I am team Conrad.
I may be in my thirties and live in the burbs, but nothing has better captured my obsessive energy lately than Season 3 of "The Summer I Turned Pretty". My TikTok is full of women talking about it, my friends live tweet their watching, and I am even hosting a finale party for the final episode in a couple of weeks.
To those outside the cult, it looks like a very mediocre love triangle story between teenagers on a beach; to those inside, however, it's a passionate discussion of whether the number of red hydrangeas outside Susannah's house is indicative of Belly's changing affections (IYKYK).
Regardless of what makes us join a movement, there is nothing like the passion of feeling like part of a genuine community of people all thinking and feeling the same thing. Recently, a friend was discussing her new workplace- it seems friendly enough- they all have lunch together at the same time, there's a cupboard where everyone has written down their tea order on the inside to allow for collaborative brew-making, they do team yoga, they go to the same chiropractor. It seems nice, seems like a culture.
Until it isn't.
This friend had changed the meeting room for an internal event, and the CEO had called her out on it. "That's just not how we do things around here". The warm bosom of holding hands and joint meditation sessions only lasted until something went wrong. It made me realise that so many workplaces now are so insistent on conformity to the group, they lose sight of making a culture, and instead end up creating a cult.