Cults & Culture: A Q&A with Amanda Montell
Cultish by Amanda Montell examines the psychology and rhetoric that makes cults such a formidable presence — from actual cults to groups exhibiting cultish characteristics — this inquisitive look at language and influence is engaging, informative and immensely insightful. Read on for a Q&A Amanda on identifying cultish language, working on her first novel, “disgusting girl” lit fic, podcasting and more.
Paperback $19.99
Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism
Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism
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Paperback $19.99
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.
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.
IM: Can you please give us a brief introduction to your book?
AM: My book is about the language of cults from Scientology to SoulCycle. I’m interpreting this word cult broadly, but intentionally. The book is really an exploration of how cultish figures — who we might not all agree fit the description of full-blown cult leader, but are at the very least cultish — wield a certain breed of influence by using language as their ultimate form of power.
IM: When did you know you wanted to write this book?
“I started to notice the techniques of influence that my dad would describe in Synanon everywhere. My best friend’s evangelical mega-church . . . my high school theater program . . . wellness routines, fitness routines, the creative corporate startup where I worked.”
AM: There were a few moments. First of all, I grew up with a cult survivor in family — my dad spent his teenage years against his will in the (now) pretty notorious cult Synanon. When I started writing Cultish, most people hadn’t heard of it because it hadn’t yet made the cult documentary circuit. Now, there have been a few exposés, memoirs and docuseries about it. It was a classic 70s socialist utopian experiment turned destructive ideological sect. My dad’s parents in the 70s were self-described intellectuals who wanted in on the blossoming counter-cultural movement of the time, so they made my 14-year-old dad join, and he spent four years there. He’d escape it every day to attend a normal school so he wouldn’t completely succumb to the indoctrination of the Synanon school. He finally got out of there and I grew up on his stories.
My parents are research scientists, so I was brought up to be a fairly skeptical person, which is good, but there’s a certain smugness that comes with it. I’d think, oh, I am such an expert critical thinker. I’d never fall for the techniques that enables Synanon’s followers. As I got older, I started to notice the techniques of influence that my dad would describe in Synanon everywhere. In my best friend’s evangelical mega-church in middle school, or in my high school theater program. When I graduated from college, I moved to LA, and I really noticed it here in people’s wellness routines, fitness routines, the creative corporate startup where I worked. Since I’m extra interested in language, that’s the lens through which I perceive the world, and I couldn’t help but notice so many of the specialized buzzwords, thought-stopping tactics, specialized acronyms and abbreviations, and emotionally charged language that my dad would bring up in his Synanon stories. Even I was under their influence sometimes, particularly on social media, where people’s critical thinking skills aren’t as strong as we might like. Those were some thoughts I was having at a very early age — the moment I realized I wanted to formalize them in book form was when I was 26.
My first book, Wordslut, was about to come out, and I was with my best friend standing in a graveyard a few days before her wedding to a man she would quickly thereafter divorce. I had just been through a breakup myself with someone who had a pretty cult-like influence over me, and there were a lot of changes going on in our lives. We were in a transitional period that was causing us to rethink our place in the world. She had also just gotten sober and started going to A.A., and as we were standing there in the graveyard having this very emotional conversation, I heard her using some terms that sounded culty to me. I couldn’t quite pinpoint why that was, but they were A.A. terms. She was saying things like “H.A.L.T.-ing” and “caught a resentment.” These turns of phrase were so peculiar to me, and she explained that they were from A.A. It was changing her life for the better — I know that not everybody has that experience with A.A. I still felt as though there was something cultish in this glossary of terms, and that’s part of why she felt so taken with the dogma of A.A. In that moment, I knew I wanted to explore how cultish language works to influence us all in everyday life — for better and for worse — and how the same techniques that were used in groups like Synanon could also be found in our everyday lives, and what to look out for in this particularly culty time to make sure that we’re engaging in more of the good parts of cultish-ness and less of the bad parts.
IM: You touched on that a little bit in the book, but I didn’t know about that graveyard detail.
“Once you hear it, you can’t unhear it. It’s a blessing and a curse.”
AM: Yeah, we were standing in this graveyard in the rain in Seattle, just contemplating the unknown of our futures. Youthful uncertainty is something that cultish groups take advantage of. I do argue in the book that in 21st century America, it’s almost impossible to avoid any type of cultish influence. That doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing, but becoming aware of the language and techniques that can signal when something is a little too cultish for comfort can be a pretty helpful tool. Once you hear it, you can’t unhear it. It’s a blessing and a curse.
IM: Is there any standout cultish activity that you’ve come across since the book’s release that you might have originally included in the book when you wrote it in 2020?
AM: So much, and that’s part of what inspired The Age of Magical Overthinking. It’s sort of like a spin-off, and Cultish is like a spin-off of Wordslut. I get all my ideas from stuff that ended up on the cutting room floor of the last book, or stuff that the previous book inspired. My first book was about language and power through the lens of gender, and then Cultish is about language and power through the lens of cults. This third book is about irrational decision making, which absolutely factors into cultish affiliation, but through the lens of cognitive biases and how they show up in the contemporary zeitgeist and in our personal lives. There was a draft of Cultish whose final part focused much more on celebrity cult followings and had a section on incels and various internet fandoms. Once the January 6th events occurred, I realized I should probably pivot to making that section geared more toward conspirituality and the proliferation of QAnon ideology in the wellness space.
I had so many other cultish corners of society that I wanted to explore, that I didn’t even necessarily feel the need to explore in the context of cults. I was just interested in the psychology, sociology and behavioral economics of them. Some of those groups I did end up covering on my podcast, Sounds Like a Cult. We just did an episode on the cult of incels, which was about 4 years in the making. I feel like the timing worked out really well because that new series Adolescence had just come out on Netflix, and there’s generally a bit more mainstream discussion of the manosphere happening now. I ended up covering celebrity worship and Instagram therapy in a slightly different style in The Age of Magical Thinking because it’s a different book, but those terms could have absolutely been in Cultish.
IM: I am so excited to listen to the latest episode of Sounds Like a Cult on Erewhon.
“Blending pop culture with more serious criticism feels more sustainable to me than having to stick with a super doom and gloom tone everyday.”
AM: I swear you cannot launch a projectile without hitting like 7 different types of cults in LA, and Erewhon is one of them. You’ll have to listen to that episode to the end to figure out our verdict and whether or not we determined it was a live your life, watch your back, or get the fuck out. That was a very fun episode to record — we had Raven Symone from That’s So Raven and her wife, Miranda Maday, on with us. I thought it would be more of a jokey, light-hearted episode, but it got pretty serious at times, and that’s why I like the style that I write in and make the podcast in. It’s not for everybody, but blending pop culture with more serious criticism feels more sustainable to me than having to stick with a super doom and gloom tone every day.
IM: From writing it in 2020 to its release in 2021, Cultish has been reborn in paperback now. It’s being reborn into a totally different world now than in 2021. Do you have any hopes for how this book can help people now? If you had an ideal reader for this book who walks into B&N and picks it up from a table, who would that person be?
“Not everyone is super stoked about me calling everything a cult . . . I had to accept that there will be plenty of people who are offended by the subject matter, whose confirmation biases will take over.”
AM: I love this question — my career has completely changed because of this book. It has been equal parts amazing, and a dream come true, and also really stressful, because not everybody is super stoked about me calling everything a cult. The girls who get it, get it. Unless you’re sitting down and reading all of Part 1 of where I breakdown the nuances of the etymology, the contextual dependency and subjectivity of this word, you’re probably just going to be like, what is this girl talking about? I had to accept that there will be plenty of people who are offended by the subject matter, whose confirmation bias will take over. It’s been humbling — every book I write is extremely humbling because I realize I’m just as susceptible to all these things I thought I was immune to. Writing the books I’ve written has made me a more compassionate person, and I’m so grateful for that, because not everybody’s work does.
If I were to walk into a Barnes & Noble and see someone pick up this book, I would be most excited if that person appeared to be a college student. I love being invited to talk at different colleges and connect with young readers. It makes sense that that my most devoted and curious — and favorite — readers are college students. I’m a relatively young author, particularly young in the field of social science, and I’m not an academic. I’m a writer, so I’m applying a very different tone to the subject matter. I’m also a woman, and it’s become clear to me how underrepresented young women are in this field. I regard my work as more cultural criticism than social science, but it is informed by social science. It’s not for everyone, but the people it does connect with really do appreciate it. It’s been so cool to see how these books have inspired college students and grad students to pursue related fields and unlock parts of their brain that might not have otherwise been unlocked. It has been so fulfilling to connect with younger readers.
IM: I know you’re working on your first novel right now. Can you talk a bit about how that process is going and how you knew you wanted to switch to fiction?
AM: It’s my favorite thing I’ve ever done. It’s so much easier — writing nonfiction has made me smarter and it has allowed me to continue my education without having to go to more school because I get to interview so many brilliant people. It’s such a privilege to be able to reach out to academics, psychologists and so many people whose minds I admire, and incorporate their insights into my work. I feel that my mind is sharper and better at synthesizing ideas, and better at cutting through the static to reach an understanding more than it was before I started writing these types of books. I also think that writing thesis-driven books has made me better at plotting, because it’s all a big logic puzzle. Writing fiction has been so liberating because I just get to make up whatever I want. So many of the ideas I’ve explored in my book so far enrich this process. I’m in a honeymoon phase with this novel — I’m like 3/4 of the way through the first draft, so it’s probably really bad right now. That’s another gift that writing three books already has given me: it’s a thought-terminating cliche, but I do trust the process. I know that with time, iteration and feedback, it’ll get to a good place. Switching to fiction was a pretty intuitive choice. I feel like I’m shedding my training wheels — I feel like everything I’ve written so far has led me to this point. The book’s protagonist is a linguist, and it’s speculative fiction with a light academia vibe. It’s been the joy of my life to work on it. It makes me feel so creative, it makes me feel like a real writer — although, that’s problematic and I would never actually endorse that line of thinking. Life is existentially very challenging for so many people right now, and fiction is a little more escapist. I hope to convey some type of meaningful takeaway about where we are now and the time we’re in. It’s a magical story, and I think that is going to click with the human spirit better than a nonfiction book would right now.
IM: Who are you reading now?
AM: When I’m in the active process of drafting a book, I have to be very careful about what I read because I know it will contaminate whatever I’m working on. I’ve been reading in the genre in which I’m writing — voice-wise, I’d say the most influential for what I’m writing right now is The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley. Other books I’m reading that are also informing what I’m writing — authors who I could never hope to emulate in a million years — are by Ted Chiang and Octavia Butler.
The genre of fiction that I love the most and naturally gravitate towards — I actually just made an Instagram reel about this — is “Disgusting Girl” lit fic. I love reading books about some gross lady being weird. I’m currently contemplating my next read in that genre. I think I might pick up Chlorine by Jade Song. One of my favorite books from last year was All Fours by Miranda July.
IM: I’m also a big fan of books like that — I’d pick up The Pisces by Melissa Broder and Piglet by Lottie Hazell, if you haven’t already. Thank you so much for your time today.
AM: Thank you for having me.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.