Every now and then an article gets to the front page of this website that completely baffles me as to the reason it got there. Could someone explain this one to me?
I liked reading it, so I upvoted it. Apparently other people did the same.
We are sorry to inform you that you are in a cult
21–30 of 327 posts
Re: We are sorry to inform you that you are in a cult
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honestly, apply it to your political party. I've come to see both parties can be very cultish as of late. If you leave the herd, you are immediately attacked even if it's for the smallest topic. People leave their families over it. When you start to think about it...it's starts to fall a bit into that. I think that is a more compelling argument than saying family itself is a cult, which is at the human core more than…
I got basically a zero score when I did it for my company (except the separation one, which I guess is analogous to quitting) but when I tried my country I got a pretty good score - 8/10 (Edit: To be clear I'm not a member of a political party so I can't try that one.)
That doesn't sound so implausible. Many countries are cult-like and many people, even those who think of themselves as liberal, have a very cult-like nationalism.
Re: We are sorry to inform you that you are in a cult
#23I was waiting for the part that would make it clear what was being satirized, and it never came? I feel like I'm missing context?
> what was being satirized
It was everything.
Re: We are sorry to inform you that you are in a cult
#24Every now and then an article gets to the front page of this website that completely baffles me as to the reason it got there. Could someone explain this one to me?
Could be in part bot activity. I've seen a couple other weird things rise up on here.
The blogging platform for this one is interesting, if you follow the rabbit hole a bit you'll find e.g. https://herman.bearblog.dev/building-software-to-last-foreve...
I don't see that many posts, but it appears to have some interesting traffic on it at present. Worth holding on to perhaps?
Re: We are sorry to inform you that you are in a cult
#25This looks like something you might read on McSweeney's
Re: We are sorry to inform you that you are in a cult
#26Every now and then an article gets to the front page of this website that completely baffles me as to the reason it got there. Could someone explain this one to me?
its an interesting read, can be related to religion or culture
Re: We are sorry to inform you that you are in a cult
#27Aside from all the content-free "Everything I Don't Like Is A Cult" chuntering I already see, what is the point of this? I thought it was a dig at how cult-like the "anticult" deprogramming stuff was back during the last big scare in the 1980s, but it isn't that, because the victims of deprogramming sessions weren't free to leave. That was rather their big problem: They kidnapped people and held them in motel rooms a…
I don’t think it has a point in that sense? Perhaps I’m lacking critical reading skills but this seems more like creative writing than social commentary. Your response to all the other comments is very on point though. Cults are real, and I think this story repeatedly interacts with some very scary aspects of real cults - aspects not found in an Agile coach or middle manager, in my uninformed opinion.
Yeah, it's probably just a piece of creative writing, but I've seen the basic conceit done better. The Local 58 web videos, for example, do the "message to you" thing better because they build a world for that message to have come from, and draw you into that world using both text and paratext. This, on the other hand, does no world-building and doesn't even create an implied character for the message to have come from. It's too sterile.
Even if it is nodding at morally-questionable deprogramming outfits, one, that's kind of an odd reference to be making decades after the fact, and, two, there's nothing in the text to support that beyond the literal use of the word "de-programming" precisely once. However, there's no other obvious interpretation which would give this a point.
Re: We are sorry to inform you that you are in a cult
#28I was waiting for the part that would make it clear what was being satirized, and it never came? I feel like I'm missing context?
I think the idea is to craft a cult sales pitch framed as a support system for cult members that want to leave. The premise of the article is, of course, that we are all in some type of cult.
> The premise of the article is, of course, that we are all in some type of cult.
Which is precisely what a cult leader would want their victims to think: "Nobody is free, so stay in the group!"
Re: We are sorry to inform you that you are in a cult
#29I was waiting for the part that would make it clear what was being satirized, and it never came? I feel like I'm missing context?
My reading is that the very fact that it's so abstract and general is itself the point. What could the cult be? Politics? Religion? A particular professional mindset or focus? Many could fit. Apart from the reference to "promise of godly exaltation or gift in a theoretical afterlife" (which nod towards religion), you could apply a lot of this to many social groups.
> One of the hallmark tactics of a cult is to isolate you from the rest of the world. They make you depend solely on others within the community for your every need, thus making it extremely difficult to leave.
This line stood out to me and seems very apt in these days. For ex, how it's now normal to go after people's jobs directly via social media pressure tactics or business's revenue (and subsequently their employees jobs) via Visa/mastercard/paypal/ad buyers/etc, merely for stepping out of line from mainstream opinions... as Wikileaks and many others experienced.
Making society more resilient to cult-like behaviour is always a good thing. Even when these tactics might benefit your pet beliefs, it's rarely worth the trade-offs and usually backfires.
When the system you promote exclusively benefits a particular ideology or exclusive set of organizations that's usually a good indicator it's cultish.
Re: We are sorry to inform you that you are in a cult
#30Since the day we're born we're interpreting the world around us, or we're told stories explaining it. We live in our image of the world, not in reality.
When grown up, most are afraid of the real world, protecting their dreamy world with ferocity, afraid to peek out.
It takes courage to face it.