Hoodwinked: My Conversation with Dr. Mara Einstein About Marketing and Cult Influence - How marketers turn anxiety and belonging into profit—and how we can protect our freedom of mind.
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Hoodwinked: My Conversation with Dr. Mara Einstein About Marketing and Cult Influence - How marketers turn anxiety and belonging into profit—and how we can protect our freedom of mind.
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Mara teaches at Queens College, the very place where I was recruited into the Moonies cult in 1974. She came to the study of influence through advertising and media. I came to it through my experience in a destructive cult and my work helping others understand and recover from authoritarian control.
We had a great deal to talk about.
On Cults, Culture, and Coercion, we discussed her book, Hoodwinked: How Marketers Use the Same Tactics as Cults. It examines how commercial interests draw on our desire for belonging, our insecurities, and our trust in other people to shape what we buy and believe. Mara spent a decade working in advertising and television before questioning what she was helping accomplish. As she told me, getting people to watch more television could not be all she was supposed to do with her life. She returned to school, studied with Neil Postman, and earned a doctorate in media ecology, which examines how communication technologies change society. She has written numerous books and teaches at my alma mater.
Her background helps her explain what many of us encounter every day without fully understanding: the planning behind the pitch. A social media post may look spontaneous. A recommendation may feel like advice from a friend. A community may appear to have formed entirely around shared interests. Mara asks us to look more closely at the commercial arrangements and incentives behind those experiences. One of her most useful ideas is the “anxiety economy.”
We often hear that platforms compete for our attention. Mara argues that this description leaves out a crucial part of the business model. Anxiety can keep us engaged. We scroll because we are worried, encounter more upsetting material, and keep scrolling in search of relief. Along the way, advertisers have more opportunities to reach us. The proposed relief may be another video, a purchase, a course, or a membership. The underlying message is familiar: something is wrong with your life, and someone has what you need to fix it. This is an enlightening discussion.