The Sneaky Language Tricks Cults Use to Influence You | Amanda Montell | TED

0:03 Greetings followers.

0:06 And settle in.

0:08 Because I'm about to share with you a true story

0:12 about one of the most zealous cults in the world.

0:17 The story takes place on the group's holiest day.

0:20 Acolytes arrived at dawn,

0:22 some having crossed oceans and sacrificed life savings in order to get there.

0:27 They came bearing hand-beaded offerings inscribed

0:30 with sacred numbers: 22, 13, 89.

0:35 But this, my friends,

0:36 is not the story of an apocalyptic sect on a faraway compound.

0:40 No, this was a Taylor Swift concert.

0:43 (Laughter) I said it.

0:46 The talismans are friendship bracelets, the biblical books are known as eras,

0:50 and the charismatic leader is a billionaire pop priestess who,

0:53 let's be honest, could probably rule the free world if she really wanted to.

0:58 Now, don't get me wrong.

0:59 I'm a deep-dyed "Red" album girlie.

1:01 I'm not here to call out Swifties as cult followers.

1:04 No, I wouldn't dare.

1:07 But I'm an author and a cultural commentator with a background in linguistics.

1:12 And I’m here to share how we’re all susceptible to cult-ish thinking,

1:17 for better and for worse.

1:19 And our everyday vocabularies are evidence of our devotion.

1:23 I'm here to share what to pay attention to, what to listen

1:27 for, so that, as we move through these inevitably culty times,

1:30 we can stay both enchanted and empowered.

1:35 Now, my fascination with cults is personal.

1:37 That's because of my dad.

1:39 As a teenager, he was forced to join Synanon,

1:42 a '70s California compound with matching overalls

1:45 and a traumatizing truth-telling ritual called The Game.

1:49 But my dad escaped, became a neuroscientist,

1:52 and brought up a nosy kid who became obsessed

1:55 with understanding how to identify cultish influence in everyday life.

2:01 As I got older, I couldn't help but notice that the same language

2:05 tactics that my dad described in Synanon could be found kind of everywhere.

2:10 Like, in my high school theater program

2:13 and in the wellness industry and on my social media feed.

2:18 That's how I came to study the cultish spectrum, degrees of influence,

2:22 none of which start out with LSD and robes, but instead, sneakily, with words.

2:29 I want to point out three cultish

2:31 language tactics to listen for in everyday life.

2:33 The first is called the thought-terminating cliche.

2:36 Coined in 1961 by the psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton,

2:39 thought-terminating cliches are zingy stack

2:42 expressions that are easy to memorize,

2:44 easy to repeat and aimed at shutting down independent thinking and questioning.

2:48 So let's say you're a member of a group,

2:50 and there's a rule that you want to push back against.

2:53 You might get hit with a phrase like,

2:55 "trust the process," or "it's all in God's plan" to shut you down.

3:00 In Synanon, the phrase "act as if" effectively

3:03 meant pretend that you believe until you do.

3:06 Today, in conspiracy theory-type groups,

3:09 the phrase “do your research” basically means

3:11 “stop asking me about mine.” (Laughter) Next,

3:15 I want to talk about "us" versus "them" labels.

3:17 In Synanon, defectors were called "splitees." Today,

3:21 you’ve got your “sheeple,” your “NPCs,”

3:24 your “industry plants.” When a label makes

3:27 all of those people seem unilaterally evil and us superior, that's a red flag.

3:32 And thirdly, I want to mention loaded language.

3:35 Corporate synergistic visionaries.

3:37 Wellness 5D consciousness.

3:39 At first, emotionally charged buzzwords like this feel like enlightenment.

3:43 Then one day you wake up and you realize you've

3:46 completely surrendered your ability to talk and think for yourself.

3:50 This language works because it plugs straight into our cognitive biases.

3:55 These deeply ingrained decision-making shortcuts that developed

3:58 in earlier human brains to help

4:00 us process information from the world around us enough to survive it.

4:03 But today, mental magic tricks like confirmation bias, the sunk cost fallacy,

4:09 and the halo effect cause us to believe

4:11 only the information we already agree with, double

4:14 down on sketchy choices and worship mortal human

4:16 beings we've never even met as all-knowing deities.

4:20 This clash between our once useful cognitive biases and the information

4:25 age is this phenomenon that I've been calling magical overthinking.

4:30 And it's a problem because studies show that social

4:32 media has damaged our mental health and our attention spans,

4:36 all the while making cultish leaders mega accessible.

4:39 Who needs compounds when you have comment sections?

4:44 Now, I don't say this to freak anyone out.

4:47 I'm just here to point out the difference between awe and indoctrination.

4:52 And I want to leave us with a few tips to help us do that.

4:55 First of all, when you find yourself in a space, even a digital one,

4:59 where you feel really emotionally activated and you're using a lot

5:02 of buzzwords that make you feel like you're part of a tribe,

5:05 but you can't really define exactly what you're saying in plain English,

5:08 or why, that's a sign to take a step back and consult other sources.

5:12 Next, pay attention to exit costs.

5:15 Healthy groups might make leaving feel awkward,

5:18 but never apocalyptic or earth-shattering.

5:21 And finally, we can use cult language for good.

5:24 Rousing chants, rhyming mantras,

5:26 they can be used to make true information catchy, too.

5:31 I'm not here to take away anyone's friendship bracelets.

5:34 We need community more now than ever.

5:37 So I think living in this cultiest era of all time,

5:42 the goal is not so much to be cult-proof, it's to be cult-literate.

5:49 You follow?

5:50 (Laughter) Thank you.

5:53 (Applause)