Hoodwinked by the Algorithm: Dr. Mara Einstein on Cult Tactics in Marketing (Part 1)

[00:00:00] We are Teresa and Nemo and that's why we have to Shopify. The platform, which we have used before Shopify, has used regularly updates, which have sometimes led to that the shop didn't work. Our Nemo Boards shop makes so much more clear on the mobile devices and the illustrations on the boards come now much clearer, what is important to us and what our brand also means. Start your test today for 1€ per month on shopify.de.

[00:00:29] This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered legal, medical or mental health advice. The views and opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the podcast and are not intended to malign any religion, group, club, organization, business, individual, anyone or anything. I'm Sarah Edmondson. And I'm Anthony Nippy Ames.

[00:00:57] And this is A Little Bit Culty. Cults are commonplace now. From fandoms to fads, we're examining them all. We look at what happens when things that seem like a great thing at first go bad. Every week we chat with survivors, experts and whistleblowers for real culty stories told directly by the people who lived through them. Because we want you to learn a few things that we've had to learn the hard way. For example, if you think you're too smart to get sucked into something culty, you might be prime recruitment material. And who knows? You could already be in a cult.

[00:01:28] If you're not aware of your programming, you're probably being programmed. So keep listening to find out. We'll talk about all sorts of topics on the show, but be aware, this podcast might contain stories that could be alarming to some of our listeners. So please check our show notes for more detailed descriptions and take care of yourself. Subscribe to our Patreon for Thursday bonus episodes, Q&A, and all sorts of exclusive content. That's patreon.com slash a little bit culty. Welcome to season seven of A Little Bit Culty.

[00:02:07] Great episode today, Sarah. Welcome back, everyone. How are we? We're good. We're so good. We being both of us or just you? Me and my fanny pack. Okay. You snuck it in. You snuck it in. Well, it's apropos for this episode. Today, we are digging in to a form of cultiness that bombards us every single day. It's there when you open your phone, turn on your television, or walk 10 feet outside your house.

[00:02:35] A lot of times, it's on our clothing. Even our fanny packs. Even our fanny packs. Yep. We are talking about advertising and marketing. But the issues here run deeper than annoying ads and logos on everything like fanny packs. It's an industry that uses psychology against us to trick us into buying more shit that we don't need. Like a hot pink fanny pack, Sarah? Let me be clear. You need a fanny pack. But that's not what we're talking about here. Often, we don't even realize it's happening.

[00:03:02] We have touched on this since we started four years ago in different episodes, but we've never really done a deep dive. Until today. Our guest is Dr. Mara Einstein, and she's an expert on deceptive marketing. Her new book is called Hoodwinked, How Marketers Use the Same Tactics as Cults. Dr. Einstein spent years in the corporate marketing world, and she's here to tell us how companies use our fears and insecurities to manipulate us. Also, she gets into how the digital age has completely changed marketing.

[00:03:32] From influencers to social media, the internet has made advertising more pervasive than ever. And in the data economy, we have become the products. Short of throwing away our phones and living in a cave, there's no way to escape advertising. It's here permanently. Hopefully, though, Dr. Einstein can share ways to protect ourselves from shady marketing tactics. Let's welcome her to our show. Ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Mara Einstein.

[00:04:12] Dr. Mara Einstein, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. I've been so looking forward to this. Me too. Nippy has been a little bit out of the loop, but I've been messaging you on Instagram as I read your book because I'm just so excited to find somebody who we feel so in line with, but also is expanding our view of what we... I mean, I kind of thought I knew. Okay, yeah, marketing. Thank you. Marketing uses call tactics. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, I get that. I see that.

[00:04:40] I see it, but I didn't know how much I didn't know also. Yeah. Well, this is what's so hard about teaching marketing is because people are so immersed in it. They think they understand all of the ways in which it works. But because you are immersed in consumer culture all the time, you actually don't... Most people don't understand all the machinations that go into getting people to move in a particular direction. And so it's like, no, no, no, wait, wait, wait. No, I have more to tell you.

[00:05:09] It really does work this way. Whenever people say they think they understand it or it couldn't happen to them, I just watch them fortify their blind spot. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Myself included. So it's not like, you know, awareness almost isn't enough. Well, because people, I think, have a sense of, you know, great example of this is something like TikTok made me buy it. People feel like, oh, I went onto TikTok. I saw an influencer.

[00:05:37] The influencer talked about this product. I thought it was really fabulous and that's why I bought it. But the reality is there were several steps and this gets into the, right into the cult stuff, right? Mm-hmm. There were several steps along the way that got you to the point to actually push that button. And it starts with, if we want to dig right in here. Yes, let's dig in. Yeah. There were several steps. And that's cults and marketing.

[00:06:06] And there's not a marketer on the planet that's telling you that you're okay the way you are. Because if they did, you'd never go out and buy their product. They need to tell you there's something wrong with you. So then you will go out and buy their product and then you get rid of the problem. So this goes back to Listerine and halitosis, right? Halitosis is not really a thing. Bad breath is a thing, but halitosis was created by Listerine so they could solve the problem. And then once you get to that, you get into the deceptive marketing tactics, telling people

[00:06:36] you're one thing when you're really something else. Great example of this really recently online was the Crystal Mugs. I don't know if you guys saw this. No. I've seen those. Yeah. It was AI-created Crystal Mugs. They weren't real. They were images that were created by AI. And people thought they were so wonderful and they're like, oh, I got to get it, got to get it. Of course, they got to their houses and they were plastic pieces of junk.

[00:07:03] But they bought into it thinking that they were going to get something that was really wonderful. And so step by step by step down this process, you believe in the influencer. You believe in somebody that you have come to trust. And that trust, right, that's part of the process of building you along and taking you into wanting to buy this particular process. But by the time you've pushed the button, there have been several steps along the way to get you to that.

[00:07:29] The not broken thing is actually a big part of the book we're writing. I think I told you that we're working on a book as well. And in fact, the original title of the book was, you don't need this book. Because we wanted to show that you don't need any of this shit. But like maybe you also want this book so you can help you. But then we were afraid people would say. We thought people wouldn't actually buy the book. Yeah. People were like, yeah, you're right. I don't. So it's hard. But actually, before we get into all the steps, will you just give us a little bit of your marketing background in a nutshell? And like your eventual leaving and your come to Jesus moment about how you realize you don't want to be a part of that anymore?

[00:08:00] Right. Sure. So I actually started my career as an actress. Don't we all? And yes, it's so true. And I worked in commercial production and then I worked as a talent agent and then realized, you know, no, I would like to do something a little more mind intense. And it was in the 1980s. And so I got my MBA because everyone in Hollywood was getting an MBA at that point. Right.

[00:08:25] And I ended up actually in New York working in advertising and I worked on accounts like Miller Lite and Dull Foods and Uncle Ben's, which I don't even think is called Uncle Ben's rice anymore. And then after doing that for a while, I really wanted to be in entertainment, having come out of being an actress. And so I got a job working at MTV networks.

[00:08:48] I worked at VH1 as a director of marketing and worked there for about five years and then shifted over to NBC. And I worked at NBC for about five years, also in marketing. So I was working with marketers to get them to buy more and more advertising, the big events where we have advertisers all come and want to spend their money and the big stars show up. And we try to get them to spend money because they get to shake hands with the stars and all of that sort of thing.

[00:09:15] And so after doing that for about five years, it was so mind numbing. When I got to the point where I didn't care whether or not Jerry Seinfeld showed up, I knew it was time to get out of Dodge. I mean, we were we were sending the plane to come pick him up. And I was just like, you know, if he shows up, great. If he doesn't, whatever. So I was getting my Ph.D. while I was still working at NBC.

[00:09:38] And my Ph.D. is in something called media ecology, which is understanding how systems media work within systems. So we think about the environmental ecology and think about how systems play against one another. In media ecology, we think in terms of when a new medium is introduced into a society, how does that have an impact on society? So it changes the way we vote. It changes the way we educate our children. It changes the way we interact with each other.

[00:10:07] And it has changed the definition of cults. So since then, I left. I left corporate America about 25 years ago. I became an academic. I'm a tenured professor in CUNY. And I've written eight books on marketing, religion, advertising. I started researching the overlap between religion and marketing 20 years ago. And my first book on that was called Brands of Faith. And since then, I've continued to try to understand where they cross over.

[00:10:34] And the crossover is really pretty one-on-one in a lot of ways. And so when I got to now and what's going on in terms of digital technology and how we relate to each other, but also how we think about how we buy products, also how we are put into silos, how we interact or don't interact with each other, creating in and out groups. All of those things started to come into play. So it wasn't just religion. It became about cults.

[00:11:03] Do you remember the first time that that kind of crossed your path and you had that aha moment? Or has it been a slow drip? Well, this is what's so funny about talking to you guys about this. The reason why I wrote this book or working on this book was it was during COVID. And I was downstairs, you know, you couldn't go to the gym. So I had a gym in my basement and I would go downstairs and get on the elliptical. And I was watching The Vow and I was watching Lula Rich at the same time.

[00:11:32] And every other day I was like watching one or the other one. And I was sitting there going, oh, good God, these are the same things. You know, an MLM is a cult. A cult is an MLM. And I was like, oh, my God, that's nuts. So I then started looking into multilevel marketing. I spent two years getting really immersed in to that. And I was really surprised how little critical study in academia exists around multilevel marketing.

[00:12:01] There's a lot of stuff that exists in terms of business schools and how this is a great thing. And I'm embarrassed to say that there's a professor from my former institution that wrote something saying that herbal life was OK. Ugh. Ugh, terrible. Terrible. And then it came out later that she was paid to write it, of course. But there's very little critical analysis about MLMs. Now, it's starting to come out now. But we're talking four years ago and there wasn't a lot.

[00:12:31] So there's a lot in the zeitgeist in pop culture, but not so much in academia. Well, I would imagine that they would have to take a look at how they're doing the behavior that they're studying to evolve it. I would imagine that they're guilty of a lot of the tactics that the cults are. So that's why there might not be studies on it. Well, that's because it's different parts of the institution that are studying it. So if there's people in business schools that are looking at it, they're looking at it as exactly what you say.

[00:13:01] They're looking at they're using MLMs and they're saying it's a good thing when you get outside of business school. So I teach media studies and I criticize advertising marketing within a critical studies perspective. Then you start getting people who are saying this is not a great thing. Or there's a guy by the name of Bill Keeb, who's a professor.

[00:13:22] He is in a business school, but he's always been somebody who worked as an expert in cases against multi-level marketing companies. So, like I said, when I was watching these two shows back to back and thinking, oh, this is this is crazy. And then started studying multi-level marketing. I discovered I wasn't the first one who figured out that cults and MLMs are the same things.

[00:13:49] So then I said, OK, let me pull back on this a little bit about what I know about how marketing works in the interaction of religion and brands more broadly. And then I started thinking I had been doing work for a long time in terms of brand cults. And so I began to dig further into the idea of brand cults. And the idea of what a brand cult is started in 2005. There were a couple of books that came out at that time.

[00:14:17] Douglas Atkins wrote a book called The Branding of Cults. And what he found at that time, when you looked at what people were looking for from brands in terms of what at that point people were more talking about as brand communities, was the same thing that they were looking for from cults. It's the same kind of community. It's the same sort of connection. It's the same sort of interactions on an ongoing basis.

[00:14:43] And it doesn't matter if the ideology is something that comes out of religion or if it's something that is connected to a brand. And so that's when I began to piece this all together and pull it out, not just about MLMs, but also about brands and influencers and influencers who become conspiracy theorists. And can you give our audience some examples of, I was saying cult brands, but it's brand cults. People say it both ways. And so it gets a little confusing.

[00:15:11] So I'm not surprised that you are. Brand cults traditionally. So when we talked about it, you know, 20 years ago, there were just a handful. It was Jeep. It was Harley Davidson. It was Oprah, right? And Apple. Those were kind of the handful of cult brands that exist. Kind of tongue in cheek, too, right? They weren't. Yeah. I mean, I don't think they weren't doing it to say, oh, you know, we're trying to do that.

[00:15:40] But the mind shift has completely changed. There's a major marketing conference that's held every year. And it's now called The Gathering. But it used to be called The Cult Gathering. And when you actually look at the URL for this event, it still says The Cult Gathering in the URL, though they've rebranded it as the conference overall. And this is like a top five Forbes marketing conference. It's really expensive.

[00:16:10] It's like, you know, several thousand dollars to stay there for a couple of days. And they talk about all of the brand cults that they think are really wonderful. And it's everything from, you know, Harley Davidson's, but also to Zappos and Tesla and, you know, Lululemon and all of them. And because the idea behind it is that this has become the North Star for marketers.

[00:16:36] It's not enough to just have a transaction with someone. So traditionally what marketing or buying was, was I need a product. I need a computer. I go out. I buy the computer. I take it home. That's it. I'm done. Right. I give you money. You gave me my computer. I'm done. End of transaction. But that's not what it is anymore.

[00:17:01] Now it's about making that computer part of who you are. So when you open up an Apple, if you have an Apple computer, then the Apple shows up so that people on the other side see the logo correctly. Right. And that's a really interesting design element that people never thought of before because it was, it was have the laptop closed and you see it when you read it. But when they design it, they decided so the Apple is seen from the other side.

[00:17:31] And so when you become part of something like Apple, it's not just the computer. You've got to buy the iPhone and the iPad. And it has this walled garden to keep you locked in to their product system. Because try to get out of iTunes sometime. Mera, I'm like, I legitimately a part of this cult. I really thought I was cult free, but I'm legitimately an Apple cult. I really am suspect of people who don't use Apple products. I'm like, what's wrong with you?

[00:18:01] Also, the consumer experience from start to finish, you have to have a username and password. You have to do all these things. It's the same thing when you want to make a reservation at a restaurant. You have to go into OpenTable and you have to go into all these things to like, you know, as opposed to calling up someone 20 years ago, the traditional way, and say, hey, table of whatever. Now it's with all these technologies. The technologies aren't making it more efficient. They're making it. You have to join this group in order to.

[00:18:30] But there's benefits, right? Like even with Resi or OpenTable, there's benefits to that. So there has to be benefits. Otherwise, you are not going to take time doing the secret handshake or whatever. It is like a secret handshake, right? Yeah. You know, what's interesting to me is like I get it maybe with something like Apple, right? But even with Apple, it goes too far. You know, you have the Apple forums and you have the Mac meetings that happen once a year. And you have to find out what's the latest, newest thing that's going on, you know, which also gets back to cult kind of stuff. Which acts against what people's belief systems are.

[00:19:00] Because most people, if you ask them, will say, I care about the environment, right? But if you actually talk to them about what their behaviors are, they're the first ones online when the new iPhone comes out. And so there's a great article that's called Compassion Without Action that talks about how these things work against each other. How people talk the game of really caring.

[00:19:24] But don't do it when it comes to the marketing tactics that are at play that push you to want to do these things that work against what you really care about. But if you look at other cults that are smaller, right, that may not take the kind of money that an Apple would. So if you look at something like Lululemon. So Lululemon, you have the leggings. You have to be a certain size. They don't carry upper sizes. So it's telling you what size you're supposed to be.

[00:19:53] I feel uncomfortable walking into those stores. I know they're not trying to talk to me. They have classes that you attend. They used to have message boards in the back for the people who work there about how they were supposed to act and what they were supposed to say. And this kind of parallels what's going on in Brandy Melville. I'm about to call it Brandy Hellville because that's the name of the documentary. But Brandy Melville does the same thing, but even worse because they're specifically targeting adolescent girls.

[00:20:22] And truly, who is more vulnerable than kids and adolescents? Because they don't know who they are. They don't have that sense of self that allows them to say, no, I don't want to act like this. But this company has one size. And I actually was showing this to my students yesterday in class. And it's horrifying. It's horrifying to go onto that website and see the size of the girls.

[00:20:50] And they cut their heads off on the website. So you only see their bodies, no matter what they're showing. It doesn't matter if they're showing underwear or they're showing a sweater. They cut their heads off. So in the photography, not literally, in the photography. But what that does is it dehumanizes people. That's how you start to dehumanize people is to eliminate their face. Back to Lululemon for a minute. And that's horrifying, by the way.

[00:21:20] But I'm not sure if you've made this connection in your research that Lululemon, their whole personal development. Scaffolding is landmark. Did you know that? I think I knew that because I wrote that part of the book a long time ago. But yeah, no, that makes sense. Yeah. And if you didn't hear our episode, landmark is basically NXIVM Lite. Or worse, depending on who your leader was. Landmark is the one where they don't let you go to the bathroom. And it used to be... Est. Est.

[00:21:50] Yeah. Warner or Hart. Yeah. I'm around long enough that I remember it as Est. Yes. Est is before our time. But I remember when all my friends were doing landmark before I even did NXIVM, my parents were like, no, no, that's from Est. And they knew who Werner was. Alas, I don't know if Lululemon is still using landmark, but it was very much... I could always tell somebody was working at Lululemon because they were spouting all the

[00:22:15] special language, all the isms and the jargon that was landmark teachings. Anyway. Take that back, right? I mean, we're talking about a clothing store. We're talking about somebody working at a clothing store. Why? Why? Why would you need to do this in any kind of a framework? You're getting somebody to come to a store, somebody. Obviously, you are providing them with a product you hope that they want. You show them your clothing and that's it.

[00:22:45] There is no reason to add this layer of mind control onto people who work at your store. There is just no scenario under which any of this kind of thing makes sense, whether it's Lululemon or it's Brandy Melville or any of the other places that are doing this. Hey, Kalti listeners. As you probably know, Nippy and I are working on a manuscript for our first book together. And as you probably also know, maintaining control is important to us.

[00:23:15] That's why we've decided to produce our book with the Self-Publishing Agency or TSPA. Unlike traditional publishing, where you're often left waiting for months or even years to get your story out, the Self-Publishing Agency lets you take control of your timeline. You'll have complete creative freedom with insights and guidance from pros in the publishing world. So if you're like us and you have a story or a message that's burning to be told, we highly recommend TSPA as your go-to partner.

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[00:24:48] You've heard from our sponsors. Now let's get back to a little bitkalti, shall we? When I was looking at it, I was looking at it more from the perspective of the consumer rather than, you know, what's happening in the stores. So what happens to consumers when they start engaging with what marketers are doing? So what, and I was looking at this more online.

[00:25:11] And the way the marketers are doing this online is by creating these communities and creating communities that surround a particular brand. And what happens, which we know, whether you're talking about a megachurch or a cult or any other kind of community, is they're creating communities.

[00:25:32] And so once you get people connected to the community, it's no longer about disconnecting from the brand or the product. It becomes about disconnecting from all the people that you have interacted with. And so if you look at something like Jeep, and this is why Jeep has always been an example, is they had these things, Jeep Jamborees, where they brought people together for a weekend.

[00:26:00] And they told them, you know, it wasn't just you show up, Sarah, you know, you've got to come with Nippy. Because if the two of you come together, then you all start to create interactions with other people who are there. And then you learn how to drive your car off-road, which is the sort of differentiation between Jeep and other vehicles. And then you make personal connections with people, and they continue to build those connections once you go back home.

[00:26:27] So then when you decide, oh, you know what, maybe I want to drive, I don't know, a Chrysler or whatever. It's not just about changing your car. It's about changing your relationships with people that you've met in relationship to that car. Interesting. Yeah, I mean, I understand the incentives. Having had a Land Rover for a few years, I have experienced that. They've certainly created an excellent, very slick community.

[00:26:52] Yeah, how do marketers build a sense of community that are like cult leaders? What's the process? What are the stages of it? Some of it, I mean, it depends on what the brand is. And different brands use different methods to do this. Some of it happens naturally, actually, from the consumer side. So if you talk about something like Nutella, people just love that stuff. I mean, it's delicious. Like, let's not kid ourselves. But not something to go crazy for.

[00:27:21] But people created World Nutella Day. Consumers, people who love the brand created World Nutella Day, not the brand. And so then the brand was able to take it over. And so then people began sharing recipes and interacting with each other. And so it became a whole kind of event in terms of surrounding this product. Alternatively, what a brand does is insert itself into the conversation to allow people to interact with each other.

[00:27:49] So a great example of that is something like Nike. Nike has the Running Club app. And if you're a runner, one of the things it does is it allows you to compare yourself to other people, which in and of itself isn't necessarily healthy, depending upon how competitive you end up being. But it also ends up that they also provide coaches for you. So if you're training for a run, then you get connected to the app and you can learn what kind of races to do.

[00:28:18] But it keeps you coming back to the app over and over and over again. And so it begins to get you to interact with people. And then you begin to create relationships around the brand. So it's created around Nike. Another one that I, you know, the Brandy Melville one, because it's so extreme, because because one of the things I do in the book is I create this thing called the cult plus marketing continuum.

[00:28:42] And it goes from brands, cults to influencers who I call cult light to influencers who become conspiracy theorists to multilevel marketing. And so as you go from one end of the spectrum to the other, what you have is an increased level of extremism and an increased level of anxiety. But even within those individual spaces, like brand cults, you have a spectrum of cult kind

[00:29:12] of behavior. So you might have something like Nutella, which is pretty innocuous in terms of its people's enjoyment of the brand and their connection to other people. Then take it to Apple, which creates the walled garden. Then take it to Lululemon, which gets into landmark to take it to Brandy Melville, where you have an older gentleman who owns the con and I use the term gentleman loosely who owns

[00:29:40] the company, who has the girls and they are girls who work in the store, take pictures of themselves so that he can check and make sure they are properly dressed for the day, right? To telling girls that wearing one size and one size only, and that size is beyond petite, is the correct way for them to live. So that gets into real cult, cult, cult, cult kinds of behavior. Right.

[00:30:10] And in the book, you literally looked at the recruitment process or the indoctrination process of cults and applied it to marketing. Can you take us through those stages? Sure. So when, if anybody who's listening to us, a marketer knows all about the marketing funnel and when marketers talk about how they move people from not knowing anything about their product to becoming fervent supporters of the brand, they go through the marketing funnel.

[00:30:40] And at the top of the funnel is awareness. And that's when marketers want people to learn about their brand. They will do everything they can. Commercials, print ads, influencers, all of that. And then the next step in the process is consideration. So now that you are aware of the brand and you understand what the attributes and benefits of that brand are, you start to consider it and you think about it in relationship to other brands that are available in the marketplace.

[00:31:09] The next step in the process is, and I love this, is called conversion. It's when you buy the process, you convert to a brand user. And then the last step of the process is loyalty. And loyalty is then when you tell others about it. And in fact, in the digital space, we call people who are loyal marketing evangelists. So again, you see this crossover of religion and marketing and the languaging within religion and marketing.

[00:31:38] So if you think in terms of awareness versus cults, you have the finding vulnerable people. And we talked about this a little bit already, right? You want to find people who are vulnerable so that you can bring them in. You use oftentimes deceptive tactics. Certainly cults do. Some marketers do. I would say certainly something like the more brandy kind of cults that we just talked about did. Even something like Apple, right?

[00:32:07] You think you're just buying a product and the next thing you know, you've gotten so far down the loop. You just can't break out of it. Boy, that's pretty culty. And some of the things that cults do are not one-on-one with what brands do. So, you know, depriving people of sleep or depriving people of food, that isn't necessarily going to happen in every cult, but there's certainly some that do.

[00:32:33] So if you want to think of something like CrossFit, right? People may join CrossFit because they want to get healthier or they want to get in shape and all of that sort of stuff. But once you get into that practice, if you're not throwing up at the end of the workout, then you're not really doing the practice. They also expect you to have a paleo diet. So they're telling you to eat.

[00:32:57] So there are certain very extreme kinds of aspects that appear in cults that also appear in brands. The next step in the process after recruiting people with deception is upselling. Marketers are always upselling. You know, once you've gotten people drawn in, right, and accepting what you are selling to them, then you want to take them to the next step. And one of the things that I talk about in the book is I spent a couple of years researching the Kabbalah Center,

[00:33:26] or Kabbalah, as they like to call it. And people may remember it was very popular because Madonna was very involved in Kabbalah. The red bracelets. Yeah. And when you go to the Kabbalah Center in New York, you want to talk about religion and marketing. When you go to the Kabbalah Center in New York, you walk through the bookstore. So you're not walking into where the service is happening. You're walking right through the marketing or walking right through the bookstore.

[00:33:56] And that red string costs you 36 bucks and somebody had to tie it on you and all of that sort of stuff. But the way that they upsell you is that you go in and Kabbalah is in the Jewish tradition is only supposed to be practiced by men. And it's only supposed to be practiced by men who are over 40. And what the Kabbalah Center said was, Nah, it doesn't matter. You can be whoever you want to be. You don't even need to be Jewish. You don't have to be over 40. You don't have to be.

[00:34:25] We'll let anybody come in. You know, that's marketing. But what they do is you take your first class. And as part of the first class, you are given a free session with the teacher one-on-one. And so you think that you are going in to have a one-on-one session with this teacher. And you've already committed to taking the class. And you think, Great, this will be wonderful. And so I can ask the questions and I can learn more about this practice.

[00:34:52] Now, remember, most people who have come there are probably already incredibly vulnerable. When people are at a point where they're seeking a new religious practice or understanding, they are probably at a point in their life where something pretty major is going on in their life. Something's not working. So get somebody to take a class. They think they're getting a one-on-one session. They go in to meet this person. And then it turns out to be a sales pitch.

[00:35:18] So for an hour, you have somebody who does this every day, day after day, trying to sell you on the Zohar, which is their set of books, which costs over $400. And he was trying to sell me on not one, but two, because I needed to have one at my home and at my office, because that was going to be the thing that was going to make sure that I was going to get the full understanding of the spiritual practice. Mind you, it's all in Aramaic.

[00:35:45] And the only thing that I was going to be able to do was run my hand over it. And the energy from those letters were going to be the thing that was going to lead me to spiritual enlightenment. So that's an example of upsell. And this is, at this point too, it's also about finding pain points. It's about what marketers talk about as pain points. And that's finding where people are vulnerable.

[00:36:08] So you could push at the pain point so that you can get people to buy into what you're selling and make that deeper commitment. Right? And so a great example. So these are for-profit colleges. So like Trump University or Corinthian or any of those. And what they say to people is, don't you want to make more money for your kids? Don't you want to be smarter for your children? Don't you want to have a better lifestyle?

[00:36:35] So they find those places where they know people are most vulnerable and they push on those as hard as possible in order, again, to upsell people to something more. And we'll come back to colleges as well. There's a little excitement for our listeners in part two with you. But yeah, back to upselling and then love bombing. Love bombing. Following along in your book. So love bombing. Everybody loves love bombing. How do marketers love bomb? Well, I mean, that ties into the community stuff that we were talking about. How do you get people to continue to be part of a community?

[00:37:05] You tell them how wonderful they are and how great they are. You see this with influencers all the time. If somebody comes on to their live, they're like, oh, you know, Susie, you're here. Oh, Emily, so glad to see you. And that's the way they get them to buy. That's the way they keep them on board. You know, we see, you know, multi-level marketing. That stuff's crazy. The way they get people to sign up is to find people who are already posting in social media spaces and say, oh, you're really great at this. But then we get into tough love.

[00:37:33] And this is less used in commercial spaces than it is in traditional cults. Because, you know, ultimately they want people to buy stuff. I mean, the end point is to get people to buy the product. So you're not going to distress your consumer too, too much. But again, if you get into these extreme sort of brand cults, those things are going to happen. And I was trying to think about this in terms of the influencer space. I'm not even sure that happens here.

[00:38:02] I think that if you're talking about tough love within the consumer space, where you're going to see that is multi-level marketing. When you get into things like sensory deprivation and hypnosis and meditation, you will see that sporadically talked about in terms of something like CrossFit. What I'm hoping my next book is going to be is all about weight loss and fitness and the cults within that space.

[00:38:25] I think that's where you see a lot of real parallels between all of these steps in the cult recruitment and retention process that also exist in the weight loss space. Because that happens over time. And what's really interesting is to look at it in terms of something like Weight Watchers that has been around for so, so, so, so long. And so, people who, and look, I first joined Weight Watchers when I was 13 years old.

[00:38:53] So, you want to talk about somebody who knows this backwards and forwards. I was part of Weight Watchers when you had to have liver once a week. Okay? So, if that's not torture, I don't know what is. But what's interesting to see about what's going on with them right now is that now that they've introduced the use of medication as part of their program,

[00:39:17] all these people who had been taught for years and years and been going to meetings every single week and becoming part of a community every single week are now taught, you know what? No, you could do this all with a shot. And so, they're starting to have some serious backlash. Wait a minute. You told me all the stuff that I've been doing for the last 20 years is not what I should be doing. But they've been told, right?

[00:39:43] They've been told what to eat, how much to exercise, what counts as what, and it's all in your head. Which is part of the reason why when people say, oh, you know, but if you're talking about brand cults, there's no cult leader. But we've had 75 years of consumer culture telling us what to do and what not to do. And where you see that really particularly is in the weight loss and fitness area. Because if you know someone who's been part of any kind of these weight loss programs,

[00:40:13] they can tell you off the back of their hand exactly how many points they're allowed to eat, exactly how much they're supposed to exercise. All of that stuff is very, very regimented. So, when you get to the point where you do want to leave it, which I finally did after many, many, many, many decades, to finally say, I had been trained that, you know, I'm allowed to eat this many points. And so, gosh darn it, I'm going to eat all that. Whether I was hungry for it or not anymore,

[00:40:42] that level of control can start to take over within the person and can be worked on through the consumer marketplace. It doesn't happen in a lot of spaces, but I would definitely say it happens in the weight loss and fitness area. Well, you're not listening to your body. You're listening to demands. You bring up a really good point. And something that we really stress, like, throughout our podcast and our book as well is, like, Weight Watchers isn't clearly, like, a traditional cult, right?

[00:41:10] But that particular tactic or that particular issue of controlling and, like, being in your head and monitoring everything you do, that's just problematic. Like, that's an element of things that cults do, and it's in this other thing, and maybe you don't want to do it anymore. It's just not healthy. Right. You know, we talked before about how do you create that community? How do you create that space? Weight Watchers was all about showing up for the weekly meeting. You had to have the weekly weigh-in.

[00:41:36] And then you sat with other people and then talked about your most personal interactions with food. I mean, that's got to be ringing bells for people all over the place when it comes to cult stuff, right? By the time this episode's dropped, we'll all have already just dropped the episode about AA. So people will be able to sort of connect the dots there. People will be horrified. Not all groups are bad. Not all groups are bad. Blah, blah, blah. Yeah. People will be horrified of my food habits. Well, also, there's shame, too, right?

[00:42:05] Like, shame sitting around in a circle if you didn't hit your goal weight. So, I mean, they're supposedly not shame, but how can you not if you're getting on a scale once a week in front of somebody, you know, and then they're writing the number down. You know, I mean, there's a certain amount of, yeah, you've got to face whether or not you lived your reality. But what also came to me was, you know, I'm of a certain age, and when I was going through menopause, and I went through months and months and months of not losing weight, and I finally talked to the leader.

[00:42:34] And she said to me, oh, well, this isn't going to work for you right now. And so I looked at her and said, what the hell am I doing here then? Right? But nobody was going to say that to me. Nobody was going to tell me that this doesn't work. They want to keep me as part of the group. Right? Now, this is fundamentally part of what's going on now with brands because of the social media space, because we are being siloed into people who agree with us. And it's all being done for advertising purposes.

[00:43:02] This is what I always want to get across to people. We are being put into groups. We are being put into in and out groups, people who agree with us and staying away from people who don't agree with us in order for us to be served advertising. That is the only reason why it happens. But because it is happening, we are being put into groups the same way that cults are.

[00:43:26] So you don't need to have, you know, Rajneesh's compound up in Oregon somewhere. All you need to do is put people onto social media spaces and they're already being separated away from people who don't agree with them. And if people don't agree with them, then people just start bombing them with, you don't know what the hell you're talking about. Right. So you get filtered right away in a lot of ways. Yeah. Kind of ushered into your group. Because they also start now with saying to you, what do you want to engage with?

[00:43:56] And can you explain? Wow, that's. Yeah. What cult do you want to be in? For more background on what brought us here, check out Sarah's page turning memoir. It's called Scarred, the true story of how I escaped NXIVM, the cult that bound my life. It's available on Amazon, Audible and at most bookstores. Highly recommend, of course, because she's my wife. And now a brief message from our Little Bit Culty sponsors.

[00:44:23] Remember, when you support our sponsors, you support our podcast. Break time's over, people. Let's get back to this episode of A Little Bit Culty. It's a good one. We talk about the algorithm. We talk about just the actual logistics of how this is creating the echo chamber. But reading your book really helped me see it on a whole new level.

[00:44:51] Can you explain to our listeners specifically how the algorithm creates the echo chamber and the cult like thinking in different belief systems? Well, the algorithm is looking at, quote unquote, looking at, right? What it is that you engage with and assumes that's what you want. And so it will continue to send you similar kinds of content.

[00:45:17] So if anybody's ever been on TikTok, for instance, when you first get on TikTok, the first half hour to an hour is like, what is this stuff? I have no idea what it is. But once you start clicking on things that you like or becomes your favorite, it starts to serve you similar sorts of content. Or if you're on things like YouTube, YouTube will present to you a recommended list.

[00:45:44] And so one of the things and somebody criticized the book about this, which I was kind of like, yeah, no, that people aren't influenced by the algorithms. But one of the quotes that is pretty well known is that the VP of Google said that about 70% of the content that people engage with on YouTube comes from the recommendations they put on the side.

[00:46:10] So right after you watch a video, it puts all these recommendations on the side or it auto plays what the next thing is for you. So one of the things that I talk about in the book, which is a really wonderful TED talk, is from Zeynep Tefecki. She is a sociologist from University of North Carolina. She's also an op-ed writer for The New York Times. And so she talks about she was doing research on Trump.

[00:46:35] And so when it first she was just, you know, doing some research for whatever and protests against him, whatever. And slowly she spent more time on there. It began to serve her more and more white supremacist content. But it didn't just happen for her as it related to Trump. She was looking at something about being a vegetarian or how to eat as a vegetarian. And she said it started moving to more and more vegan content.

[00:47:05] And so what she says is, as far as the algorithms are concerned, you're never extreme enough. Whatever it will take you to, it will take you further and further down the road till you get to the furthest part of extremism. Now, let's add into this now that meta is eliminating its trust and security errors. It's eliminating all of the things that it had in place to protect us against certain kinds of content.

[00:47:34] So imagine what's going to start to happen in those spaces. And what he's doing is he's running meta the same way that Musk started running X. And we know that that's become a bit of a dumpster fire. And he bought it for $44 billion. It's now worth $15 billion. So maybe the same thing will happen to meta. We don't know.

[00:47:59] I'm listening in horror but also laughing a little bit because recently somebody sent me this fascinating video of a shirtless man in loose gray sweatpants doing push-ups to like a sea shanty. That wasn't me? It was not you, my love. It was not you. But I did watch it a few times. And now it's all I'm getting is like these AI-generated, perfect-looking men dancing and skipping rope to different songs. But I'm laughing.

[00:48:27] Like that's what the algorithm thinks I want because I watch it a couple times. I love the comment the algorithm doesn't think you're extreme enough. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Because we've been talking about that every group has an extreme version of itself. And if the algorithm knows that, it's just going to take you to that point until you either have your own natural, okay, that's enough. And the other link I got from your book, just to piggyback off that comment, is that the extreme lens is the dangerous lens but it's also where the anger kicks in.

[00:48:57] And the marketers want the anger, right, to fuel more time online which then brings in more marketing dollars. Okay. That whole – that's what this book really did for me. It connected the dots in a way that I hadn't seen before. Thank you. I'm glad. I'm glad. That's what that was for. And thank you for bringing this up because one of the key points in the book that I'm arguing is that we live in an anxiety economy. And what economists say is that we live in an attention economy.

[00:49:27] And I think attention is not a strong enough word because it's not just about us paying attention to what's on our phone or what's on our tablet. It's about us having our emotions so ginned up that we stay connected to it. And we stay connected to it because that anxiety needs release. That emotion needs release. And so you hear that term rage farming.

[00:49:51] And so influencers are incentivized to increase our rage because it increases their engagement which increases how much money they make. And so while they may not think something is that terrible, they'll produce the content so that it feels that way. And so one of the things that's going on now that makes me crazy is people start their videos saying, breaking news, breaking news, right?

[00:50:19] You know, it's not breaking news. It's not. And if everything's breaking news, then nothing is breaking news. And when I grew up, breaking news was when they broke into the middle of prime time because Martin Luther King was shot. That's breaking news. That's serious enough that you need to grab people by the throat and get them to pay attention. But not, you know, another executive order was written. No, you don't. You really know.

[00:50:46] Well, there's also a component, too, you know, I think that's similar is I noticed this probably 10 years ago more than I had and recognized it was a problem. It's like so-and-so slammed so-and-so in this. And, like, the clickbait titles are like it used to be benign. So-and-so issues this, this, this. But then it's like CNN claps back or Fox News claps back. And it's like when do these headlines become the norm? And so – Well, it's creating the drama that you talked about.

[00:51:15] The media outlets need you to watch as well. Everyone's incentive. It's game theory. Right. Nibby didn't want me to bring this up, but I have to right now. Speaking of drama, how does all this relate to Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni? Oh, my God. You did not just do that. You did not just do that. I got it in before he could stop me. Is that breaking news? Breaking news. Baldoni drops his lawsuit against – Just give me your hit. Give me your, like, quick hit. I'm going to be quiet.

[00:51:40] My quick hit is this is – like, I don't even know who these people – I barely know who these people are. Yeah, that's kind of right. I mean, truly. And it's so funny because I used to be a talent agent. I used to read People Magazine, like, you know, vociferously. And I see People Magazine now and I don't even know who these people are. Same. It's eye candy. And it's not even good eye candy. It's junk food for the mind. Yeah. Well, this is a great quote that someone had.

[00:52:09] And I forget his name, but he just came out of the book called Nexus. And he said, there's a difference between facts and information. And what's happening now is we are being bombarded with information. So that's information, right? The lawsuit's happening. The lawsuit's not happening, right? That's information. But that's not facts. That's not something useful that I can engage with that's going to make a difference in my life or my day. I studied with a guy by the name of Neil Postman.

[00:52:37] And he wrote a book called Amusing Ourselves to Death. And he wrote that book in 1984. People should go read it now. It is exactly what's going on right now. And it's about how we want to engage with this kind of cotton candy kind of content. He was writing before the internet, right? 1984. He was talking about it in terms of television.

[00:53:00] But even at that point, news was starting to move to where it had to be a profit center instead of a cost center. And so television stations were already at that point starting to pull money away from it or turning news into entertainment instead of being the sort of thing that we need in order to be able to make a difference in our lives. So we need to be really conscious, one, about the silos that we have been put into.

[00:53:30] Those spaces, those groups, in and out groups that we have been put into and find ways to not all the time, but once in a while, go see what the other side is engaging with. So we know what they're thinking and learning and hearing. But also to make a conscious decision about finding out the people that you trust who are giving you real news and not information and not breaking news. Right. Which is not useful. Yeah, news should be boring.

[00:53:59] Yeah, and helpful. Yeah. Just, oh, okay. And you can have your reaction to information that's normal and not entertained or it should be like, okay, thanks for the information. I derailed your list. We were talking about renouncing those who question the group. Right. So that was, we were talking about silos. And then the next thing is introducing core beliefs.

[00:54:24] You know, if we go back to the Apple example, that's, you know, you've been sucked into the Apple cults and try to get out of iTunes or something. That's more in play. And that also happens in multi-level marketing. Some had happened during the conspiracy stuff during COVID. When we talk about, you know, these influencers who became conspiracy theorists, a lot of them were in the New Age space.

[00:54:47] And we get into the conspirituality area, right, where you have these people who are New Agers, a lot of yoga instructors, who suddenly pivoted to this idea of our body is our temple. Vaccines are not good for us. You should do your own research, all of those kinds of things. And so they sort of pivoted people from things that might be really healthy for them and helpful to them to something that really wasn't.

[00:55:13] And again, that goes to the rage conversation that we were just talking about, which is that as you start getting people concerned about their health, right, they get ginned up, they get nervous and anxious and so on. And then they start buying in and they're buying into these influencers who they've trusted, who they've developed a relationship with over a period of time, right? So you see some of those parallels in the patterns. They also got politicized too. So there's a lot of things combating that specific one.

[00:55:43] And just a note on that, Mara, because we just started our podcast when this was happening. And now that I think about it, like that anxiety about like what's happening in our world and what's the best thing, I think it did drive people to two real extremes. In fact, both sides said we should do a podcast about the other side. People who are on board with everything said you need to do a podcast about the anti-vaxxers. And the anti-vaxxers like you need to do a podcast of the people who've been indoctrinated into big pharma.

[00:56:09] So both sides were equally as culty, actually, from what we could see because they were both extreme and they weren't talking to each other because of the algorithm. And both of them are providing that overall worldview. They're providing an idea of, you know, how do we think about this thing that's going on that's going to help us, you know, feel safe enough that it's going to answer all of our questions, right?

[00:56:35] And, you know, some people who bought the big pharma story didn't necessarily buy all of the big pharma story. Right. But there's not room for those median people to these extremes. It's like, you know, Sarah and I, we went back and forth like all the time. And we felt anytime we tried to get answers, it was like, you should be this or you should be that. And it didn't feel it was coming from the best place. And it's still hard to tell. Well, I guess, I mean, I was in a sort of privileged position, privileged and not privileged position when it came to that.

[00:57:03] And that I live in Queens, New York, which was the epicenter of the epicenter of COVID because we're, you know, JFK and LaGuardia. But JFK is 20 minutes from my house. So we were hearing ambulances going by multiple times a day. We were in complete lockdown. I'm friends with somebody who worked at one of the local hospitals and she was ordering, you know, refrigerator trucks to take care of the bodies.

[00:57:32] So, you know, if there was going to be something that was going to protect me from having that happen. Yeah, I was I was willing to take the shot because I was seeing it in a way. There were probably people around the country that weren't. I also have a friend who's a health reporter for The New York Times. And I said, OK, is this real? She said, yeah, it's real. Yeah. And we were in Vancouver where it didn't even like we didn't know anyone personally who had it till like Omicron, like 18 months later. Wow.

[00:58:01] So we were like. Well, you have to respond to what's in your immediate world. There's no intellectual take on that. When something's in your lap, you have to act accordingly to it. We stopped watching the news end of March 2020 because we were like we could also see and feel the hype around it. And we couldn't. We were protecting our kids too. We didn't want them to live in a small apartment. So we were like they can't see this. Anyway, again, I'm sorry for derailing. So the last one is your repercussions for leaving.

[00:58:31] That's more likely to be something that's going to happen on a cult than something that's going to happen at a brand cult, except unless you're talking about multilevel marketing. Right. That's the one place where you really do see that. Because by the time you have become fully immersed in that, you've given up your family, you've given up your friends, your whole life is surrounded by the people that are part of the MLM. But what we see also in traditional cults and Kabbalah Center, again, is a great example.

[00:58:58] The litigiousness of that institution is off the charts. And so the fear of leaving. I mean, talking about what's going on in our country right now, you know, that's why I think the Republicans are doing what they're. They're part of this and they're part of a group that, let's just say, is cult-like and their ability to leave is hampered by the fact that there are going to be severe repercussions if they do.

[00:59:28] I think some of them need to get over their bad selves and plow through that. But right now, they just don't see it. It's career suicide. But I think that they're, you know, they're all being afraid of being primaried. But the fact of the matter is, if it gets bad enough and right now it's starting to feel like it's going to get bad enough, they're going to get primaried anyway. So why don't you- I'm a Canadian. What does that mean? Elected out. Oh. They're going to get elected out.

[00:59:55] That what's going to happen is Elon Musk is going to bankroll somebody else who will run against them in the Republican primary. And then they run against a Democrat. But like, take what's going on with the Kansas farmers right now. What Musk has done is pull the money out of USAID.

[01:00:16] What he didn't realize when he did that is that billions of dollars were going to American farmers to grow products that would then be shipped out overseas. And so all of a sudden you have people from red, red, red, red states, right? Republican states losing money, losing family farms because of what they're doing.

[01:00:39] Do you think those people are going to vote for the senator who allowed that to happen, allowed their family farm to finally get pulled out of their hands after 100 years or more? No way. They're going to fight against that person as is. So I think there's got to be some kind of a reality check. And I'm hoping that there becomes that break in the bookshelf that Janja Lalic talks about so that they begin to say, you know what, I'm losing anyway. So I might as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Incentives change.

[01:01:09] Correct. Exactly right. Mera, the third part of our book, it's in five sections. The third part is called When the Shelf Breaks. Ah, beautiful. Beautiful. Perfect. Yeah. Perfect. So we've covered a lot with you and there was more. Clearly an hour was not enough. So we're going to take a pause right there. And when we come back next week, we will talk more about influencers and the coaching industry, touch on MLMs.

[01:01:35] And also we want to know more about how all this relates to higher ed, higher education, a topic that you couldn't write a second book about because no one would touch it because everybody wants everyone to go to university. Correct? That's right. And a top university at that. Indeed. So stay tuned, everybody. Come back next week with Mera Einstein. Do you like what you hear on A Little Bit Culti?

[01:02:02] Then please do give us a rating, a review, and subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen. Or even better, share this episode with someone who you think needs to hear it. Maybe they're in a cult. Maybe they're a little bit susceptible. Just share the love. Thanks. Thank you, everybody. That was part one with Dr. Mera Einstein. Please join us next Monday for part two. And between now and then, please try not to buy everything that social media suggests.

[01:02:32] That means liquid collagen, special protein powder, unless, of course, as the sponsor is on A Little Bit Culti, in which case buy everything. And the Pink Fanny Pack. Until then. Bye for now. Sinking down to the depths of the ocean.

[01:03:00] A Little Bit Culti is a Trace 120 production. Executive produced by Sarah Edmondson and Anthony Nippy Ames, in collaboration with Amphibian Media. Our co-creator is Jess Temple-Tardy. Audio engineering by Red Cayman Studios. And our writing and research is done by Emma Diehl and Kristen Reeder. Our theme song, Cultivated, is by the artists John Bryant and Nigel Aslan. A Little Bit Culti. A Little Bit Culti. you