Reviews tagging 'Gaslighting'

Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell

144 reviews

hexedmaiden's review

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informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

First off I fuckin love the cover of this book and would buy an art print of it to hang on my wall.

Now on to the content of this book, I think Amanda did an banger job on this and I like this should be a book that everyone and their grandma reads. If you're like me and have been listening/reading/watching anything to do with True Crime you might be familiar with not only the cults in here, but even the language used that Amanda refers to as, "Cultish." I found this book absolutely fascinating and getting to see how powerful language can truly be, for the worse and the better. How that cultish language is used by genuine cults, politicians, multi-level marketing (MLM) corporations, to even workout gyms. 

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erinwolf1997's review

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informative medium-paced

4.0


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glitterdeww's review

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informative reflective medium-paced

4.75

Excellent dive into the power of language and how cultish groups everywhere use it to coerce and condition their members. I never liked MLMs, but I will definitely be looking at them even more sideways after this read. 

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thursdd4y's review

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informative fast-paced

3.75


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michelles_book_nook's review against another edition

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informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

⚠️ CW: gaslighting, sexual assault, rape, abuse, violence, suicide, murder ⚠️ If you're looking for a mind blowing non-fic read then this one is for you! 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 these 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. However, Montell argues that the key to manufacturing intense ideology, community and us vs 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. 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 such Peloton leaderboards and Instagram feeds. This addicting take on the curious social science of power and belief will make you hear the fanatical language of 'cultish' everywhere. This book was so incredibly mind blowing and interesting that I could not put it down! It has easily become one of my favourite non-fiction reads. Overall, I absolutely loved this one and I highly recommend that everyone reads this book!

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growintogardens's review against another edition

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medium-paced

3.0


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jennykre's review against another edition

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informative reflective medium-paced

3.0


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itsame_dio's review against another edition

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challenging funny informative lighthearted reflective fast-paced

4.25

It was very informative and entertaining, the author did have a habit of reusing phrases ( “We’ll get to that in part 4” for example) and after a while it was getting a little annoying. Also be warned that the first 2 parts go into Jamestown and Heavengate. 

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marija_m95's review against another edition

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informative fast-paced

2.75

The title indicated that this books concentrates mainly on the linguistic properties of cult language which was not the case. 
The first three parts (the book is divided in 6 parts) were somewhat satisfactory, and the author had some interesting views on how cultish language works to lure a person into becoming a part of a cult and also into staying in it.

But parts four, five, six felt like reading a completely different book, concentrating on MLMs, fitness groups and online communities which we can agree are "cult like" but they are not cults in the negative sense of the word associated with groups like Heaven's Gate or Jonestown. And while it was interesting to read how these groups and organisations possess cultish qualifies and cultish language it felt far too removed from the main topic. 

Other downsides of reading these were the author's writing style, especially the signposting. Reading lines as "more on that later"; "we'll discuss this in part 6"; etc. creates aversion to the book and it's not something I'd like to encounter in any type of book. It would've been more suitable if this was a research paper. 

Another thing was how the author was excessively present in the book and her numerous mentions of her hate towards Donald Trump felt like she was imposing her own political views upon the reader. We can agree that politicians use language to gain following and therefore a good political orator can have many similarities with a cult leader, but when only one politician is mentioned repeatedly as a bad example the book itself becomes biased.

Overall, this book felt misleading and not what I expected. While there were some interesting points to take from it, it wasn't anything groundbreaking and nothing I haven't heard of before. There was no new knowledge or perspective to be gained from this.

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ana_p_carvalho's review against another edition

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funny informative reflective medium-paced

4.0


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