Welcome to the Cult Culture Blog!

What makes a cult, a cult? How do cults form? How do people become involved in cults? Are people aware they're in a cult?

These are questions that I've wondered for years. Cults have been in the news for decades, and have garnered widespread public attention. Nearly everyone has heard of infamous cults like the Manson Family and NXIVM, but there are several cults that lurk in the shadows, drawing people in unwittingly, and going unnoticed by society at large.

Cults don't just impact those who join; they have a deep, unrelenting effect on the friends and family members of their participants. This blog is going to explore how cults form, how they recruit members, how they shape the lives of their participants, and much more. If you've ever wondered the same things I have about the development and continuation of cults, then this is the blog for you.

Each week, I'll be unpacking more and more information about the culture of cults in the form of weekly blog posts, with the goal of understanding how they form and how so many people become deeply involved in them. All of this research and investigation will culminate in a podcast that brings all of these threads together, and shed some light on this enigmatic corner of society.

Join me in taking a deep dive into Cult Culture!

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Cults before the Internet: Dangerous & Deadly

In the last post, we discussed how cults are able to spread their beliefs to a wide-ranging audience through various online platforms. But how did cults operate before the Internet became a widely available commodity for beliefs and information to spread? At their core, cults are fundamentally driven by controlled human interaction. Individuals join organizations that are seemingly well-meaning, and become enveloped by the beliefs and behaviours the organization (and its leader) promote. Members encourage other members to conform through peer-pressure and by shunning all “non-believers” from their personal lives. The only way for a cult to be successful is if its members believe what the cult leader says, and bring new members into the organization by spreading information through word of mouth. Two of the most prolific and destructive cults during the pre-internet age were the Manson Family , which operated in California during the late 1960s and early 1970s, and the Peoples Templ...

Cults in the Media

In the previous post, we discussed the anti-cult movement and several variations of it that target specific types of cults. We briefly touched on the topic of the media and how they both portray and attempt to peel away the veneer of cults, so that people have a better understanding of how they work. This week, we’re taking a deeper dive into media coverage of cults, and how big of a role the media can play in a cult’s downfall. Media is arguably the most powerful tool of the twenty-first century (aside from technology). It shapes the way we view the world, and our perceptions of particular topics, people and events are heavily influenced by what we read and watch, and where we are getting that information from. Just think about how the media has been reporting about the COVID-19 Pandemic over the last year, and how differing opinions about the virus and the measures being taken to mitigate its spread are influenced by where people are receiving their news from. There is always bi...

New Religious Movements: Are they Cults?

In the previous post, we discussed how cults operated and recruited members prior to the Internet age. We discussed two prominent cults that existed during the second half of the 1900s: the Manson Family and the Peoples Temple. The latter of these organizations was technically considered to be a New Religious Movement (NRM). But what does that mean? Defining new religious movements has been difficult because of the terminology used to describe them. The term “new” indicates that the organization has not been around for a long time, but that can be said about any religion at one time or another; every religion was once “new.” Additionally, NRM’s have become synonymous with the word “cult” for main three reasons: they operate on the fringes of society; they have a marginal group membership in comparison to traditional religions; and they often represent beliefs that deviate from the norm (Saliba & Melton, 2003, p. 10). For our purposes, New Religious Movements can be defined as m...

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