{"id":2466879,"date":"2026-06-19T12:29:43","date_gmt":"2026-06-19T12:29:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2466879"},"modified":"2026-06-19T12:29:43","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T12:29:43","slug":"why-people-join-cults-on-gossip-fiction-shared-understanding-from-the-culting-of-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/why-people-join-cults-on-gossip-fiction-shared-understanding-from-the-culting-of-america\/","title":{"rendered":"WHY PEOPLE JOIN CULTS? On Gossip, Fiction, &#038; Shared Understanding from the Culting of America"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\"  width=\"580\" height=\"385\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/1wdoPTDQVo8?autoplay=1&#038;modestbranding=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><br \/>\n<br \/>One of my most asked questions is &#8220;why do people join cults?&#8221; Their worldview shifts. A reading from, &#8220;The Culting of America.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>About Me:<br \/>\nI&#8217;m Daniella Mestyanek Young, author, scholar of cults, extreme groups, and extremely bad leadership. These days, I&#8217;m also known as Knitting Cult Lady. I grew up in the Children of God cult (also known as the Family International, or COG-TFI), and served 2 tours of duty in the cult of the US army. I noticed that those two organizations had a lot in common and have been studying them and what we can learn about other cults&#8211; and how to protect ourselves from coercive control and abusive situations. Those books are called, &#8220;Uncultured&#8221; (my memoir) and &#8220;The Culting of America&#8221; (my bad-guy tactics book). For those of you who have been through the cult experience (any kind of cult experience including 1:1 cults, or single family cults, or internet cults, or 12 step cults) I made a &#8220;Deconstruction Workbook&#8221; as a companion guide to help you find your way out of the rabbit hole.  <\/p>\n<p>Support my Work and Learn About Me:<br \/>\nBuy the Culting of America: https:\/\/bit.ly\/4reK0u7<br \/>\nBuy Uncultured: https:\/\/bit.ly\/42TKNWN<br \/>\nPatreon: https:\/\/bit.ly\/YTPLanding<br \/>\nCult book Clubs (Advanced AND Memoirs) Annual Membership: https:\/\/bit.ly\/YTPLanding<br \/>\nKnitting Cult Patterns: https:\/\/bit.ly\/4alDbQe<br \/>\nGet my book, Uncultured, from Bookshop.org: https:\/\/bit.ly\/4g1Ufw8<br \/>\nInstagram:  https:\/\/bit.ly\/4ePAOFK \/ daniellamyoung_<br \/>\nUnamerican video book (on Patreon): https:\/\/bit.ly\/YTVideoBook<br \/>\nSecret Practice video book (on Patreon): https:\/\/bit.ly\/3ZswGY8<br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=1wdoPTDQVo8\">Video Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of my most asked questions is &#8220;why do people join cults?&#8221; Their worldview shifts. A reading from, &#8220;The Culting of America.&#8221; About Me: I&#8217;m Daniella Mestyanek Young, author, scholar of cults, extreme groups, and extremely bad leadership. These days, I&#8217;m also known as Knitting Cult Lady. I grew up in the Children of God [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2466880,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25180],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2466879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-videos"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1781872181_maxresdefault.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2466879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2466879"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2466879\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2466881,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2466879\/revisions\/2466881"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2466880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2466879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2466879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2466879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}