The New York Times bestselling author of The Age of Magical Overthinking and Wordslut analyzes the social science of cult influence: how “cultish” groups, from Jonestown and Scientologists to SoulCycle and social media gurus, use language as the ultimate form of power.
What makes “cults” so intriguing and frightening? What makes them powerful? The reason why so many of us binge Manson documentaries by the dozen and fall down rabbit holes researching suburban moms gone QAnon is because we’re looking for a satisfying explanation for what causes people to join—and more importantly, stay in—extreme groups. We secretly want to know: could it happen to me? Amanda Montell’s argument is that, on some level, it already has . . .
Our culture tends to provide pretty flimsy answers to questions of cult influence, mostly having to do with vague talk of “brainwashing.” But the true answer has nothing to do with freaky mind-control wizardry or Kool-Aid. In Cultish, Montell argues that the key to manufacturing intense ideology, community, and us/them attitudes all comes down to language. In both positive ways and shadowy ones, cultish language is something we hear—and are influenced by—every single day.
Through juicy storytelling and cutting original research, Montell exposes the verbal elements that make a wide spectrum of communities “cultish,” revealing how they affect followers of groups as notorious as Heaven’s Gate, but also how they pervade our modern start-ups, Peloton leaderboards, and Instagram feeds. Incisive and darkly funny, this enrapturing take on the curious social science of power and belief will make you hear the fanatical language of “cultish” everywhere.
I finally finished it!
I don’t know what took me so long… it was just under 300 pages, but for some reason I couldn’t engage with it as much as I would have liked to. It kind of threw a hiccup in my progress toward 50 books.
That said: excellently written, and when I WAS reading it, I was engaged. It dealt heavily in the kind of language one sees in cults, going from the biggest cults that thrived in the 50s and 70s to the smallest modern-day cults (or cult-likes) made out of social media followings.
The argument for language being what makes a cult draw people in and keep them crushed down is a substantial one, going into the psychological abuses and manipulations that are used to inspire a person to stay and conform to the cult expectations. It extracts the main danger points of well-known cult language and points out the use in modern day workout clubs, conspiracy spaces, and MLMs, discussing where a cult crosses the line from a temporary and consensual experience into a dangerous lifestyle.
I actually wish the book was longer. It read lightly, and had a tint of humor overall, making the subject enormously accessible to readers. It also brought up a lot of cult history I was unfamiliar with and noted thusly, as well as how this language is reflected in everyday life. It was fascinating to read and ingest. It explains a lot about how people fall into cults— as we (being me and the handful of people who read my shit) know, cults draw in reasonably good people and locks them in. A person isn’t inherently lesser by getting drawn into a cult. It just… fucks em up.
Anyway, I’d recommend this to Remy. Remy, let me know if you wanna borrow it.
