Our culture tends to provide pretty flimsy answers to questions of cult influence, mostly having to do with vague talk of "brainwashing." Amanda Montell argues that the key to manufacturing intense ideology, community, and us/them attitudes all comes down to language. 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.
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