DNF

Not what I thought it would be.
Touches on psychological phenomena like confirmation bias etc. but kinda feels like a memoir and is just super disjointed. Says “pseudo spiritual practices like manifestation are basically conspiracy theories”.
Entire first chapter is about Swifties. Not for me.

Readable and engaging, but I felt like Cultish had a lot to say about one concept whereas this had a medium-to-low amount to say about many concepts. Ended up skimming more than I'd usually like. Montell is still a boss. ( )

Engaging and often funny, but left me with more to overthink than anything else. The chapter on children with cancer who vlogged their experience on YouTube was both difficult to get through and one of my favorites. ( )

Dnf at 37%.

This is mopey memoir masquerading as social science. I was a huge fan of Cultish and was excited to get to this book, but it is an exemplar of the very thing she is attacking. She rails against people who see something online and accept it as gospel but her level of rigor is barely better. While actually reading a study (as I assume she did) is better than circulating clickbait, it is only a skoosh better. She repeatedly cherry-picks research, generally relying upon a single study to support grand pronouncements about group dynamics in areas where a good amount of sound contradictory research and scholarship exists, and is never referred to. She also relies on a boatload of assumptions about human behavior she sets forth as universal, or at least typical, but which are not. As social science this is unforgivable.

If I read this as memoir or cultural criticism (which I see is what it is being advertised as, I had not read the blurb before starting this) the book is forgivable but lazy and out of touch. I am not one to rail against privilege displayed in a memoir. Privileged is not a corollary to happy, and being privileged does not mean that you are not interesting and/or do not have keen insights. And some might consider me privileged so I feel uncomfortable conceding that privilege makes a person's experiences and observations less than worthwhile. But even I was uncomfortable with references to her burning need to sojourn to Italy to find ballast. In the end, as memoir I found this boring and tone deaf and as cultural criticism it was a rehash of many things I have read before -- there is nothing fresh and little that is persuasive. This book is to cultural anthropology what GOOP is to epidemiology. A spectacular disappointment. ( )