Sounds Like A Cult - The Cult of Amazon

Episode Date: January 16, 2024

Welcome baaaAAAAaaaAAaack, culties!! Time to *ascend* to the 2024 era of Sounds Like A Cult 👽 Kicking off with a damn bang—the most colossal cult we’ve ever covered (as in ~1.5 million employees and 310 million users colossal). It's the multi-pronged monster of convenience, which spares no one, no matter the cost… you guessed it, Amazon. Duh, we know, Amazon is a cult—from its notorious treatment of factory workers to its uncanny world-domination energy to its “never leave us” messaging, it’s obvious. But is Amazon a LYL, a WYB, or a GTFO-level cult? And is the verdict the same for both employees and consumers? To unpack this gazillion-dollar organization (religion?) from the inside, please welcome special guest Kristi Coulter, an ex-Amazonian who spent 12 years in the cult… I mean, *company*… before defecting to write her new tell-all memoir, Exit Interview. It’s one of our juiciest conversations in SLAC history and we hope you enjoy it!! Thanks to all the listeners who leant their voice messages to this episode. Follow us on IG @soundslikeacultpod @amanda_montell To preorder Amanda's new book, The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality, out April 9, 2024, click here :) For news about her forthcoming Magical Overthinkers podcast, consider subscribing to her newsletter! Thank you to our sponsors: Go to HelixSleep.com/CULT and use code HELIXPARTNER20 for 20% off all mattress orders AND two free pillows. Ibotta is offering $5 just for trying the app by using the code CULT when you register in the App Store or Google Play store. SKIMS Bras are now available at SKIMS.com. Visit betterhelp.com/cult to get 10% off your first month.

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in the survey and select our show in the drop down menu that follows. The views expressed on this episode, as with all episodes of Sounds Like A Cult, are solely host opinions and quoted allegations. The content here should not be taken as indisputable fact. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. Hi, sounds like a cold pod. My name is Reese and I'm calling from Columbia, Maryland. And the cold easiest thing about Amazon is how they just actively and openly want to take over the world. If you think about how many industries Amazon has dipped their feet into, they bought whole foods, they own rain cameras, they own good reads, audible, and they run Amazon Web Services,

which basically runs the internet. Like, Amazon wants people to rely on them for everything. That is their goal, and that's Coltie. My name is Maevem from DC. The Coltiest thing about Amazon is how hard it is to leave the Colt of Amazon, even if everything that Amazon does goes against your beliefs. Once you get a prime membership and you start getting the two-day shipping, it's really hard to go back because you go on another website and you realize

that nothing is going to show up to your door as fast. Hi, I'm Robin. I'm calling from Los Angeles. It has terrible working conditions, it's bad for the environment, and we just don't care. This is Sounds Like a Cult, a show about the modern day cults. We all follow. I'm your host Amanda Montel, author of the book's Cultish, The Language of Fanaticism, and the forthcoming The Age of Magical Overthinking. Every week on the show, you're going to hear about a different fanatical fringe group from the cultural zeitgeist, from soul cycle to the supreme court, from goop Youth Groups, from Doomsday Preppers to Theater Kids.

And today, we're gonna be talking about the cult of Amazon, potentially the most gigantic cult we've ever discussed on this podcast. To try and answer the big question, this group sounds like the cults, but is it really? really. Oh hey! Culties! Welcome to the 2024 era of Sounds Like A Cult.

Can you even believe we're back? I'm not done talking about cults. Yes indeed. We're ready to talk about all the many cults that we still have on our spreadsheet. Today we're talking about Amazon, oh my god. How have we not addressed that yet? The season has been so much fun to work on. I've taken so many of your amazing suggestions that you've left in our IG comments.

Go find us. Sounds like a cult pod on Instagram, if you're not already. There's so much discourse there, not for the faint of heart. Without too many spoilers, we've got the cult of Lulu Lemon coming this season. We've got the cult of Hyropropractors coming, the cult of Hollywood. For those who are new here, welcome. Welcome to the cult. It's a cult podcast that talks about cults in a light-hearted joky way.

It's not for everybody. For those who've just been inducted, let me kinda like explain to you maybe for a sec what sounds like a cult even is because it's unique. Sounds like a cult is a lighthearted, yet informative. We try to be show about all of the culty groups that have cropped up in the modern day, zeitgeist. We're talking Disney adults. We're talking Elon Musk stands.

We're talking those ladies on Facebook who are just obsessed with essential oils. A little bit of backstory. I like many people listening who click on a cult podcast and obsessed with the sort of classic cults, the Mansons, the Jones Towns. My dad grew up in a cult,

one of those like 70s compounds, the bad kind, it didn't end well, he's fine. So I had just finished writing this book called Coltish, which is about the language of Colts from Scientology to Soul Cycle. And the idea behind this podcast was kind of to like continue talking about Colts all day long, but with the sort of chatty, fun, co-hosted format

that is often applied to like true crime podcasts, but with the sort of chatty, fun, co-hosted format that is often applied to like true crime podcasts, but isn't always applied to cults. Because it truly just never gets old, sitting around, like shooting the shit about how culty Swifties are, or how ever since your friend started working in finance, you can't help but notice that he seems like he's in a cult. There is Gallows humor in just poking fun at the absurd ways in which people attempt to find community and belonging and identity,

but also there are legitimate points to be made and analysis to be shared about the fact that cultishness can't be avoided in this day and age. We're living through an incredibly turbulent time. I think the cultiest era of all time, you can basically slip and fall into a cult from the comfort of your couch, but as you can tell from the many connotations

that the word cult can have, not every culty group that you might be a part of these days is equally destructive. And that's why on this podcast, we have our three cult categories. So at the end of every episode of Sounds Like A Cult, after we've discussed the Cult of the Week, whether we're talking about child stars

or corporate America, or something really wacky, like the Cult of Feet, or the Cult of heterosexuality. We've got episodes on all kinds of shit. We always land at our cultie verdict, where we ask the ultimate question. This group sounds like a cult, but is it really? And if so, is it a live-your-life, a watcher-back,

or a get-the-fuck-out-level cult? And this is obviously not a real taxonomy system or anything, but I actually think these cult categories are pretty useful because they kind of offer a way to talk about this reality that while Everyone might not fall into the same kind of cult. There is a cult for everyone and It's kind of like a futile effort to try to avoid cultishness at all costs. That's literally how you die alone But you do want to keep an eye out for the groups that are mostly harmless Versus the groups that are mostly harmless versus the groups

that are like maybe a little bit more of a red flag, versus the groups that can potentially ruin your life. So some live your life's that we've discussed in the past are like the cult of peloton or the cult of trade or joes. Some examples of watcher backs that we've done, and there are, oh my god, there are so many watcher backs. The cult of academia, the cult of non-profits, Cult of Academia, the Cult of Non-Profits, the Cult of Astrology, the Cult of Reality TV Families,

although I actually thought that that one was more of a Get the Fuck Out. And that's the thing about these cult categories is that sometimes there's disagreement during the Culty verdict, but some like absolute Get the Fuck Out, no doubt about it, that we've done in the past include the the cult of flat earthers, purity culture. I think we might have even said

the cult of fraternities was a get the fuck out, but like I said, there is definitely room for disagreement and discussion. So for my OG culties and for the newbies too, this season is gonna be a little different. It's just me hosting this time, but to keep it exciting because I know the co-hosted shows are often just more fun to listen to. Every episode is gonna have a different guest host, someone with a unique expertise on the cult of the week,

whether that person is a survivor of the cult or still kind of in it, or a journalist who's reported on the subject, or a fellow podcaster who has done their own obsessive, deep dives into that week's cult and has a fun perspective to share. I want to thank you listeners so much for sticking with the podcast and for giving this season a try. This show means a lot to me. And I'm so grateful that I get to keep doing it.

And I kind of, I handed out this earlier, but the thing too is that this is a divisive show, like just tonally, even on its best day. And it's never gonna click with everyone, but the conversations that the show sparks are something that I think is like really special and fascinating about it. Like, I love when listeners take these cult categories so seriously.

I literally use Live Your Life, watch your back at the fuck out when talking about cults in real life. So yeah, thanks for being here. I've been having the best time our editor, Jordan, who's been with the show for a year now, is a literal angel on the planet. So here is to a Coltie as hell,

2024 in the Live Your Lifeiest Way. Cheers. Starting with a damn bang, because I don't know if I know a single person who's not in today's cold. What's your favorite song? What's your favorite song? What's your favorite song?

Oh my god, the cult of Amazon. This has been on the sounds like a cult list of topics since the very, very beginning of the show, but it's an intimidating subject because there are so many aspects to this cult. As I mentioned, it's literally the biggest one we've ever covered, bigger than the wedding industry, bigger than diet culture even.

It's culty from the consumer angle. It's culty from the employer angle. Where do we get? I mean, from the mistreatment and literal physical harm of the employees who work in Amazon factories to the addictive qualities that make it basically impossible for Prime members to leave all the way to the psychological warfare and superiority complexes ability to sincerely interrogate Amazon's fundamental values called its leadership principles, which you are about to learn all about,

lest you be met with the tagline, it's the Amazon way. Amazon is so gargantuan and so powerful and knows it, that they can basically get away with murder, allegedly, allegedly, metaphorically, metaphorically, not really, not really, but figuratively. And know that they will be fine. It's Amazon. It's the Amazon fucking way.

There have been quite a few exposés written about how culty Amazon is. Maybe not framing it as a cult, but definitely suggesting that. I don't know how many listeners read the Amazon expose that came out in, I think, 2015 in the New York times that really provided a window into how legitimately terrifying it is to work there. One of the cultiest aspects I remember reading about is that according to ex-Amazonians,

Maxims often repeated around the office, like these culty mantras include, where it comes first, life comes second, and trying to find the balance comes last. They're like telling on themselves that they're cult. As Bezos himself wrote in a notorious 1999 shareholder letter, I constantly remind our employees to be afraid to wake up every morning terrified. So all this lore about Amazon's cult like environment, it's well known, especially nowadays, Amazon x X employees, and actually current employees will take to TikTok to divulge their stories, but I've found that there are very few insiders who've come forward with a more kind of formal, exhaustive, and still

very personal account of their experiences in this cult until my special guest, Christy Kulter, who just published her new book called Exit Interview, the life and death of my ambitious career, which is a very candid, funny memoir about her 12 years working at Amazon. Now, I do wanna make the disclaimer that we're obviously not gonna be able to address every single perspective about the Kulter Amazon Amazon because this cult is so fucking massive.

It could legitimately be an entire multi-season podcast on its own, and I would love to listen to that. But I do sincerely hope you enjoy the conversation I had today, in addition to being an ex-Amazonian, Christy is a fiction writer, essayist, and I am so excited to welcome her to the pod today to discuss Amazon. It sounds like a cult, but is it really? And if so, is it a living life, or watch her back, or a get the fuck out of a cult?

["The Future of the World"] ["The Future of the World"] Hi, Amanda. Okay, this is gonna be way too long, so I tried to just stick to a couple things. I am a current employee at Amazon, I work with Impried Video. The cultiest part of Amazon, the first ding ding ding was when I was interviewing and I was told by a friend who already worked there to study the leadership principles as that

was what the interviews were about. After my 15 interviews, I had showed up on my first day and they have been new hire package that takes like 10 to 20 hours a week to complete. The videos and reading pieces heavily feature educations about mindsets and guiding philosophies that Amazonians use every day. These also have specific names and acronyms. Recently, one of the directors I work with told me he doesn't even know what most of the acronyms he uses are and he's asked other people and they don't know either. Another thing is that we all have badges and they have colors associated with how many years you worked at Amazon. So the first is blue, yellow, then red, then purple, then silver I think.

People love talking about their badges and when they get a new one. It's very strange. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ Hello, Christy. Our brave Amazon cold survivor. Thank you so much for joining me. We've been meaning to do this topic for a long time. And actually, there was a moment in sounds like a cult history when we weren't even allowed to do the cult of Amazon. I'm so glad those times are behind us. Yeah, people are talking now and they were not talking before.

Things have changed. Documents are getting leaked. Videos getting leaked. The floodgates have opened. The tape is ripped off our mouths. Exactly. Okay, well first things first, could you introduce yourself and how you're related to the cult of Amazon? My name is Kristi Kulter. I am a Seattle writer who just wrote a book about Amazon and it is about the 12 years that I spent working at Amazon in corporate, which put me in something like the 98th percentile for tenure. Weird legs, but okay.

Somebody made a little job in script to find out like what your tenure was. And the average employee makes it something like 18 months, and I stay for 12 years. You're like the Allison Mack to just be Zosis Keith Reneerie. I mean, I can't deny it. Could you sort of like summarize the story of how you came to work at Amazon to just Bezos' Keith Rinerie. I mean, I can't deny it. Could you sort of like summarize the story of how you came to work at Amazon and what you did there?

So I was 35 and feeling like I was kind of out of runway on my career. I wanted to like do big things. So on a whim, I applied at Amazon and they hired me to my great surprise. It was 2006. So Amazon was already probably the most famous e-commerce store on earth, but the Kindle didn't exist.

A lot of things did not exist. But to me, it still seemed like massive. So we moved to Seattle. And I worked in merchandising there for a few years as the company grew, like these chances to do new things kept popping up So I moved into like an international role and then I moved into Amazon publishing where I ran the translation I'm in somehow I worked in leadership development and then I worked in Amazon Go Which is the weird supermarket where you don't pay I mean you do pay but you don't check out

Which is actually like I still feel caught like about that because it's so, it's so great. Basically, I just kept reinventing myself over and over and over. And Amazon made that possible because they just have a whole cinematic universe of people you can be. Right. The company's so many tentacles now.

You can just basically make yourself into someone new every few years. For me, it was a feature, not a bug, but there were people who were just like, what are you doing? Like, your career makes no sense. And I was like, well, it makes sense to me, kind of. So this is super fascinating, just already, to hear the tone that you bring to talking about Amazon, because it's like, you clearly had some good experiences there. There are some genius elements to Amazon. Obviously, they've come to take over the entire world. They're like the religion that we're all a member of,

whether we want to be or not. Exactly. But then you wrote this expose. And so, for better and for worse, when I say the cult of Amazon, what does that mean off the top to you? We used to joke about drinking the coolate. You have drunk the coolate.

You can't make it otherwise because the place it runs on fear. It runs on having like these really great, hardworking, smart people. I think they're never quite good enough. Like that is how the company gets things done. A friend said it's where overachievers go to feel bad about themselves.

It's like this place where you're constantly thinking, I'm gonna be good enough, just next week. Next week I'm gonna be good enough. Next month I'm gonna get everything done. And to me that's very cult-like because it's almost like this self-improvement journey that you're supposed to be on so that you'll finally get the pad on the shoulder. Totally.

You know, you don't get thanked a lot in Amazon. I mean, like I had bosses, you know, and coworkers who were wonderful and thanked me and said, good job, but you really don't get it in like an institutional way. You're always just a few steps away from being acceptable. To me, that's really cult like

and the company also runs on these leadership principles. A lot of companies have like mission statements and principles that they just ignore. They are embedded in Amazon. They got embedded in my private life. I still think about them. I've been out for five years and sometimes I'll be like, well, I just need to disagree and commit in this situation. It's like having the 10 commandments or something. Of course. Oh my god. You know, it's kind of like there's ways in which they commandments or something. Of course, oh my God. You know, it's kind of like there's ways in which they were really useful.

And then there's ways in which looking back, I'm like, wow, that was weird that we were all just parroting the stuff. Yeah, so my understanding of the leadership principles are essentially these 14 hackneyed values, right? Could you recite some that are like, have grit? Yeah, there's a lot that are kind of like typical thing big, you know, don't think small that you would see

in a lot of companies. The ones that are very Amazon, like one is called have backbone, disagree and commit, right? And basically, this one's really was often misunderstood. That's the other thing is the company grew. We went from like, you know, 5,000 of us having more or less a shared understanding of what all it's all meant to like people who were just winging it and like getting it all wrong. So if you disagree with the direction that's being set, the idea is that you're supposed to have the backbone to stand up and say so. Even if

to your vice president who's setting the direction, Amazon values that kind of conflict, what they call productive conflict, whether it's productive is in the eye of the holder. Oh my God. Oh, it makes me so stressed. Like it churns my stomach thinking about going to work and being like, what kind of productive conflict can I stir up today?

What kind of arguments did I get into? I mean, one of my bosses used to be like, you know, I wish you would argue with me. I would need to feel comfortable arguing with me when I'm wrong. And I was in truth. I said, you know, I do. When you're wrong, I will argue with you. You know, I think you're right. A lot of the time. And that was part of the problem is I think people felt like they needed to disagree just to be shown disagreeing, which is very like tech bro, which we can get into. But so disagreeing commit, which usually means disagreeing

verbally, you know, in a meeting in front of people. But then the commit part is like, okay, and this is reasonable. It's like at some point a decision's gonna be made. If you've had to say and it didn't go your way, you still need to get on board. And people would misunderstand that and they'd be like,

well, I'm committing to disagree. Oh my God, I mean, it reminds me of how people interpret the Bible to me mean whatever they wanted to mean conveniently, right? Exactly. So we are hardly the first people to point out that Amazon sounds like a cult, but sometimes when people write about cults, even cults and scare quotes, the things that they call out as culty aren't necessarily the most dangerous aspects, like they might be the most sort of bizarre or cinematic, but not necessarily the most sinister. I was wondering if you could share what reporters or even other outsiders have gotten wrong

in the past about the cultiest parts of working at Amazon. So, there was a time about 10 years ago when everyone had a copy of Orwell's 1984 on their Kindle and they woke up one day and it was gone. What had happened was literally like, it was a non-copy-righted edition. It was taken down because when Amazon finds non-copy-righted books, they take them out of the catalog or something. And because it hadn't happened in a long time, no one had thought through like what it would look like

to take it off people's kindles rather than just stop selling it. It was just a pure coincidence that it had to be 1984. I mean we walked around being like, are you fucking kidding me? So in the blogosphere people were like, this is Amazon's way of sending a message that they control all the ideas in the me. So in the blogosphere, people were like, this is Amazon's way of sending a message that they control all the ideas in the world. So there were all these times that we were just like, you guys know, we just screwed up. That's all, it's not as bad as it was.

That is often the explanation whenever something happens with a celebrity or a company that looks like a conspiracy. Yeah, but I also understood. I was like, well, if you're already freaked out about the amount of control Amazon has over the marketplace, then of course you're gonna see something bad here. Totally, it's like the satanic panic but for Amazon.

Exactly, exactly. And you just got to be like, okay, well, they think we did this to send a message and we just fucked up. So then what are some of the things that didn't look culty but actually were? A lot of it is the way that you really are expected for the job to subsume everything. Nobody says it, they don't have to because it's just in the culture where you just see how others are acting.

You know, you leave the office and like routinely everyone goes home and they have dinner and then they're back on up. Maybe they're back online till midnight. Maybe they're back on until two. Maybe they're about 5 a.m. to catch up on email. And I remember one time I was on a team that was just hanging by a thread. And my VP had our senior VP come into talk to us. And I actually really liked this guy a lot.

I thought he was great. I wish you were CEO now. We had a great little just fun meeting talking about stuff. And then he said, you guys, you know, you've gotta have a balanced life. That means a few times a year, you leave at 5.30 on a Friday to see your family.

Do it. Oh my God, the bar is solo. It's solo. And I looked at my boss's face and I could see that he was like, this is not what I thought you were going to say, you know? And I was just kind of horrified. So there was just this understanding

that nothing else really mattered. There was also a really deep belief in meritocracy. I think meritocracy is a, I don't know if you talked about in the podcast, but meritocracy is a cult of its own. You know, so if you're not succeeding, you might not want it enough. So Amazon, it's like 50, 50 male female at entry level, but then by the time you get to manager, it's like 66% male or something like that.

I was like sort of upper middle management. It was almost 75% male, 25% female. So women just start vanishing. Oh my God, what a sound, my God. Just a mirror. Yeah. If I was dealing with the people I represented who were usually a couple levels down,

I'd be looking at a room full of men and women, but at senior leadership, I mean, it was just like, oh, there's the other lady. Hi, how are you? You look nice today. It was really insidious because it's not the kind of place where men are like, well, we're the only ones who can do this job. Like they've convinced themselves that it's because of meritocracy and that if women wanted

those jobs, they'd be rising to the top. And so you can't really argue with someone when they think they're already a gallotarian. They say things like, well, women are too smart to want these jobs. And it's like, oh, come on, it's that software being like, well, the reason women don't have these jobs is they don't want them. And it was like, no, no, no, actually, I would like that power of money and influence.

Yeah, that's why I'm here. Yeah, it's like, I'm not a fucking martyr. Exactly, exactly. Can you talk about that sort of tech row culture at Amazon? I mean, every company in Silicon Valley has its own flavor of tech row, but what was the flavor at Amazon? Was there like a type of cult follower that you could identify? It's a little different than in like California tech where you would hear about these like hot tub orgies and stuff like. Oh no, we're not gonna hear about an Amazon hot tub orgie right now.

Amazon is a very, I remember thinking, you know, I was married as a little older, but I remember being like, I don't even have a work crush here. There's something very asexual about Amazon as an environment. Do they all kind of look like Bezos a little bit? I like sometimes when you picture like a very conformist cold. You see a bunch of people who are like modeling themselves after the leader. I'm seeing like a lot of Patagonia vests. There were a lot of Patagonia vests,

but like when I first met Jeff, Jeff looked really different than he does now. I mean, he was already bald or close to bald, but he kind of wore like chinos and a button down shirt. But I think real tech bros, like the younger people who were just entry level, like they would come to work virtually in pajamas, which Jeff did not do,

or men would wear Utila kilts. I'm sorry, what? Do you know what that is? A Utila kiln, I don't know if they still make them, but there's a whole store in Seattle for them. They're about 400 bucks. It's a kill, but it's kind of like, if a kill were also cargo pants.

It's not. It's not. It's something I'm making this up. So there was a certain kind of guy who is Utila Kill to be like, I'm alternative, you know. And vibrant five finger shoes. Oh my God, the toe shoes. Yeah.

If that doesn't look like a call, I don't know what is a Utila kill and a five finger shoe. The end. Don't. No, I see your satanic robe and I raise you a Utila kill. Exactly. They were very outdoorsy. All the men were like trained, you know, I'm training for a 100 mile bike race.

And very almost like friendly military officers. Like everybody is so overwhelmed and everyone has at least two full-time jobs. And so there's this real like briskness. Like, okay, well, let's table that and move on to this. Generally a fairly friendly place, but in a very no nonsense kind of way. So utilitarian.

Utilitarian. Yeah, okay. And something important about Amazon also is that it is an incredibly austere workplace. So when people talk about Google with like the free food and laundry services, I mean, we had none of that. Early on, we didn't even have a cafeteria in most of our buildings.

The desks, arm door desks basically. What is that? A door desk is like, if you took some two by fours or some like legs and just got a door and just made a desk out of it. Oh my God, a door desk. A door desk. No, my dad had one in college, yep.

Yeah, it started because when Jeff started Amazon, he started it like in his parents garage. And so they were like, well, let's make a couple desks, you know, made sense. And by the time I started working there, the rumor was that it actually costs more money to have those door desks made and assembled than it would have to just have a contract with IKEA

or something, you know. Right, but it was symbolic of our frugality. So it's like Jesus, blessed be the poor. Yeah, but like low keykey blessed be the rich. It kind of sucked because I had this really cute masonry skirt I've gotten on consignment. And like I snagged it on my fucking door desk. Women were always complaining about like having clothes

ruined on their door desk. Because they just weren't like sanded downright? They were not sanded down at all. Oh my. Okay, so like obviously with the Google ball pits and the massage therapists and all those in office perks that kind of don't exist anymore. Like my brother works in tech

and that's not part of the equation anymore. Everyone's like downsizing and laying off and whatever. But like Amazon was never doing that. So how did they create this culture of like you are so fucking blessed to be here if not with free lunch. Basically, fear.

It was like, you were lucky to have this job. And of course, Google did those things largely to keep people at work. You don't need to go home. You have dinner, catered here. Amazon basically is like, you will give us your all or you won't work here anymore. And also, Amazon paid really well. For a lot of my time there, I was making more money than I would have at Google or Facebook because most of my comp was based on stock,

like 70% of it or something, and the stock was going insane. So they would award me a certain number of stock shares at a certain price, and then the stock would double in the next six months. And I would get to cash in on that. So I think mage or golden handcuffs at Amazon. I mean, it got to the point that like, your inside life was incredibly austere. Like you travel for Amazon and stay at like these absolutely lousy hotels that you would never stay at in real life. And then your real life was really nice because you were rich. But do you even have a real life? Because all your free time is just whispering half-grit, half-grit, half-grit to yourself and taking down the minutes till you get back to your

door desk. But you have a nice car to drive there. The austerity became very cult-like. I was leading a group of men on a leadership retreat. These were like directors and vps and we took them to this retreat center in Washington, that's just nice. It's not fancy, it's kind of rustic, but it's comfortable because we wanted them to be able to focus and feel well fed and well rested. They were all like at dinner, they were like, this feels weird, like this is too nice.

We should be spending this money on customers. Which is the thing, it's always like, and thinking about these guys, I'm like, I know you all live in like McManchons and the suburbs. You were used to being comfortable. What I found was that as I made more and more money, you know, you start to feel like, well, I always need to make this much money.

I mean, there's like very good reasons in America to make a lot of money. Like, it solves a lot of problems. I got a full vote. There are very good reasons in America to make a lot of money. Like, when people are like, oh, money doesn't buy happiness.

I'm like, well, no, maybe but lack of money can cause a lot of anxiety and a lot of real problems in this country. This is true. I will say, you know, I am continuously thinking about the relationship between money and happiness because there is some like conventional wisdom that says like, past the point of 70 grand a year. But I think now it must be more, we'll call it 90. Yeah. In the economy, but there is some research reflecting that like beyond 70 or 90K,

your happiness won't increase. Right. But then there are like plenty of memes and tweets being like, uh, try me. Exactly. Exactly. But anyway, there's this very extreme sort of culty belief that is perpetuated in Silicon Valley

that having gargantuan sums of money represents something existential about your worth as a person. Yeah. Like, if you aren't either disgustingly wealthy or trying to become disgustingly wealthy, what is even the point of your life? Which is obviously like a very, very damaging mentality. That will also keep you trapped in that cult. Okay, Coltis, I want to share a little tidbit with you. It's about my new book, The Age of Magical Overthinking, Notes on Modern Arr irrationality. It comes out April 9th.

It is my Roman Empire, it's my entire personality, it's my cult. Every chapter of the book is dedicated to a different cognitive bias. Some of the most famous ones include like confirmation bias and some cost fallacy. And I use each of these as a lens to explore some mysterious irrationality

plaguing the broader zeitgeist and my own life from how this cognitive bias called the halo effect can explain the intense cycles of celebrity worship and the thrown mint that we see in contemporary culture, and how that behavior connects to our attachment styles with our own parents, to how a cognitive bias called the recency illusion can explain the ways that we like ir rationally panic in response to the news or social media conflicts. Anyone who's enjoyed episodes of this podcast

on the Cult of Toxic Relationships, the Cult of Instagram therapists, the Cult of Self Help, I think you will really enjoy the book and I'm narrating the audiobook myself. I'm actually recording it this month. A few advanced copies have already started trickling their way into the world, meaning that the book is already being read. One reader said, if you've ever felt like the universe sent you a divinely ordained message in the form of a

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So what were those sort of unspoken promises of what being associated with Amazon would give you? Yeah, well, just like any company, you weren't really supposed to be like, well, I'm here partly for the money. Like, I'm here for my divine purpose of merchandising. I'm not here for money. Exactly.

I just want to manage programs and products like that's what I was put on earth to do. A lot of people at Amazon, and this is a true thing, kind of thrived on the chaos for a while. I got to work on crazy shit at Amazon, like a supermarket where you don't check out. I loved doing that. That was so much fun. Yeah, it's the future. It's the future. And like Amazon was investing. And Amazon had the patience to be like, okay, we still believe in

what you're doing. We know it's taking longer than you plan. But yeah, here's another 30 million dollars, you know, hire some more people. I would come home sometimes when my husband would be like, oh, my friends start up closed. And I was like, well, why don't they just get more investors? And he was like, you know, at some point, you just ran out of money. And I was, oh, really? Because you forget.

Because an Amazon that never happened. No, like if he believed in something, you didn't run out of money. You know, occasionally we would shut things down, like the phone did not last forever. We heard eat our own dog food a lot. What on earth does that mean? It basically means like, oh, we should also shop on Amazon

or like there were people who firmly believed everyone at Amazon should be using a fire phone. And I mean, must was for like, that, no, I think you're not. If you want to give me one, sure, but I'm not going to buy one. Eat our own dog food. Eat our own dog food, Which is such a gross.

This was another thing about Amazon. They had this way of just making things ugly. I mean, look at the interface. Amazon is one ugly-ass mother fucking website and I can tell they take pride in it. That could be a beautiful website, but maybe that's not the value. I remember the international teams

because I would go and work with them and they were always like, especially in Asia, they would show me their competitors' websites. They had these beautiful graphics and things that they didn't we need this. And I would have to explain like, well, you know, Amazon doesn't believe in that. And it does slow page loading. I mean, it's a good reason for it, but we also were ignoring the fact that to look legitimate, like in Japan, to look legitimate with your competitors, you needed that. It just looked like Amazon couldn't afford designers or something.

Yeah, but that's like an aesthetic now. I mean, there is something very much like, I'm too cool to care about the Amazon utilitarian look. They also often call writing and design fluff. There was this belief that in fact, this was one of the cult-like beliefs. They'd be like anyone with a college degree should be able to write flawless copy. But for years, we had three copy editors for the entire company. I mean, for like 300 merchandisers, it was awful. That really does feel like a super irrational culty belief and not a fact because Apple, hello, cult of Apple, anyone listening to that episode?

They care about copy and beauty and they're the richest company in the world. So, stuck on that Amazon. Was there generally a lot of expecting people to do tasks that they weren't qualified for at Amazon? Because that feels cult like too, you know, there's gotta be a difference between pushing people to learn, grow, explore their potential, and creating a breeding ground for a bunch of like mini-Elizabeth home types, right? Like I'm just curious to know more about

the expectations of employees as cult followers of sorts. When I got there, there were probably four or five thousand employees in Seattle, which I'd come from a company of 250. So it seemed overwhelming to me, but it was actually small enough that someone could be like, oh, do you know Joe in catalog and you'd be like, oh, yeah, I kind of know that guy. You know, so there was a sense of personal connection like these senior VPs knew who I was

and knew my name, they would think of me for assignments. And as the company grew, you know, we got into all these little subcultures and I remember early on we always said don't hire someone you can't imagine in two or three different jobs over time because you know it's like things change and but and I remember having to fight like when I was acquiring editors for Amazon publishing you know we were interviewing people from like, Harlequin, they edit romance novels. And I would have to fight with people who were like, but they won't be able to do multiple jobs here. To be like, I know, you're right, they won't.

And that is okay. I was like, I need the best people. I need like the best people from Harlequin and Kensington. And to their credit, they came around, but it's turned around their brains around it. But what happened is that all the leadership principles and things just got more and more, just words you had heard somewhere,

like a game of telephone. So people were sort of reciting them, but like I early on, I would have regular exposure to Jeff Bezos himself, talking about these things. And he's really smart. And I would be like, oh, I never thought of it that way. And so when you don't have that, it just gets kind of like more and more diffuse.

And the fear, I think, and the systems got out of control. Like, you lose the sense of nuance when you think about like hiring, firing. We used to do the thing called the lifeboat exercise, which is not pleasant, where you sit in a room and you rank all your people. Like a whole org, so all the managers would rank all the people in the org under us from most valuable to least valuable.

And the idea, and this was like common in tech at the time, was that that bottom like 10 to 20%, you needed to figure out a way to either make them better or get them out. And it's awful. It's a terrible thing. And everyone in the room, I think, except for a few like actual sociopaths,

was uncomfortable. But when it was a smaller or you at least, you all kind of knew these people. And you could be like, well, I know he really screwed that up. But what about this other thing? You know, it was more human. It was much more human. But, you know, as you grow, it just becomes be like, well, I know he really screwed that up, but what about this other thing? You know, it was more human. It was much more human. But, you know, as you grow, it just becomes more like, okay, well, you got to come up with 10% and the problem was we really hired well.

So like the people in that 10% could be really solid. They just weren't superstars. And so there was this idea that everyone at Amazon needed to be a star. You couldn't just be like good at your job, really reliable, rock solid learning, and like not wanting to take over the world. And that is so destructive. It's one thing if it's entry-level people, you really do want hunger and fire in those people. But like at some point, like maybe you're just a really good person, and like we're gonna get rid of, maybe you're just a really good person and we're gonna get rid of you because you're not a rock star?

Yes, oh my God, this reminds me of something I wanted to bring up earlier, which is that it sounds like at Amazon, there was such a sense of like, we're better than everyone else on the outside. Oh yeah. Despite Amazon being a legitimately structured company, its mentality is extremely MLM, you know,

like it demands that you make the impossible, possible, that you become superhuman. And you can use that sense of superiority that you're instilling in people as an excuse to abuse them. Yeah, like there was this sense that you needed to constantly be improving. If you got to thank your praise for something you've done

five minutes later, be like, well, what have you done since then? Which is, it's incredibly stressful, you know? It sounds like you couldn't even work at Amazon without like serious mommy and daddy issues. I do think if there was a common personality trait, I mean, it's like how many hundreds and thousands of people now, but it was this like, you've always gotten approval for being like diligent and good at what you do and smart, and you just want that again, but now you're with a lot of people who are just the same,

and it was just vicious. Honestly, I mean, I knew people like men who were like masters of the universe, you know, the alpha men, and when you feel get to know them, like, they would tell you, like, they were terrified all the time, you know, they didn't feel like they were ever good enough, you know, it's just everywhere. And with the women, I found the best women were constantly sure that they were about to be fired. Like these would be women where you really could not imagine the team without them,

like they were so valuable. And it was actually, it was funny. It was exhausting to me as a female boss to work with women because if there were men who worked for me who were terrified, like I rarely saw it. But the women, I think also because we would be close. I mean, maybe something tiny went wrong and they'd be like, do you still believe in me? And I was like, yes! I mean, that sounds like trauma. Yeah. And while like that might have been more exhausting to deal with in the day to day, the keeping it in a bottle is worse. That is way worse. Like when you don't allow men to

experience and express the full range of emotions, in the end, you do get sociopaths, Donald Trump, Charles Manson. But who were the cult leaders at Amazon? Of course, there's Jeff Bezos and I want to talk about him. But then like who were the cult leaders at Amazon? Of course, there's Jeff Bezos, and I wanna talk about him, but then who were the types of people who really, really rose through the ranks? Like what sorts of people were they? Yeah, well, they were men almost invariably, and they generally had pretty classic business school backgrounds.

They'd gone to like one of two or three, like Stanford or Thunderbird, the big business schools. And they were just kind of emotionless. Like they could be pleasant to deal with, but they were relentless about work and they were extremely data focused. I remember being told, we never write or say we feel, we say we think like, you couldn't say we feel we believe.

So they were just like these Generally affable automaton's but they would like fully murder someone if the data supported it I think so yeah, and these guys almost invariably had like a wife who stayed at home and these wives were like people with Harvard Law degrees I mean, it's not like they had married some girl off the farm But they would always be like what we decided it just made more sense for her to be the one to stay home with the kids. The data. Yeah, the data. So it's like that. Oh my God.

So then, like, what was Bayzo's like as a cult leader? And would you like classify him as a cult leader of sorts because I would. I mean, I think there's no denying it. I mean, there's no, I don't know that he would think of himself as a cult leader but who does? Who does? You know, it's weird because like, I, you know, he would think of himself as a call leader, but who does? Who does? It opens.

It's weird because I spent a fair amount of time with him in person, and I found that very likable, honestly, as a good call leader should be. Exactly, he's charismatic, and he's in this geeky way. He's very charismatic. He's funny, he laughs a lot. I always felt like he was respectful to me. We've all heard stories about Jeff going off on people in meetings.

I mean, it's like it can only be terrifying to be in a room with someone who is the richest man in the world. He got stranger and stranger over the years, you know? I think he got more detached from the day to day. And I remember one time I hadn't seen him in person in probably two years. And I was in a meeting with him. And he came in and I was like, he's jacked. Like this was the Jeff Bezos we know now. You know, we're like, he's really muscular.

And I was like, what happened? And he was wearing all black and his head was like all shiny. And he still acted kind of the same, but I was like, something's changed. Like there was definitely a point where Jeff realized he had a lot of money. And he became like a persona, like a larger than life figure. Like he started having security around him all the time and they were very low key, but I kind of had to figure it out.

I was like, who are these guys just hanging outside the meeting room? And I was like, Oh, right, these are bodyguards. Dude, it reminds me. I swear to God, it reminds me so much of Chuck Deidrick, who is the leader of the cult that my dad was in synonym. He got more eccentric and more eccentric over the years and he eventually surrounded himself with his own little army called the Imperial Marines. And like, that's what happens when your cult has legs, when it's able to go on for years

and years, is that like, if you don't have the sort of like restraint and humility to step back or to step down or be like, this is maybe too much power, whether it's in a spiritual sense or in a capitalist sense, then you're just gonna become weirder and cultier over time. And you're gonna be cut off from normal people too. Like I always heard people say it was when he started

spending more and more time in LA when Amazon Studios spun up. I would have fun, I love LA, go to LA every year. And I'd say, but I'm not in Jeff's LA. If you look at his first wife, Mackenzie, like she was just like, I've met her a normal person, she was a novelist. He was never gonna go to Coachella

with Mackenzie in a helicopter. Like, I'm just, that's just right. What's like gonna happen? What's like gonna happen? What's like gonna happen? What's like gonna happen? What's like gonna happen? Hi, my name is Beth from Ohio

and I think the Colties thing about Amazon is how hard they try and get you to rejoin pride after you drop it. Hi, my name is Selma. I live in Colorado. I think the Colties thing about Amazon is it's common knowledge. Not bad there for small businesses.

And yet, a lot of us still feel dependent on them. Hi, sounds like a cult. This is Charlotte calling from London. And I think the cultiest thing about Amazon is that they're kind of creating like company towns around the world, but namely in the US. I think that's pretty horrible because it makes an entire population of people reliant on a single company. And if Amazon were to ever go under, thousands of lives would be

affected and people would probably have to move. Hey, Colties, my name is Katie from Spokane, Washington, and I worked for an Amazon reseller in agency for five years. There were so many people who would put their entire livelihoods into reselling products on Amazon. And whenever you have that many people using one platform to make their entire livelihoods, I think that in itself is quite Coltie. in itself is quite cold tea. What do you think is the worst cold tea thing that Amazon has already done from a corporate standpoint, and where do they go from here? I think the worst thing they've done is abuse probably hundreds of thousands of warehouse workers.

There is real abuse going on at my level, which was a fancy corporate level. But I mean, they're literally running out of people to work in the warehouses, because like people are getting injured so much, they're having to pee and bottles. They're, I mean, it's just bad, bad, bad. And I don't see any end to that. They're trying to squash the unions.

How does Amazon's cultish energy extend to the consumer side? I think for people what they've done to become a cult is they've made this like ecosystem where everything kind of exists within Amazon. You know like prime, it's almost like prime has become a cult. Like when I joined Amazon Prime meant you got fast shipping, you know, and now as a branding person I'm just like what is prime Like, I would not have described it. Like, it's this idea that Amazon can fulfill all your needs. They now have like, concierge medical service.

There's a pharmacy, which is excellent. I have to say. And so they get you swept up in this world where you just, you're dependent on them for just daily things. I know you can't escape them. Like, I tried for like two years not to have an Amazon account,

but it's just like not possible. Right. Like they've taken over if I wanna like watch a news piece for research for my book, but also if I need flea medication delivered overnight for my pets, all those things happen on Amazon all at once. I think I finally I bet the bullet and I reassigned up for prime. I mean, if I want like a weird kind of spatula, when I want it fast or something,

I can either fight Seattle traffic to maybe find this thing somewhere or Amazon can put it on my porch five or six hours later. So it just becomes like, what is my time worth? I also think that something people don't think about often is that even if they don't use Amazon, maybe half the websites they do use are AWS websites. Like Amazon is the back end of a lot of, so like in a lot of ways, you could be,

and there are people out there who are like vigilant about not using anything Amazon. And that becomes their whole personality. And that is like, I hate Amazon. It's just like, oh my God. I went to see Manchester by the sea in the movie theater seven years ago, whenever it came out.

It was like Kenneth Lonergan, like this renowned filmmaker, he's great. And Amazon was the executive producer. And when the Amazon name came up on the screen, people booed in the audience. This is the opening credits. And I was like, you know, you guys presumably voluntarily came to this theater

because you want to see this movie, right? It's not like Hollywood's just throwing money at Kenneth Lonergan, like his previous film was held hostage by Harvey Weinstein for like six years. Dude, I will have to say, up several years ago, I got to be someone's plus one to the Golden Globes. And I went to the Amazon Golden Globes after party. That was the place to be.

It was like the Netflix after party, sucked, that was like B team. It was all about the Amazon Questlove DJ. Like that was where it was fucking at. Because that's the thing. It's like, we hate Amazon. Obviously, we fucking hate it. But like, we love it.

And what do we do with that? So then, let me ask kind of a more practical question. The abuse of the factory workers, unspeakable. Like that's beyond exploitative. What can consumers do who like actually in their hearts care about people not being mistreated in a cultish way like that? Like what can we do?

I mean, I think consumers can decide that maybe they don't need everything right away. I think a lot of the warehouse stuff is just that they are trying to fulfill these promises that have just become crazy and I'm as susceptible to them as anyone. If consumers didn't want things in two days, people wouldn't have to deliver things in two days, you know. Totally. I really think that it's just like this consumers have to think about like, what am I enabling? Or they have to somehow, and this would probably come through shareholder or government action, really. That's what needs to happen. Like to say, hey, Amazon, you can do the two-day delivery thing,

but you're gonna have to figure out a way to either do it with like robotics or treat people well. But I think that honestly, it's government regulation. Living in Seattle, I often hear people say, because we've had a huge homelessless problem. Why doesn't Jeff Bezos just build a house for every homeless person in Seattle? My tech brain always sticks first. Like, he would have to spin up a foundation and blah, blah, blah, blah. But more to the point, it's like, why aren't you asking the government to tax him

at a level where then the government can do what it's supposed to do? They're a fucking ass. We don't want philanthropists, like housing people. We want the government to do a job. That's the capitalist mindset, you know, it's like that's a private solution to a public problem. Exactly. And I think the lines between public and private have become really blurry in this like late stage capitalist hell escape. I mean, the city council had passed a head

tax here in Seattle for any business over like a large gross. It was basically the Amazon head tax, you know, and then they turned around five days later and said, oh no, never mind because Amazon threatened to stop building on one building in downtown. And I was just like, you guys, you've got to have balls at some point. Yeah, have backbone, have backbone. And that's what I would tell consumers to do, is like they need to vote for representatives who believe in paying for services and holding corporations accountable.

And I'm not a communist, you know, like I have sort of resigned to capitalism is here. And I think it could be a lot better regulated and a lot more contained. And it's still going to be a wildly imperfect system. I don't think even boycats will work. You would have to have such a vast number of people boycotting Amazon.

I'm like the boring lady in her 50s who is like, we need incremental solutions that involve policy and things improving a bit at a time. Well, we need the boring incrementalism lady in the same room as the radical boycater in the same room as the radical boycottter in the same room as the hypercapitalist because we all need to be able to have discussions and find consensus together.

I mean, call me a fucking optimist, but that's a world I would like to see. And that's how we combat modern cultishness. Okay. A major cult red flag that can put something in the Get the Fuck Out level category is when there is no exit strategy. Your memoir is called Exit Interview. Yeah. Could you talk about like what the exit path

for an Amazon employee looks like and how did you end up leaving? I left partly because I had a literary career starting, but I was like, you know, if you're gonna write a book about Amazon, like you should leave. Like just ethically, like you're just gonna to want to, you're going to want to go. You can't. So the book was part of why you left. The part of it. But also I had been told for like the 15th time that I was a year away from promotion.

And then we had a reorg and my boss put someone at my level over me, meaning he would have to get promoted to the next level before I could get promoted. and my boss put someone at my level over me, meaning he would have to get promoted to the next level before I could get promoted. It's like how a Scientologist can never really go clear. Exactly. And I remember my boss being like, no, you know, something would get promoted.

And I was so frustrated that he hadn't even thought it through. I was like, okay, I just gotta go. And then I expected to get an exit interview. I was given like a form to fill out and not an in-person exit interview. And then like, our tech was so shitty internally that it lost my form.

Stop it. Yeah. And so that's what I was like, well, I guess I'm writing my exit interview. I was trying to make the connection between like how the culture within Amazon seeps out into the culture of Amazon consumers. And the lack of humanity is I think truly the connection because again there's like that utilitarian

aspect, that data-driven aspect to the company itself, no frills, no emotions, and that's how consumers use the website. It's like, no humans involved. There's just no humanity in how we engage with the website just the way that there's no humanity at the company itself. I was just so shocked that like nobody wanted to sit down and just have a real, it's all like I was gonna go

in there ramping, just have a real conversation with me. And then the fact that the technology was so bad, you know, we had such terrible equipment internally that I was like, oh, come on, this is perfect. Like, this is a perfect ending. But I was gonna have my say. Amazon trained me to be vocal and to disagree and commit and to like speak up.

But it sounds like compared to certain cults that we cover, it wasn't like impossible to leave. I mean, yes, you had dedicated so many years, but it sounds like you were able to kind of pursue your passions and write outside of work. And that's why it's so important. If you're a member of some kind of cult, whether it's like Soul Cycle or whatever it is,

Swifties, what have you, to have other interests and passions and outside opinions in the mix so that if you do have to interests and passions and outside opinions in the mix so that if you do have to get the fuck out of that thing at some point, you have somewhere to go. It's so important. You know, a lot of people leave Amazon for another job, of course.

You just bounce around from tech company and tech company. But I know a lot of people who were just like, I just had to go. I just had to go. And I had to take six months off because I couldn't even think. And you have usually the financial cushion to do that. But I mean, that's the thing about Amazon

is like people wash out before they've even at the point where they still have to pay back their signing bonus, you know? Oh my God, they just like zombie walk out of there like pale in the face. Like fine, I'll pay you back my $20,000 or they wash out before their stock starts besting because that takes a couple of years, you know? So people sometimes don't even make it to the point

that they start saying like real financial rewards. And I'm like more power to them. I know, I was about to say I admire that cut your fucking losses. Exactly, exactly. That's why I think if you go in, especially if you're young and you're at a level where you're really in learning mode

You can learn so much, but just have a strategy. I didn't. I already had like shaking up self-esteem But I was just like, well, maybe they'll let me work here. You know, I didn't understand how good I was I was really fucking good at my job. Well, that's what a cult does to you. It makes you feel like you don't have value anywhere else. Yeah, I mean, I really was convinced that if I left Amazon, nobody else would hire me. Now that I've written a book, maybe nobody else would hire me. I mean, I made a different career. Well, fuck them. Right, right, right.

Has Amazon tried to retaliate in any way? They have not. I was worried, of course, but it's a literary memoir, so it's purely my own experience. And I was very, you know, of course, but it's a literary memoir, so it's purely my own experience, and I was very, you know, of course, Bookshave, Legal Reviews and everything. Nope, they've been cool, they're selling it, they're not drawing extra attention to it. You know, I've had VPs that Amazon write to me

and be like, I can't say this publicly, but it's amazing, it's perfect you nailed it, thank you. And like, they're not actually that litigious accompany. Okay, cool. Well, I'm glad to hear that for the purposes of this episode. Me too. Now's the time. And it sounds like a cult episode where we're gonna play

a little game. I am very excited about this game. We've never played it before on Sounds Like A Cult. It's a version of two truths in a lie. Okay. So here's how it's gonna work. I am endlessly flabbergasted by the fact that you can buy literally anything on Amazon

and give it a rating out of five stars, including resources for how to start a cult. So when I search how to start a cult on Amazon, a number of very disturbing resources come up in the search results. I am going to read sets of three search results that come up when you search how to start a cult. And you're gonna have to identify which one

is not the real Amazon product. So it's kind of like two truths that allow but it's like two real products. Okay, the first round, which one of these is the fake how to start a cold Amazon product? A free Kindle book titled, how to use deception to recruit cult members, three reviews, 4.5 stars.

A DVD course called, Satanic Rituals for Curious Beginners, six reviews, 3.5 stars. Or a composition notebook that says, let's start a cult on the cover and features a drawing of the Kool-Aid mascot, no reviews yet. I hope that one's real.

That's amazing. I am going to guess the DVD is a lie. That is correct. The DVD curse on satanic rituals. That is not a real. But the free Kindle book called How to Use Deception to Recruit cult members is real and has three reviews.

And I not surprised, I was like, oh, that'll definitely be real because like if it's not illegal or like blatantly immoral, starting a cult is not illegal. Right, it's the whole thing. They'd be like, well, we're gonna start.

And why is starting a cult not illegal? Because it's hard to even identify what a cult is? I was gonna say because no one really knows what a cult is until it's definitely a cult. Yeah. Round number two, two real cult products in a big one, which is the fake. A T-shirt that reads, Cult Leader Follow Me, one rating, five stars. A book titled, Dark Psychology and Manipulation, Discover

Forty Covert Emotional Manipulation Techniques, Mind Control, and Brainwashing, 937 ratings, 4.4 stars, or a wall poster outlining how to destroy the government, five ratings, five stars. I am going to guess the middle one sounds like a pickup artist stars. I am going to guess the middle one sounds like a pickup artist manual. I'm gonna guess the poster is fake. You are correct. I want to make love for a long time.

Yeah, I know. You would win this game. Yeah. What was the first one again? So it was like, a T-shirt that reads, Cole Leader follow me. I can totally envision that.

That's real. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, last round. Two true products in a fake. When you type in a Hattest article, a number of suggested results that are shocking for other reasons come up, which one is the life?

An audiobook titled, Start a Five-O-One C3-Nom profit that doesn't ruin your life, 838 ratings, 4.5 stars. That comes, that maybe comes up when you search how to start a goal. That's amazing. I know people who've started 513Cs

who ended up being like, this ruined my life. So, I totally see that. So it's basically how to start non-profit without ruining your life, that's option one. Option two, a book titled, How to Start a House of Worship for the Religious Entrepreneur. 32 ratings, 4.4 stars. Third option, an audiobook titled YouTube Secrets,

the Ultimate Guide to Growing Your Following and Making Money as a Video Influencer, 3,346 ratings, 4.6 stars. Man, these all sounds so plausible. The cynic in me wants to think the religious entrepreneur one is real, but I'm gonna guess that's fake. It was a trick question. Your instincts were right. They're all real.

They're all real. They're all real. They're all real. And not only do all of those things come up when you search how to start a cult, but also an audio book called Big Podcast, Grow Your Podcast Audience, Build, Listen, or Loyalty, and Get Everybody Talking About Your Show. Show us up when you start how to start a cold. Okay, my very last question is the following, Christie. Out of our three cold categories, live your life, watch your back, and get the fuck out.

Which do you think the cult of Amazon falls into? For the right person, it's watch your back. For the large majority people, it's going to be get the fuck out. Really explain, yeah. it's going to be, get the fuck out. Really? Explain. Yeah. I think Amazon for people who go in and I'm thinking about employees, you know, knowing what they want and having an exit strategy and just like sticking with it, being like, I'm going to be here for three years. I want X, Y, and Z. And then I'm going. They will learn a lot. It's great on your resume. You'll be higher bowl. You'll be smarter. You'll be a little richer.

Most people are not that person. Most people are gonna get chewed up and spit out. And I hear from people every day who've had their lives ruined because they worked for the Amazon. Oh my God. So what about for consumers who might have a prime account? I would say in some ways it's like live your life. I have never been here to tell people to not shop on Amazon

because I think some of the stuff about like what Main Street retail is coming from a place of privilege of people who live in cities with great bookstores and you know that kind of thing. I would say like live your life but if you're going to live your life demand accountability from Amazon and do that through your reps. Like you could shop at Amazon and also try to have Amazon taxed into the stratosphere. Right, I know it's impossible to avoid cults these days.

But we can have awareness about them and we can try to like, I guess, correct for some of our cultish behavior that's having a negative impact. Like in some ways, it's a really nanny-pant-my-answer-agate, but it's the realism. And to remember the thing you get overnight is on the backs of people who are either really, really, really being exploited, or, you know, corporate workers who are probably seeing a psychiatrist. You know? No one's okay over there. No one's okay and it's a bit amazing the letters I've gotten.

I've used having men yell at me for my writing, but I've had so many men write to me from Amazon and other companies and say you told my story. Well, that's our show. Thanks so much for listening. Stick around for a new cult next week, but in the meantime, stay culty. But not too Coltty! Yeah!

Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Sounds like a cult is hosted and produced by Amanda Montel and edited by Jordan Moore of the Pod Cabin.

Our theme music is by Casey Colt. This episode was made with production help from Katie Epperson. Thank you as well to our partner, All Things Callie. And if you like the show, please feel free to check out my books, Word Slut, A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language, Cultish the Language of Fanaticism, and the forthcoming, The Age of Magical Overthinking, Notes on Modern Arasionality.

If you're a fan of Sounds Like a Cult, I would really appreciate it if you'd leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. if you leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪