Transcript | Ep. 133: That’s So Cultish

Amanda: the word cult is incredibly subjective. Cults are not just these remote compounds in the jungle. They're on social media. They're in our workplaces. They're in our yoga studios. All these groups follow along a cultish spectrum. So while we might not all agree that Heaven's Gate and CrossFit are full blown cults, we can at the very least agree that they are cultish. And cultishness is something that shows up in groups we might not think of as cults, and none of us are immune to it.

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Cristen: Caroline, when I hear the word “cult,” I immediately think of Wild Wild Country and all of those matching maroon outfits, you know? Or followers of Jonestown drinking poisoned kool aid…

Caroline: Yeah, I mean here you’ve got your charismatic leader and their faithful followers who have essentially cut themselves off from mainstream society

Cristen: Exactly. Stereotypical cult. But today’s guest, Amanda Montell, has me wondering, could Unladylike qualify as a cult??

Caroline: Oh God!

Cristen: Like, we call our listeners “unladies.” We have our own uniforms of sorts with our Unladylike sweatshirts and swag. Like, we have a guiding motto: “Stay curious. Build empathy. Raise hell.” We even, at the end of every episode, ask people to follow us (on social media). Like, are we accidental cult leaders???

Caroline: I mean, Cristen, I will say. We are very charismatic but-

Cristen: I do feel we own too few cars to be cult leaders.

Caroline: But I mean it’s not like we’re claiming to have all the answers or grant any enlightenment. And folks can freely (please don’t!) unsubscribe from our podcast. But your question isn't so outlandish, Cristen, since, like Amanda said, cultishness is EVERYWHERE these days

Amanda: New agey, cultish language has made its way into so many corners of our culture, not just the sort of Instagram wellness space, but also the sort of cult fitness space. You'll hear that language in startups. You'll hear it in evangelical megachurches. They'll talk about manifesting and intuitive and intentional and all that stuff. And I think it really speaks to the cultishness of our culture in general, where we glom onto these buzzwords to signify that “I'm tapped into this type of exclusive wisdom. And if you learn how to speak this language and if you use this language too, then you'll be an insider and you'll be in the right,” even though a lot of this language doesn't have any meaning at all.

Cristen: Amanda's new book is called Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism. She's a linguist by training and the theory she lays out in her book is that the power and allure of cults is actually all about LANGUAGE — not magical brainwashing or rules and rituals. It’s a language that she dubs "cultish."

Caroline: Cultish buzzwords and inspirational sayings are used to create a sense of community and insider knowledge. It's like the cliché of like, "Oh, now you're speaking my language!"

Cristen: And that language can be as benign -- we promise! -- as Caroline and me calling listeners "unladies" or way more sinister like NVXIM members calling Keith Raniere "prefect." But how do you know the difference? Where’s the line between seeking like-minded community and self-betterment and walling ourselves off from outside opinions and influence?

Caroline: This episode, Amanda is bringing us some answers to those questions and helping us understand why cult vibes are SO strong right now and what cultish language tells us about power, patriarchy and our innate desire to connect.

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Caroline: Ok, so I have a seemingly deceptively simple question for you, and that is: What is a cult?

Amanda: Yeah, it is deceptively simple because, you know, we grow up thinking that cults are innately sinister, innately evil. But scholars who study cults and new religions have not even been able to come up with one hard and fast definition or list of criteria separating a cult from an accepted religion from another kind of ideologically bound group, it is so subjective and so sensational. So it's really tricky. And the history in many meanings of the word cult, which has changed a lot over time, really correspond pretty precisely to our culture's relationship to community, spirituality, identity, meaning.

Cristen: Well, can you talk a little bit more about the history of cults and why it’s such a cultish time period right now?

Amanda: So we’re really living in this extremely politically and socially fraught time with politics and the pandemic and, you know, so much existential reckoning. And we also saw a lot of that during the 60s and 70s, when we saw the formation of groups from Scientology to Jews for Jesus to the Church of Aphrodite, you know, these classic cults that we think of, the Mansons, et cetera, and some of them were good and some of them were really bad, but they formed in response to so much of the cultural tumult at the time, from the Kennedy assassinations to the Vietnam War to the civil rights movement. There was just a lot going on. Americans felt just unmoored, if you will, especially because, you know, all of these institutions that were supposed to provide them with support, like the government and institutionalized religion, were not serving them anymore. So they started turning to these alternative groups. And that's what we're seeing now as well. The difference is that because of the Internet and increased globalization and all these other things, when these groups are able to radicalize and find one another more easily than ever, I've found that we've entered what I think is the most cultish era of all time, when groups are able to form and collapse on social media and when following a cultish guru that you might not even realize is a cultish guru. So my sort of crusade is to invite us all to consider that the word cult is incredibly subjective. All these groups follow along a cultish spectrum. So while we might not all agree that Heaven's Gate and CrossFit are full-blown cults, we can at the very least agree that they are cultish. And cultishness is something that shows up in groups we might not think of as cults, and none of us are immune to it.

Cristen: So what are some of those myths about, I guess, who is susceptible to cultish-ness.

Amanda: Right yeah, I mean, prevailing wisdom in the popular media will tell you that people who wind up in groups like Jonestown or Nxivm are desperate, disturbed, intellectually deficient in some way. But what I found talking to so, so many cult survivors and sociologists and psychologists is that these folks are incredibly bright. They are service oriented. You know, they really want to help. They were the children of firefighters and teachers and and dreamers. And their fatal flaw ultimately was not desperation. It was optimism. It was this overabundance of idealism that answers to the world's most urgent problems, from classism to addiction could be found, and that by affiliating with this group, they could be a part of that solution. So, you know, I talked to this cult scholar named Steven Hassan, who who's everywhere. He's you know pretty widely published cults scholar. He's a psychologist, and he's also an ex Moonie, an ex-member of the Unification Church. And he used to recruit people to the Unification Church. So he knows a little bit about the type of person that a cult would go for. And they didn't want someone who was, you know, on the outs because that person would be liable to break down quickly if someone doesn't have enough money to get by, even after all these promises that they were made, that you're going to you're going to be wealthy and you're going to be happy very quickly, all that love bombing process that you that you go through, even after those promises aren't fulfilled immediately, you want someone who has enough idealism, enough optimism, enough privilege, enough money, enough fortitude to stick it out because someone who doesn't is going to get the hell out of Dodge because they just don't have what it takes to stick around. But yeah. You know, if you don't believe that these urgent problems that exist in the world can be solved, then you're not going to buy what these cultish leaders are selling.

Caroline: Well, what does that have to do with why cults are so popular here in America?

Amanda: We as Americans, we we're filled with this sense of the American dream, with this inflated sense of hope we're conditioned to just because of our history and our culture. And so I think this is why I tend to invite people to consider the idea that cults are not just these remote compounds in the jungle. They're on social media. They're in our workplaces. They're in our yoga studios. A lot of people are probably familiar with this type of person. But, you know, when they go to their yoga studio, their sort of like whitewashed yoga studio, as they're wearing their racer back that says “nama-slay” or whatever. Like they have to believe on some level that - that transcendence is accessible to them and that they can ascend to that next level of enlightenment or that they have access to this you know exclusive wisdom. It's not just folks who wind up in a Jonestown-level cult that have this sort of inflated sense of purpose. I think we all do. I mean, it's part of the reason why so many sort of like creative, artistic types wind up in these abusive sociopolitical groups, these cultish groups, because anyone with a dream has to be a little bit delusional. Right? Like, if you have a dream, there's some sort of delusional idealism that goes into that because, you know, only a select few number of people can achieve that. Again, this is sort of a very distinctly American form of delusional idealism. And that's the exact type of idealism that is not inherently bad but that these cultish leaders exploit. And I think more of us have that quality than you would think.

Cristen: So rather than being one definitive thing, it sounds like cults are more of a spectrum?

Amanda: Yeah, I mean, the word cult now can apply to literally anything from a group as destructive as qAnon that is currently at large to a group that's kind of more old school like the Mansons to a frickin makeup brand. So this wide panoply of meanings really says something about how cultish our culture has become, especially because these sites of real spirituality and community and meaning for us are often secular. You know we’re moving away from the churches that we grew up in and we're looking toward the startups that we work at and the fitness studios where we exercise for this type of religious fulfillment. And again, that doesn't necessarily have to be bad. But when a clout chasing, quote unquote, charismatic, you know, megalomaniacal leader at the top is perfectly open to exploiting those profoundly human desires, that's when it gets sketchy.

Cristen: We’re going to take a quick break.

Caroline: When we come back, Amanda takes us to spin class.

Cristen: Get ready to namaslay, y’all.

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Cristen: We’re back with linguist Amanda Montell, author of Cultish. When we left off, Amanda was connecting the dots between Americans' mass exodus from churches and migration toward alternative communities and spiritual spaces.

Amanda: Researchers at the Harvard Divinity School have found that as young people in particular in this culture, increasingly move away from the traditional sites of religion that maybe their parents brought them to when they were kids, they are still craving community. They're still craving a spiritual connection. And a lot of them are naming cult fitness studios like Soul Cycle and Crossfit and Peloton as their new sort of religious sites.

Cristen: And these brands are not fucking around. You can buy T-shirts that say Soul Cycle is my church or Crossfit is my cult. Even SoulCycle’s branding describes its spin classes as sanctuaries.

Amanda: So they use this sort of religious liturgical language in order to, yeah, create this impression that this is not just a place where you're going to get like a taut ass and flat abs. Like this is a place where you're going to meet your closest friends and confidants, where you're going to you know develop the the courage and the strength to overcome your trauma, to beat your cancer. I mean, these are really the things that are talked about in a soul cycle class on the bike.

Caroline: Some instructors preach explicitly religious rhetoric on the bike. There’s one SoulCycle instructor, for instance, named Angela Davis, who is an out and proud evangelical Christian.

Amanda: And she would she would use evangelical rhetoric on the bike, talk of angels and God. And you know you were created on purpose for a purpose. There's this whole dialect of evangelical-ese that some listeners might be familiar with. But I mean, when you use these really lofty faux-spirational mantras and phrases and you're doing so while people are like pedaling for their lives. And of course, there's this, like climax at the end of every Soul Cycle class where everybody is like on their hardest, you know, doing their hardest hills. And that's when the instructor will hit you with their best motivational mantras, that really does create this larger than life, almost supernatural experience. And it it really bonds you to the other people in that room and particularly to the instructor, because they're positioning themselves not just as a fitness trainer, but as a pastor of sorts, as your best friend. But, you know, they they really blur those lines between a fitness trainer, lifestyle guru, clergymen or clergy person, BFF, like they're everything to these people. And that's one of the reasons why the dynamics within these Soul Cycle studios can become kind of toxic, because we're not just talking about working out here. We're talking about something much deeper than that.

Caroline: Well, speaking of like SoulCycle and Peloton instructors - where does personal branding and being an influencer fall on that cult spectrum?

Amanda: it really depends from person to person. One of the criterion that I often look at is this like what kind of promises are they making? Like are they making these extremely lofty promises that ultimately cannot be delivered on but create this incredibly positive impression without really revealing what membership or or what a follower is really required to do by becoming a part of this. So I won't name any names, but what type of influencer on social media that really disturbs me right now is a sort of mental health influencer who will package really complex, nuanced mental health concepts into these hashtag aesthetic nuggets of like social media, quotegrams that feel really resonant for people because they're so vague, like they're so broad. It's like a horoscope. Anybody can project themselves onto these quotegrams. And when you're either a licensed therapist or just a random person online espousing mental health advice, especially during this time when so many people are going through existential and psychological crises and really lack access to therapy, not only because of the pandemic, because but also because it can be so expensive. And you're offering this alternative, like you don't need therapy, you just need me. You just need my account. You just need my quote grams. And then from there, you can sign up for my course. And then from there you can sign up for my retreat, and you can buy my book, and you can pay me $8,000 for one on one sessions where I'll expose you to my most transcendent mental health wisdom. You know, you don't need therapy or pharmaceuticals. You just need me. That's the most exploitative type of guru that I can think of is the the one who's really promising these enormous solutions to, again, the most urgent crises in our culture right now, promises that they're really not qualified to deliver on.

Caroline: One of the things I found fascinating in your book is this more intimate example of "personal influencing" through cultish language. So, can you tell us about what toxic romantic partners and cult leaders have in common?

Amanda: You know, this was one of the most humbling discoveries I made while writing the book. You know, we like to think, oh, I would never wind up in a cult. How how desperate and pathetic are these people? But you know, a toxic relationship is really a cult of one. And I've been in my fair share of those. The labeling that we use to talk about the techniques of manipulation used by romantic partners versus cult leaders are different. We'll call cult leaders these power abusive masterminds will call abusive partners, these charming narcissists. In cults you'll talk about love bombing, whereas in relationships, you'll talk about grooming. You'll talk about gaslighting in relationships, whereas you'll talk about mind control and brainwashing in cults. So the labeling is different, but a lot of the techniques of manipulation and coercion are very similar.

Caroline: Yeah, unfortunately this is ringing a lot of bells for me. Very, very long story short, after my last relationship ended and I had finally extricated myself from that situation, my ex said that all he had really wanted to hear from me was that I would do anything for him and anything to make the relationship better, and he saw now that I “couldn't do that.” And damn if that doesn't sound like a cult of one.

Amanda: Oh, totally. I mean, something that I've been doing on my Instagram is creating these Venn diagrams where I'll show the overlap between cult leaders and all kinds of other figures in our culture, from wellness influencers to emotionally abusive lovers to CEOs to spin instructors. And I'll show the things that they have in common. Like I have one Venn diagram where it's like the three circles on the outside said cult leaders, emotionally abusive lovers and wellness influencers. And the center overlap, said toxicity, branded as charisma. But the overlap between cult leaders and emotionally abusive lovers one of the many would be phrases like You'd be lost without me. Like you can't live. I'm the best. I'm the best you'll ever have. Like no one will ever love you like I can, like you would die without me sort of thing. So there's a lot of overlap between sort of toxic figures in our culture that may not be full-blown cult leaders, but still are making use of cultish tactics.

Caroline: We’re gonna take a quick break.

Cristen: When we come back, Amanda unpacks what happens when feminist language turns cultish — and how MLMs use it to attract recruits.

Caroline: Stick around!

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Cristen: We’re back with linguist and Cultish author Amanda Montell, and it’s time to get into the cult that we’re ALWAYS dragging on Unladylike …

Caroline: Well when we pan back and look at cultish culture at large, how does patriarchy factor into it?

Amanda: Oh, the cult of the patriarchy. Sure. I mean, ultimately, it's like we give people the power that we think they deserve. So when you look at all of these, quote unquote, charismatic cult leaders, they all look exactly the same. Right? There are these middle aged, slightly balding white men, and those are the people that we've been conditioned to expect to be able to speak with authority about subjects of God and government. And we're willing to listen to them by default when we hear that voice of standard American English, standard in scare quotes, of course, the booming sort of Tony Robbins esque voice of this middle aged white man. We're like, OK, cool self-help, daddy. He's going to save it all. So the patriarchy has conditioned us to think that certain genders, certain races just have an innate or default type of authority and we're willing to listen to them without much scrutiny. So when you look at everyone from Jeff Bezos to Greg Glassman, the founder of CrossFit, to Keith Rainere, like all these guys fit a similar profile physically and linguistically. And that's a profile that we automatically trust thanks to the patriarchy. And then and then you have like the sort of Gwyneth Paltrows and the Rachel Hollises. You know, these are the the sort of problematic guru type that we’re willing to trust with these sort of more domestic quagmires, because they have they have like a maternal vibe to them. And so even though - if they tried to espouse, you know, government advice or that they were some sort of prophet, we might not be willing to believe that. But when they talk about CBD and anti-vax and how to raise your kids and blah, blah, blah, you know, we're willing to listen to them on on that level.

Caroline: Well, let’s talk about the capitalist cult of MLMs. From your perspective, what are they selling — I mean, what are they really selling — and how do they use cultish language to do that?

Amanda: Right. Well, MLMs will tell you that they're really selling products, whether it's eye cream or essential oils or leggings or whatever it is. But really what they're selling is hope. And the language that they use is really reflective of that. They will use incredibly lofty terminology like once in a lifetime opportunity. You can be your own girl boss, hashtag boss babe. You can be the mompreneur, the she-EO that you've always wanted to be. You can make a full time living with part time work so you never have to leave your home. You can stay there with your kids and you know be like the mompreneur of the year. It's like this is really almost spoofed version of the American dream reflected in the language. And it's often using this sort of pseudo feminist vernacular, the sort of Pinteresty pseudo feminist vernacular, because ever since the dawn of the modern direct sales industry in the 1940s, non-working stay at home wives and mothers who are middle class have always been the MLM industry's targets so while, in the 40s, Tupperware was promised to be the best thing to happen to women since they got the vote, now these MLMs are promised to be the opportunity to be part of this holistic, you know, female empowering movement. So they continue to sort of like target and assault the the American Dream in this way which has a lot of staying power. So, yeah, I mean, I just anecdotally, I follow a lot of former high school classmates who are involved with MLMs, as most of us do. And there's one young woman who’s- she's a sort of micro influencer type. You know sort of very hashtag aesthetic young mom who who wants her sort of 15 minutes of Internet fame. And she sells Young Living, the essential oils, this woman that I follow. And she'll never reveal the name Young Living. They don't even call themselves young living anymore, because I think young living has this bad reputation. So they'll use this other language. They'll call themselves like oily mamas, which is so nasty sounding.

Caroline: Oh.

Amanda: And she'll be like be one of my oily mamas. And you just like you can you can clock the dialect of an MLMer from a mile away, like they don't even have to mention a product or a company, just their use of hashtags. And this sort of faux-spirational register that they use with all the exclamation points, et cetera, like you can just tell, because something that MLMs exploit and this is reflective of the rest of the dignified American labor market in general, is that they're all about toxic positivity. You know, the the biggest MLM in the world, Amway, which stands for American Way, talks about stinkin’ thinkin’. You're not supposed to breathe a bad word about the company or anything in it if you're involved with Amway, you're only supposed to speak positively about it in your captions, in your day to day life. Their their toxically positive language really overtakes the way that you communicate everywhere. And if you breathe a bad word about the company to anyone, you're a stinkin’ thinker. And that's sort of this form of loaded language that's that's used as a threat.

Caroline: Ok, so you talked about that faux-empowerment language with MLMs, but what about feminism? Does feminist language ever get cultish?

Amanda: Oh, it definitely can be. There is some feminist language that has been co-opted by people across the political spectrum. You know, anti vaxers will use language like “my body, my choice” and “forced penetration” to talk about the vaccine. So that's one end of the cultish use of feminist language. But, yeah, you will also find that we're living in a time of like so little nuance, so many good / evil binaries. And it's a sort of thing where if, like, you make an argument that a certain group of feminists don't like or have been conditioned to to be triggered by, then they will shut you down with with certain language, like, I'll see people getting into pretty poorly informed buzzword-filled debates on the Internet about feminism. They're just like, throwing these words at each other and not really connecting. They just want to be right. I mean, there's so much pressure in our culture right now to be immediately right about everything from feminist concerns to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And I think that's part of what makes influencers or some influencers really. It gives them too much power because we feel so overwhelmed by how much information there is out there. And we just want a guru to tell us what to think, what to choose, who to vote for, what to believe. And the red flag is when an influencer is talking about everything under the sun and voicing an opinion about every single last current event. That's not a sign that you should follow them. That's a sign that you should unfollow, because the best informed people are only going to talk about the tiny sliver of expertise that they have. And yet the people who know nothing about anything are willing to speak about every topic under the sun. And we and we like that like we like that confidence because it makes everything really simple.

Cristen: How then, can we fulfill this deep innate need to identify, self, identify and commune without defaulting into these like polarizing, like binary cultish ways of thinking.

Amanda: Yeah, it's really hard. So, you know, the word sacred literally means set aside. So even if you have the desire to engage in a sort of metaphysical, spiritual, woowoo, irrational practice, that's OK. We're human beings. We do irrational things all the time and we're entitled to be able to do that. But you need to be able to set it aside and return to your normal life and your normal language. It's just that awareness of when somebody might be using a certain buzz word or us versus them label to manipulate you or influence you in a way that you're ultimately not OK with that awareness, can then empower you to decide, OK, do I still want to affiliate with this group to follow this person? And if I still do, then to what degree? Because any legitimate group will allow you to participate casually, will stand up to scrutiny, will allow you to have one foot out the door. And if you find that it's an all or nothing situation, that's a red flag. And you need to be able to strip off the linguistic uniform of that group and be able to talk to other people who don't agree with that group. There's such an emphasis on this black and white. Do you agree? Do you don't agree? Are you on my side or are you not on my side? And I think that thinking is really causing a lot of the problems in our culture right now. So, yeah, I mean, I think the solution is to be involved with multiple cults, not just one.

Cristen: You can follow Amanda Montell on Instagram @amanda_montell or on Twitter @amandamontell. Make sure you check out her new book Cultish and go subscribe to her podcast Sounds Like A Cult!

Caroline: You can find us on instagram, facebook and Twitter @unladylikemedia. You can also support Cristen and me by joining our Patreon; you’ll get our undying love and gratitude plus ad-free bonus episodes, like the one we just recorded on FEMCELS — as in involuntarily celibate women — over at patreon.com/unladylikemedia.

Cristen: Nora Ritchie is the senior producer of Unladylike. Michele O’Brien is our associate producer. Gianna Palmer is our story editor. Shruti Marathe transcribes our tape. Our music is by Flamingo Shadow, Amit May Cohen and Sarah Tudzin. Mixing is by Andi Kristins. Sound design and additional music is by Casey Holford and Andi Kristins. Executive producers are Peter Clowney, Daisy Rosario and Unladylike Media.

Caroline: This podcast was created by your hosts, Caroline Ervin

Cristen: And Cristen Conger of Unladylike Media.

Caroline: Next week...

Lauren: I guess it was like the mythicism of like being able to think about something or write something down in a journal or cut out pictures from a magazine and paste it to a board and be like, I'm manifesting all this shit here. And if I'm a good girl and I just keep manifesting, then I'll get what I want. and if it doesn't work out well then it's probably just something like whoever in the universe didn't want it for me at the time.

Caroline: We’re talking manifesting. We’ll dig into why manifesting is especially appealing to women, and how we can make our wildest dreams come true.

Cristen: You don’t want to miss this episode! Make sure you’re subscribed to Unladylike. Find us in stitcher, spotify, apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Caroline: And remember, got a problem?

Cristen: Get Unladylike.