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jhbandcats 's review for:
Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism
by Amanda Montell
dark
funny
informative
mysterious
sad
medium-paced
This book has a premise I’d not heard before: there’s a special way people talk in cults, a lingo that separates those who are in from those who are out. The author calls it Cultish, like English, Spanish, etc. It varies from cult to cult but has the same identifiers, the ways that show it’s the language of a cult.
The author separates the sections into types of cults, from the deadly - Jonestown, Heaven’s Gate - to the more benign - hot yoga and spin classes. I found it fascinating until I reached the section on exercising, at which point none of it made sense to me because I hate exercising!
Fascinating, scary, and informative, I liked this more than I thought I would. There are some pop culture terms that are used ironically in the author’s discussion rather than as quotes from the cults, and that seemed unnecessarily showy.
The author separates the sections into types of cults, from the deadly - Jonestown, Heaven’s Gate - to the more benign - hot yoga and spin classes. I found it fascinating until I reached the section on exercising, at which point none of it made sense to me because I hate exercising!
Fascinating, scary, and informative, I liked this more than I thought I would. There are some pop culture terms that are used ironically in the author’s discussion rather than as quotes from the cults, and that seemed unnecessarily showy.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction, Body shaming, Bullying, Cursing, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Fatphobia, Mental illness, Racism, Sexual assault, Suicide, Toxic relationship, Gaslighting, Classism