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

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1. 0:03Greetings followers.
2. 0:06And settle in.
3. 0:08Because I'm about to share with you a true story
4. 0:12about one of the most zealous cults in the world.
5. 0:17The story takes place on the group's holiest day.
6. 0:20Acolytes arrived at dawn,
7. 0:22some having crossed oceans
8. 0:24and sacrificed life savings in order to get there.
9. 0:27They came bearing hand-beaded offerings
10. 0:29inscribed with sacred numbers: 22, 13, 89.
11. 0:35But this, my friends,
12. 0:36is not the story of an apocalyptic sect on a faraway compound.
13. 0:40No, this was a Taylor Swift concert.
14. 0:43(Laughter)
15. 0:45I said it.
16. 0:46The talismans are friendship bracelets,
17. 0:48the biblical books are known as eras,
18. 0:50and the charismatic leader is a billionaire pop priestess
19. 0:53who, let's be honest, could probably rule the free world
20. 0:55if she really wanted to.
21. 0:58Now, don't get me wrong.
22. 0:59I'm a deep-dyed "Red" album girlie.
23. 1:01I'm not here to call out Swifties as cult followers.
24. 1:04No, I wouldn't dare.
25. 1:07But I'm an author and a cultural commentator
26. 1:10with a background in linguistics.
27. 1:12And I’m here to share how we’re all susceptible to cult-ish thinking,
28. 1:17for better and for worse.
29. 1:19And our everyday vocabularies are evidence of our devotion.
30. 1:23I'm here to share what to pay attention to,
31. 1:26what to listen for,
32. 1:27so that, as we move through these inevitably culty times,
33. 1:30we can stay both enchanted and empowered.
34. 1:35Now, my fascination with cults is personal.
35. 1:37That's because of my dad.
36. 1:39As a teenager, he was forced to join Synanon,
37. 1:42a '70s California compound with matching overalls
38. 1:45and a traumatizing truth-telling ritual called The Game.
39. 1:49But my dad escaped,
40. 1:51became a neuroscientist,
41. 1:52and brought up a nosy kid
42. 1:54who became obsessed with understanding
43. 1:56how to identify cultish influence in everyday life.
44. 2:01As I got older, I couldn't help but notice
45. 2:04that the same language tactics that my dad described in Synanon
46. 2:08could be found kind of everywhere.
47. 2:10Like, in my high school theater program
48. 2:13and in the wellness industry
49. 2:15and on my social media feed.
50. 2:18That's how I came to study the cultish spectrum,
51. 2:20degrees of influence,
52. 2:22none of which start out with LSD and robes,
53. 2:25but instead, sneakily, with words.
54. 2:29I want to point out three cultish language tactics
55. 2:32to listen for in everyday life.
56. 2:33The first is called the thought-terminating cliche.
57. 2:36Coined in 1961 by the psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton,
58. 2:39thought-terminating cliches are zingy stack expressions
59. 2:42that are easy to memorize, easy to repeat
60. 2:45and aimed at shutting down independent thinking and questioning.
61. 2:48So let's say you're a member of a group,
62. 2:50and there's a rule that you want to push back against.
63. 2:53You might get hit with a phrase like, "trust the process,"
64. 2:56or "it's all in God's plan" to shut you down.
65. 3:00In Synanon, the phrase "act as if"
66. 3:02effectively meant pretend that you believe until you do.
67. 3:06Today, in conspiracy theory-type groups,
68. 3:09the phrase “do your research” basically means “stop asking me about mine.”
69. 3:13(Laughter)
70. 3:14Next, I want to talk about "us" versus "them" labels.
71. 3:17In Synanon, defectors were called "splitees."
72. 3:21Today, you’ve got your “sheeple,” your “NPCs,” your “industry plants.”
73. 3:25When a label makes all of those people seem unilaterally evil and us superior,
74. 3:31that's a red flag.
75. 3:32And thirdly, I want to mention loaded language.
76. 3:35Corporate synergistic visionaries.
77. 3:37Wellness 5D consciousness.
78. 3:39At first, emotionally charged buzzwords like this feel like enlightenment.
79. 3:43Then one day you wake up
80. 3:45and you realize you've completely surrendered your ability to talk and think
81. 3:48for yourself.
82. 3:50This language works because it plugs straight into our cognitive biases.
83. 3:55These deeply ingrained decision-making shortcuts
84. 3:58that developed in earlier human brains
85. 4:00to help us process information from the world around us
86. 4:02enough to survive it.
87. 4:03But today, mental magic tricks like confirmation bias, the sunk cost fallacy,
88. 4:09and the halo effect
89. 4:10cause us to believe only the information we already agree with,
90. 4:13double down on sketchy choices
91. 4:15and worship mortal human beings we've never even met
92. 4:18as all-knowing deities.
93. 4:20This clash between our once useful cognitive biases
94. 4:24and the information age
95. 4:25is this phenomenon that I've been calling
96. 4:27magical overthinking.
97. 4:30And it's a problem
98. 4:31because studies show that social media
99. 4:33has damaged our mental health and our attention spans,
100. 4:36all the while making cultish leaders mega accessible.
101. 4:39Who needs compounds when you have comment sections?
102. 4:44Now, I don't say this to freak anyone out.
103. 4:47I'm just here to point out the difference between awe and indoctrination.
104. 4:52And I want to leave us with a few tips to help us do that.
105. 4:55First of all,
106. 4:56when you find yourself in a space, even a digital one,
107. 4:59where you feel really emotionally activated
108. 5:01and you're using a lot of buzzwords
109. 5:03that make you feel like you're part of a tribe,
110. 5:05but you can't really define
111. 5:06exactly what you're saying in plain English, or why,
112. 5:09that's a sign to take a step back and consult other sources.
113. 5:12Next, pay attention to exit costs.
114. 5:15Healthy groups might make leaving feel awkward,
115. 5:18but never apocalyptic or earth-shattering.
116. 5:21And finally, we can use cult language for good.
117. 5:24Rousing chants, rhyming mantras,
118. 5:26they can be used to make true information catchy, too.
119. 5:31I'm not here to take away anyone's friendship bracelets.
120. 5:34We need community more now than ever.
121. 5:37So I think living in this cultiest era of all time,
122. 5:42the goal is not so much to be cult-proof,
123. 5:45it's to be cult-literate.
124. 5:49You follow?
125. 5:50(Laughter)
126. 5:51Thank you.
127. 5:53(Applause)