You are a cultist, everybody is

Group affiliations make up the scaffolding upon which we build our lives, writes linguist Amanda Montell in her 2021 book Cultish. She also co-hosts the Sounds Like A Cult podcast with Isabela Medina, a stand-up comedian and documentary filmmaker. They see cults as thriving in periods of sociopolitical tumult. So when a pandemic has pulled us away from traditional sources of community, seeking to fill the void by stanning Elon Musk or marathons or astrology or veganism or 12-step programmes is understandable and zeitgeist-y. The podcast is appreciative of a lot of this cultish behaviour but also attentive to red flags for when it tips over into dangerous brainwashing. The Cult of Instagram Therapists: People dispensing what should be bespoke mental health advice to a mass audience would not easily seduce people who are lucky enough to have good therapists in real life. But a lot of people who need one have actually never had a therapist of their own. Then the pandemic created both a big new mental health crisis and waiting periods running into months for a bona fide professional. Plus, less work right? If on a social media platform, therapy just walks up to you and you save big bucks. But you don’t know if an intern or catfish is behind the account. Some have real cred, some only good intentions, others are going for power abuse. Their pithy posts and digestible nuggets of wisdom pull you in, or the algorithm finds you. But the diagnostic terms they are playing with are quite complicated. It’s not like they are selling eye cream or you’re collecting a free sample at the supermarket. It’s mental health advice. The danger is that at a low place in your life the red alert will not go up, you will not simply unfollow because something doesn’t sound right, you will be incredibly susceptible to harmful judgments and terrible advice. The Cult of Flat Earthers: Did you think the anti-vaxxers were the worst? Nope. And if you have ever met a flat earther, in the singular, you have probably thought he is just an idiot. What it is though is a growing worldwide community and lifestyle. The 2018 documentary Behind the Curve shows how the community has conducted multiple experiments to prove that the earth is flat, and time and time again the experiments have proved that it is round, but at the end of the experiments they keep saying, well, this wasn’t the right experiment. It’s so outlandish that it’s easier to just ignore it. What harm can it do? Once again, the algorithm can push one into a more extreme version of oneself, into a conspiracy ideology that is bigger than believing in a single conspiracy theory, where one signs up for a larger belief that history is a lie and science is a lie and everything is being manipulated by somebody. And all of this always ends up in scapegoating. For instance, many flat earthers are anti-semitic. Holocaust-denial is big in this cult. Confirmation bias and dog whistles, that’s not a harmless combination but an incredibly insidious one. To the podcasters it represents everything wrong with our culture right now, where a small group of people can get together to recruit many more people, based on fiction instead of truth. medium91381504Who benefits in the new age of humiliation?When real life mafia bosses are turning content creatorsA short story of Burj Khalifa and other skyscrapers medium91381575