Our Fandom Could Be Your Life: How Fandom Became the Modern Cult
The social psychology of our cultural (and cultish) obsessions.
Browsing Tag
Cult Week
10 posts
Torture Porn, or Feminist Critique?
For women, horror films about cults offer a metaphor for social imprisonment—and liberation.
The Good Wife: How the Cult of Domesticity Still Reigns in the 21st Century
On the cost—and subtle persistence—of the cult of domesticity.
Was John Robins the Reincarnation of Adam?
What 17th-century English sectarians can teach us about the perils of biblical literalism.
Your Opinion of You
A brief history of personality tests—and how they lend themselves to cultish misdirection.
Greek Like Me: Confessions of a Florida Fraternity Brother
The frat code held us together—until it kept us from saving a life.
Floppy, Wiggly, Spectacular: The Cult of the Basset Hound
How my husband turned me from a dog-agnostic to a fervent disciple of the basset hound.
Conviction of Things Not Seen: The Uniquely American Myth of Satanic Cults
How quack psychology helped pundits invent the Satanic Panic of the 1980s and '90s.
Cults and (Sub)cultures
Our week of talking about community, belief, enthusiasm, zeal, terror, and also basset hounds.