The Community Paradox: Culty Groups Have Exit Costs, Good Groups, Not So Much...What to Do?

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]Oh, my friend, I am trying to answer this question, too.

[00:00:04]Here's the question that haunts me. If cult tactics work and cultic groups convert and proselytize and have stronger staying power than good groups because of the high exit cost, then how do groups that don't manipulate its members even have survived competing against those who do? And I think we're trying to answer this question right now with politics, right? And I continue to say this, cult tactics work. That's why people use them. I'm Daniella, a scholar of cults, extreme groups, and extremely bad leadership, and I have written The Culting of America, a best-selling cult tactics book. It's not a call-out book on individual groups, although I do call some out. Hello, Zappos and Salvation Army. But it is a tactics book. This is how they do it. And this is what I keep looking at in politics, which is something I very much care about right now, is that one side has been willing to use cult tactics on their members and especially on their children. Right? One side has been willing to isolate their children, home school, Bible school, keep us away from them, and raise them in fear and one point of view, a conservative point of view view, so that they can have this Generation Joshua. Kids who said they were Republican in the second grade. Great song by Candy Carpenter called Cult. And we're not creating those on the other side. You know why? Cuz doing that to children it's not called brainwashing, it's called mind rape.

[00:01:35]And it's very serious and it's very harmful.

[00:01:38]But the question remains.

[00:01:41]And I think one of the answers is that real work better than cult tactics. I think a lot of cult tactics are taken from community, communities of color, indigenous communities, and they're hacked.

[00:01:57]And they're used to exploit people.

[00:02:00]And part of the answer I'm trying to figure out is the same thing but in business. And I think the answer is you just you just have to do it slower.

[00:02:08]You're just going to win slower.

[00:02:10]You're just going to get rich slower.

[00:02:13]Right now I've built a super strong, super monetized brand and I'm the only one that hasn't really been paid yet.

[00:02:20]And I'm going to get paid. I'm just getting rich a little bit slower because I'm profit sharing and taking care of everyone on my team and everyone around me. And I'm not manipulating them for free labor. And I think the truth is the cults ultimately don't work.

[00:02:37]They're not going to win this round.

[00:02:39]They're not going to force America into being a Christian nationalist nation because humans don't like to live under absolute control. Human beings don't survive well tamping down their whole individual personalities for the sake of the group. That's why we see suicides as such a high exit cost of cults.

[00:02:59]But it works. It works. Love and equality is harder to motivate people with than fear.

[00:03:10]It's harder to organize than it is to control.

[00:03:14]But organizing is one of the answers and the other side has organized and we haven't.

[00:03:20]And I keep joking that I'm going to have to start Tina Church. This is not a church where we get together on Sundays and our non-praise choir leads us in revolution songs. And we have a non-prayer request prayer list where we share the wins and losses of our families and sit in community together where we chant and hum to get over grief when somebody has died and share food with each other and help each other build their houses and take care of each other because one side, unfortunately, is doing community much better than the other side even if that community is a cult that is harmful to individuals.

[00:04:02]You can get signed copies of my tactics book here or listen to me read it to you anywhere you get your audiobooks. Googly eyes, unfortunately, not included. But you can add your own.