A combination of an uncertain future and the ease of social media has allowed new age cults/cultists to develop online, many with the sole interest of monetising their following one way or the other. The author of this Substack post, Erin Nystrom, refers to them as the ‘griftoverse’ – a world where grifters or scammers trick people into parting with their money, such as say, finfluencers or most remarkably options trading tutorials (neither the author nor us are saying that all finfluencers are such).
“Everywhere you look on the internet, you’ll find niche communities. Communities for gaming, for writing, for self-development, for fitness (every variety), for spirituality (every variety). From Disney adults, to Swifties, vegans, to carnivores, every one of these groups has its own leaders—their own crop of A-list celebrities you’ve never heard of.
In real life, people form social bonds around shared interests, often as a result of crossing paths again and again because of those shared interests. Online, however, these “bonds” form with individuals, acting as a proxy for these interests, at the center. However, the people in these “communities,” with shared identities and interests, who organize themselves around a web of prominent individual accounts, rarely, if ever, form real-life bonds with other members, and instead fixate on these prominent figures.
This is the parasocial relationship—a one-way mirror where people feel so seen and validated by a public figure that they form a psychological bond with them, despite the fact that the figure has no idea they exist, and that they will likely never meet in real life.”
The author reckons the time is ripe for grifting thanks to a confluence of factors, most notably social media. In addition, “…ingredient that has created a world ripe for grifting is the lack of belief in a certain future. It used to be that if you went to school, you could get a job, which would get you a house, health insurance, and a vacation or two every year. But now, that’s all far from a guarantee. Add a rapidly changing climate, threats of nuclear war, and wealth inequality surpassing levels of a falling empire, and you get a complete loss of agency that puts us into a state of chronic fight or flight.
…The increase of social ambiguity combined with the collapse of public trust in…everything creates a giant crack in the foundations of our society that grifters rush in to fill.
When the world feels so unsafe and perilous, people start looking for something—someone—to ease their pain and suffering. To give them solutions and direction.
Cue a charismatic figure, talking directly to the camera as though they were talking to a friend on FaceTime, to swoop in to profit off of that erosion of trust by telling their audience that they can provide the thing that they didn’t get, be it money, health, attention, or “alignment.” Wherever blame for pain and anxiety can be cast is an opportunity to sell a solution. Whether that solution is real or not is neither here nor there.
And once someone starts telling us things we agree with, that bring us relief, or is aspirational in one way or another, we start to perceive everything else they do or say as infallible. Holy, even. Enter: the halo effect.
The halo effect—the psychological heuristic that leads us to believe that a single (perceived) positive trait in a person is indicative of other positive traits—was, at one point, like most cognitive biases, imperative for survival. A person who appeared clean in a time of disease, a person who demonstrated high levels of coordination and strength in a time of war, a person who appeared well-fed in a time of famine—these would be important people to align ourselves with for the sake of survival.
….Now, you don’t need to have any real level of expertise or credibility; you simply need to be charismatic and have an opinion. Crypto bros preaching about peptides, biohackers peddling crypto, fitness influencers hawking spirituality, spiritual influencers selling supplements… Status can be wholly manufactured and curated. And we put these internet personalities on such high pedestals that we can no longer perceive their humanity, not just following them online, but sometimes, off a cliff.”
Soon such grifters develop a cult following almost by method. She refers to a book by Amanda Montell called Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism, which describes the modus operandi of a cult builder which include “three specific such language tactics: Thought-terminated cliches, Us vs them, and loaded language.” She goes on to elaborate on each of these.
“…in order to make money online, you must have a loyal following who trusts you. Who find you aspirational in one way or another. And this isn’t necessarily a bad thing: there are plenty of lovely and decent people out there making a living online. But some aren’t. And the offline behavior of some of these people would shock and appall you.
Behind closed doors, everything is business and strategy: what do you have to do to get more eyes, more influence, make more sales? They study these principles like a law student studies for the Bar exam. The “community” is rarely considered. Building and profiting off an online community IS their business, the mechanism by which they get there—what kind of content it’s centered around—is merely the vehicle.”
She ends on a more positive note whilst leaving us with a warning: “Just because something is cultish doesn’t mean it’s bad, and just because we find ourselves in a community exhibiting cult-like behavior doesn’t mean we have to recuse ourselves and renounce it. We all have people we love to follow who have a positive influence on us. We are social animals, and we all want to belong. We all just want to feel like we’re a part of something. We truly do need people to learn from and be inspired by. These are some of the truly amazing aspects of the internet. But it’s worth examining the power dynamics of the groups we’re in, and who may potentially be getting exploited and who’s doing the exploiting.
We have to be privvy to the tactics at play, and learn to identify when we might be falling into cult-like thinking. Not the innocuous kind, like geeking out over your favorite artist, fitness class, or book, but the kind that might have us isolating ourselves in real life because no one else “gets it.” The kind that might have us fighting with strangers in the comments section. The kind that might have us forking over more money than we have on programs, private coaching, and retreats.
…If you want to live an authentic life, you have to free yourself from undue influence. No one person (least of all, a stranger on the internet) has the power to solve all your problems, take away your pain, or turn you into the version of yourself you always knew you could be. And if they say they do, they’re probably selling something.
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