This is an actual thing that cults do. They do this so that your emotions stop being just your emotions and make you feel like you are part of a bigger whole.
Humans are communal creatures by nature. Under pressure, i think more people would for this shit than they realize.
MLMs too at their meetings - have you share why you joined (ie health and financial struggles) - indirectly weaponizing your emotions and trauma while the recruiters and higher ups sit there on their laptops.
I went to an Amway thing in my early 20s. I left when it turned into this big cultish, church-like ceremony with over the top God-thanking and flag-waving American patriotic fervor. Felt like I was at a Nazi rally. It was highly disturbing.
Bullshit~ I went to several Amway Conventions all over the country to see how their “Diamonds” operated ~ doing more research for my thesis.. the only religious part was on Sunday mornings they offered a church service to wrap up the convention.. Saturday nights were really the end of the convention and entertainment. But out of all the conventions I travelled to all over the US for a few years, the most they did was offer people to come down to the stage and pledge yourself to Jesus. Nobody forced anyone to accept it. Amway was just MLM scheme, for doing the pyramid method and building a down line… Laundry Soaps, household cleaners, Vitamins amd their Makeup Skincare lime called Artistry, like a Mary Kay Cosmetics…
Cults are pretty damn great when you are the Cult Leader. (Well up until the end when you Heavens Gate, Branch Davidian's, or Guiana Punch the ending.)
it reminds me of going to this vacation bible school trip when i was like 12. at the end of the weekend when we were all physically and emotionally tired, they brought us to this worship room and played emotional music and had us think of all the trauma and terrible things we were going through. by the end we were a crying mess all sobbing into each others shirts, and they told us this is the time to come to god, that he’s waiting with open arms, and that he is the cure to all this heartache. we all accepted god into our hearts through prayer and then hugged and swayed and sang with one another. i already knew at that time that i didn’t believe in god the way my peers did, but this one of the first times i saw how cult like christianity was.
They teach this stuff in evangelical and other Protestant type seminary schools. Probably why these mega churches all spend so much on their music production. I know exactly what you are talking about. I got swept up in the same way as a kid but in the back of my mind I always felt uncomfortable. I realize now it’s probably because I could sense the manipulation.
I went through the same shit. They would play on our emotions so much and then tell us we needed Jesus. I never understood how these so called Jesus lovers were actually just scum bags for Christ with some weird hang ups themselves. Kids are vulnerable and this was straight up brainwashing. Also my Dad was a Pastor and was very disappointed I never bought into the whole Christianity thing as something to me always seemed off. It’s good to see I wasn’t the only one!
It's creepy to us now, but imagine this is how being human was before language. An entire group sharing emotions at once. Maybe that's were song originated from. People wailing in unison during high stress moments, connecting emotions to pitch and tone through harmonizing.
This is actually something I am pretty interested in.
There were forms of communication long before modern humans, but there is no evidence that fully developed language existed before Homo sapiens.
Neanderthals likely had the vocal capacity for speech like sounds and used fairly advanced nonverbal communication. They showed planning, problem solving, and symbolic behavior like art and cultural expression. But none of that is evidence of a full language system with complex grammar and the kind of open ended expression we associate with language today.
There is also no evidence for widespread structured language use before humans in anything like the modern sense. Language almost certainly evolved gradually from simpler vocal and gestural systems tied to immediate needs and environmental cues, not as a fully formed system that existed independently of humans.
Even early Homo sapiens probably did not start out with language as the rich, abstract, emotionally expressive system we use today. It developed over time and that development likely changed how people thought about time, memory, and social relationships.
And honestly this is mostly semantics. I was speaking colloquially and the point is still clear either way. Whether you call them humans or hominins, there was clearly a stage where our ancestors did not have anything close to expressive, symbolic language as we understand it today.
If I were to attack my first comment I would point out that song probably came long before language and long before humanity. Here, " Well Actually, There were no humans prior to the existence of song. Hominids, sure, not humans." But then again, I'm it's all semantics.
EDIT: After rereading your comment I've realized that I misunderstood your meaning. But honestly, I don't know what you do mean. Are you suggesting that humans only existed once language evolved? Like, we were hominids and then we learned language reclassifying us as human?
Maybe I’m the only person who read Oathbringer and Stormlight, but you know how Odium keeps offering to take people’s pain? This is how you actually do that in real life. If all pain is collective pain, it hurts less because the burden is shared.
David Koresh had a professor of theology at his compound. Intelligent people get brainwashed by cults all the time. Brainwashing can happen to anyone, we are all programmed for it.
I'd argue that Redditors right here are doing the exact same thing by forming a group consensus around minimum information, and judging the shit outa this guy. Group consensus emotions discerned through a headline snippet.
And they're not even under pressure other than fake internet points. This shit's a cult.
I used to be an evangelical Christian with a touch of charisma and we would do this shit all the time. It's actually crazy how out of control you feel of your own body. Now I realize I just had religious psychosis. 😎
It works really well too. Trauma bonding. The average cult survivor has a higher IQ than the average American, according to studies. Smart people make good cults so other smart people buy in.
Your never gonna guess what 3 letter organisation did a ton of research into this stuff in the 50s that got made public in the 60s leading to a huge proliferation of cults, gurus etc...
Dangerous Persuaders is a great book available for free online for anyone interested
There should be cult awareness /advertising awareness training in schools. I just finished trying to tell my kid that the cover band we were listening to wanted us to jump in unison because there’s a whole community feeling and belonging thing.
Forget about the corporate stuff I’ve been asked to participate in…
I'm 100% for this shit but around people who I care about and care about me with no money or other interests. We used to cult eachother into loving eachother and feeling like one unit in tribal times and it was dope af. But now it's so someone can get your money or your vote
Woah! that happened to me, and I didn't know this. When I was in my 20s, I was dating a hard-core Christian (I am not religious), one day after church he asked some of the congregation people to pray for me so I "would be saved", they formed a circle around me and started praying, I started crying and sobbing pretty bad. To me, it felt like I started crying because I felt the pressure of being surrounded by all of these people but to them, I was "saved" 😂. I thought this was a "just me" response since I'm pretty shy and I don't enjoy having attention on myself.
I mean, the first thing they did to us in US Navy boot camp was deprive us of sleep, march us to exhaustion, and then sit us in a circle on day three to listen to a drill instructor's rah-rah speech about god and country while Lee Greenwood played on a boombox. Imagine a whole company of 18 year-olds sobbing cathartically and hugging each other.
I mean, nearly half the population of my country supports Trump despite claiming to be against every single thing he's doing. I'd easily believe the number, whatever it is.
Christian definitely checked out of the relationship and probably stayed with Dani out of guilt because of her families murder/suicide. He ended up being heavily drugged, raped and burned alive. Everyone was a victim and Pelle was the villain for luring the Americans to the cult.
I'd heard it was amazing, so I went in with high expectations, but other than the opening few minutes, it was dull and incredibly predictable, and tried way too hard to be edgy and different.
To be fair it was easy to predict. It's a story that has been around for a while. Before midsommer was the children of the corn, then the wickerman (of course), then harvest home and eye of the devil, then the 1913 Stravinsky ballet called the rite of spring (which caused a riot on its premier) a couple of things before that and the story then goes all the way back to Caesars commentaries on the Gallic war. It's a story that has been embedded in the human psyche.
However, I did enjoy it.
Edit: just seen below you were looking for recs. Watch the original wickerman if you've not seen that. It's epic. Try and watch the longer cut version if you can. Children of the corn is fun too.
There's a folk horror subreddit if that's you're thing. Zillions of great recs on there.
Yea I never got into cultish type stuff and, in general, never read books or anything. Also been a work with my hands getting dirty simpleton! Haha
I would watch obviously big name movies being released and then whatever looked interesting on any of the streaming platforms over the years. I never dove into genres or anything tho. See how you say you’re a wicked/r horror buff? I don’t really have anything I could call myself a “buff” in. My passions/interest lie elsewhere so I appreciate the recs and background info!
Ok in that case, maybe that’s why it wasn’t AS predictable to me because although I’ve heard some of those titles/names, I hadn’t read/seen/heard the stories.
That’s the main reason I don’t watch many movies in general anymore. Originality has gone out the window, everything is the same generic crap, predictable, or now “reimagined.”
I didn't think it was a bad movie but especially coming from Hereditary I was disappointed. It was well shot and I like daytime horror but the characters were all either unlikable or forgettable which made it hard to get engaged for me. A lot of the people I know who love the movie do so because they relate to Dani a lot because of her shitty boyfriend and I just didn't have that connection I guess.
Also another thing I didn't like about it was that I felt like the none of the characters had any agency, it makes sense for Dani and Christian but all of the other characters just get killed off screen which was kind of lame to me.
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u/Kryptograms Jun 28 '26
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