@sun and it's always been that way, and the underlying idea is still good enough that everyone regrets not jumping on board with such people earlier.

This is an idea that I haven't seen in fiction. Adventures come to town and kids run away with a slippery charismatic guy, or with genuinely good people, or with bad people with bad outcomes. But this is like: a troupe of retarded charlatan priests come to town and everyone mocks them, but the god is real.