I finished this yesterday and have never watched an episode of any of the Duggars' shows but knew they existed. It was more the specific religious teachings that made me not able to look away. I grew up in the American midwest and although the acronyms don't ring any bells, the specific things that were mentioned totally did. I remember them being really weird even as a kid, the sort of 'where did that come from?!?!' feeling, but I was in a non-evangelical home and I think my mum brushed it off knowing in a teeny-tiny town, debating with evangelicals doesn't really accomplish anything other than making you an outcast sinner.
We definitely had the Cabbage Patch warlock line a lot. I'm too old for it to be Harry Potter they banned but the original Zelda game on the Nintendo (essentially a text adventure game) was seen as really horrible and there were lots of rumours about anyone who had the game. Quite a few families didn't allow Disney films and would go sit in the library if a school teacher played one in class. I even had quite a few of those pinafore dresses with the big collars because they were just fashionable in our little town.
I didn't have any close friends who were homeschooled but many acquaintances, and almost all of them had to cut all ties with non-homeschool/church friends when we were teenagers. Many of them were very skilled musicians and one came to play the piano for a concert when the regular school accompanist was ill. I hadn't seen this kid in a few years and went bouncing up to say hello, and his mother physically put herself in the way to block the path and instructed me I was not to speak to her son at all because I could not be trusted. I was totally the nerdiest kid in my school and I was playing a violin concerto. Probably wearing a pinafore dress with a pilgrim collar. If she thought I couldn't be trusted, well, a lot of the teenage population were just pure trouble then!
But honestly, growing up with that all around me it was just seen as 'these people are extra Christian' and now I am so very curious how widespread that specific 'institute' was in my hometown.
(TBF I lived geographically closer to the Phelps family and we did not consider their followers 'extra Christian' and definitely considered them really mean when they were out picketing things like funerals. So there were some lines drawn somewhere!)