In today’s post:
Cult Adjacent Culty behaviors people reported participating in at work.
The Big Post The ethics of cults in cartoons.
Cult Adajcent | This was definitely one of the creepiest things I read this week and I’m reading a book about modern-day cults. In this Buzzfeed listicle, different people talk about the “cultiest” things they were asked to do at work. The is pretty short, so I won’t give too much away. However, I must share my favorite quote from the entire piece,
I used to work at an amusement park, and that was THE weirdest place ever. On my first day, I had to learn the 'work song.' It contained lines like ‘Work hard, clean up vomit, always smile at all time.’ We were given names to that we would call everyone, and mine was ‘purple unicorn.’ Still the weirdest place of all time.
P.S. If Buzzfeed turns this into a series I need to host.
The Big Post | In last Friday’s Weekly Cult Roundup I wrote about a culty episode of Recess that almost never aired. The article made me curious about other cultic references on television. The earliest example I could recall, was Family Guy’s “Chitty Chitty Death Bang” episode. Meg is lured into a doomsday cult by her bubbly new friend Jennifer. The group is made up entirely of impressionable teenagers who are captivated by an unnamed man in white. This mysterious man convinced the teens, Heaven’s Helpers, to transcend with him by drinking poison. Peter finds Meg at their compound and convinces all the teenagers to go home to their families. Peter leads the teens in a toast to their new realization and most of them drink the poison and die.
This is a direct reference to Marshall Applewhite of Heaven’s Gate, a doomsday-UFO cult from the 1990s. Some of the more obvious references to Heaven’s Gate (besides the name) include the leader welcoming Meg into the group with a matching outfit. Their leader has purchased matching running shoes and tracksuits for the members to wear during their transcendence. Members of Heaven’s Gate wore matching all-black tracksuits and Nike Decades sneakers during their mass suicide. The episode’s emphasis on the outfits inadvertently draws attention to Applewhite’s internalized homophobia and its impact on members.
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