Douglas Rushkoff

Well, in a sense, it is. This book contains more than just one life-changing secret; it contains hundreds of them. Each product, system of thought, institution of higher learning, medical breakthrough, financial investment, blockchain white paper, diet drink, career coach, spiritual retreat, social media influencer, stoicism course, or hashtag campaign chronicled herein offered the One Truth needed to get from here to there.

All you have to do is believe, buy, click, follow, subscribe, and, most of all, share. For the only certain way of proving your faith and guaranteeing your own success in any system is to enlist others. And that’s why, as the newest member of the Mara Einstein Hoodwinked Society, I am—for a limited time—inviting you to step up, drop in, reach high, join the team, unlock the secret, take the leap, and find yourself in the new reality you always knew was possible and right over the next horizon but always just out of reach. It’s not any longer.

It’s here. You’ve found us. Welcome. Now tell your friends.

Yes, you’ve joined a cult.

Welcome to the cult of those who are willing to see the sticky strings attached to the promises of nearly every invitation to belong, to learn, to improve, or to “wake up.”

For all their promise of belonging, unity, and unconditional acceptance, the cult-inflected brands and organizations described here all demand exclusion, assignment of blame, and the payment of social, spiritual, and monetary dues.

those who employ the tactics of cults do so by leveraging our healthy and essential social and emotional needs against us. And the more desocialized and emotionally alienated our world becomes, the more vulnerable we are to the painstakingly concocted efforts at answering these needs with false promises and enforced surrender

It’s time we recognize the salespeople, influencers, and algorithms in these spaces for what they are: cult recruitment agents.

It’s not our stupidity that’s to blame, but our longing. Just as legions of high-worth investors could be hoodwinked into losing a combined $8 billion to Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto Ponzi scheme, we can all be hoodwinked into surrendering our common sense to an appeal too good to be true—especially when that appeal has been crafted for us, individually, by an artificial intelligence that knows more about us than we can remember ourselves and more about our inner workings than our therapists.

know that those who do become isolated are less likely to question when things don’t quite make sense