Talk:Cult

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On getting people out of cults

I read a recommendation that this guy has some great insight to offer on how to deal with cults and cult mentalities. Now, I've barely read the first thing about him, but after quickly perusing his list of questions to ask, I must say that his approach seems very sensible indeed. Thoughts? Reverend Black Percy (talk) 22:56, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

Funspace Cult article?

Wikipedia? 109.148.167.254 (talk) 13:40, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

? We’re not Wikipedia, we just use similar software. Christopher (talk) 16:21, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

Perhaps - can Wikipedia be described in terms of a cult? Anna Livia (talk) 17:01, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

The Church of Stop Shopping

It's pretty obvious The Church of Stop Shopping qualifies as a moonbat cult of sorts. The leader, William "Reverend Billy" Talen, is batshit insane, putting him in at least one cult leader category, and the group often calls itself a "performance community", which practically feels like they're hiding their cult status. And I think the behavior of this "performance community" matches some of the warning signs mentioned on Rick Ross' Cult Education Institute warning sign list. --2601:199:4181:E00:A4F3:1BC7:A966:6B18 (talk) 21:27, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Are you kidding? It’s so obviously performance theatre and happenings using the format of Evangelical churches, which in the US seem to have wedded themselves to the specific US version of capitalism to ultimately produce the bizarre prosperity gospel, in order to criticise the veneration of consumerism. “Reverend Billy” is a figure developed and played by a well-known performance artist.

To my knowledge, The Church of Stop Shopping doesn’t have the usual cult-like signs (e.g. trying to police it’s members, laying claim to their property as well as their thoughts, or even having any kind of systematic beliefs/theology apart from anti-consumerism and anti-corporate capitalism).

So, in what meaningful sense should this performance group be considered a cult? Which specific warning signs do you think merit this and which of Ross’s signs do not apply (cf. cherry picking? Also note that Ross is an activist, rather than an academic, so his list may not be very rigorous or useful in the first place. ScepticWombat (talk) 22:06, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

To be honest, I believe the group meets two levels of the Rick Ross signs: Warning Sign 6 "They have a hyperactivity centered on the group/leader agenda", Warning Sign 9 "They can justify anything the group/leader does", and Warning Sign 1 "They are extremely obsessive regarding the group/leader". I do believe Warning Signs 8 and 10 may also apply, but I haven't been able to find any info regarding connections to those two signs. I don't think Warning Signs 4, 5, and 7 apply, as I haven't been able to find any proof of those signs in the group's activity. --2601:199:4181:E00:2C87:99E8:B252:242A (talk) 18:36, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

As I replied on my talk page, I still think the BoN mistakes the form for the contents, assuming that because a happening adopts the form of a religious revival meeting, it must be a cult. This ignores the well known tactic of culture jamming used by anti-consumerist/-corporate capitalist activists since at least the early 2000s, examples of which include not only the Church of Stop Shopping (adopting the form of religious revivalism), but also The Yes Men (corporate consultants), Adbusters/Buy Nothing Day (commercials and political consumerism) and older organisations such as the Church of the SubGenius (conspiracy theories and end of the world millenarianism). ScepticWombat (talk) 06:42, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

'Cult' vs. 'sect' and an old confusion of language

The meaning of 'cult' has in English largely become a pejorative version of 'sect', but also exists with a meaning distinct from sect in terms of size and organizational type, from cult (small, more individualist, and loose-knit), to sect (mid-sized, more collectivist, usually with a stronger, maybe charismatic, leadership), and then religion (too big to be a mere sect). Academically, both meanings have been used, and outside academia, they are often mixed up in text. (In various other European languages at present, the words for sect and sectarian are instead used pejoratively to describe the same things that are called cults and cultish in English, e.g. French and Swedish to pick just two examples.)

Back in 1972, Colin Campbell who coined the term cultic milieu used 'cult' in the sense of small and loose-knit -- his idea of a cult was something often short-lived, and with blurry boundaries for what's part of it, which either grows to become a sect, or withers and falls away in the absence of leadership or through facing too strong opposition. Cults are born and die very often. 'Seekers' move like pollinating bees from cult to cult throughout the cultic milieu, facilitating what we here at RW call crank magnetism.

It would be good to add what's missing about this part of the picture. --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 08:21, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

The Covenant

You could've added the Covenant from Halo as fictional cult. Their Great Journey is actually their self-destruction.

This one is but flesh and faith, and is the more deluded. -Gravemind 🇷🇸 Serbiter (Wort wort wort) 17:14, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

Additions by "Oh yeah"

I noticed a new user named "Oh yeah!" trying to add entries to the lists. The edit that Plutocow rollbacked got a chuckle out of me, but I do agree with the reversion, since I don't think anyone has seriously referred to atheism, non-fundie higher education, or RationalWiki as cults (well, maybe atheism has been called a "cult", but it doesn't really fit the criteria to be considered one). As for the New Independent Fundamentalist Baptist Movement and the stuff that got the "legitimate" tag, there may be something to that, but I don't really know enough about the subject to make that call myself (nor am I sure what was meant by "legitimate"), so I'd like to open a discussion on the merits of these recent edits before letting them go through. --Luigifan18 (talk) 14:41, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

…I'm still not completely convinced that "Oh yeah!" was acting in the sort of bad faith that warrants a permanent block, but the way they complained on my talk page doesn't help their case. Ah well, maybe it's a moot point by now. --Luigifan18 (talk) 14:46, 14 September 2024 (UTC)