be hard to understand why anyone would join them if they had not been raised in that environment, but like most cults they prey on people who are at their lowest ebb and desperately seeking comfort of any kind. Plus. they put on a very good performance for anyone who shows even a bit of interest; it may even seem very liberating at that stage.

For groups like the JWs there is a very high turnover rate, they lose tens of thousands of members every year for various reasons and when they're not pushing the whole "end of the world omg right now" schtick it can really slow their growth. The internet has been a particular problem for them, making it so easy to find the archives of old publications that help people to understand just what a strange institution it has always been, and just how far removed the present-day group is from the teachings of the early leaders, who are still held up as paragons of a sort.