For me, it's social dancing, specifically West Coast Swing. Because while there is just social dancing, and some who only do it, there's a bit of a culture of competition, and it has its own governing body for determining where you place in competitions, and when it does sound like a cult when described.

    • BodyBySisyphus [he/him]
      ·
      1 month ago

      In my experience, modern demonic black magic has a much more beginner-friendly community with less gatekeeping.

        • BodyBySisyphus [he/him]
          ·
          1 month ago

          Look, we may consort with damned beings whose twisted souls know nothing but hunger, but we're at least principled about it.

  • Bobson_Dugnutt [he/him]
    ·
    1 month ago

    King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. They're not a jam band, they're a band that jams. Very fine distinction.

    • TraschcanOfIdeology [they/them, comrade/them]
      ·
      1 month ago

      A friend of mine got obsessed with KGATLW and he would seriously evangelize about it every chance he'd get.

      Tbh, fair, because King Gizz rocks hard as shit, and they have something for almost anyone.

      • fossphi@lemm.ee
        ·
        1 month ago

        Oh my god, I've been thinking about this on and off since weeks. I need to make playlists for my friends showcasing stuff they would like. But there's so much to choose from!

  • invalidusernamelol [he/him]
    ·
    1 month ago

    Any sort of TTRPG stuff. Most people would enjoy it, but explaining it does sound weird to someone who's never participated

  • RiotDoll [she/her, she/her]
    ·
    1 month ago

    "who wants to study religion and metaphysics?" [everyone running for the door like i'm charles manson] no wait like we just hang out smoke weed and read stuff like the timae- [a sawed off shotgun levelled at my head]

    • WertformProphetin [she/her]
      ·
      edit-2
      1 month ago

      It do be like that sometimes. What a lot of people don't realise is that everyone has a metaphysics, the question is have you interrogated it, thought it through etc.

      As always, the alternative to philosophy is not no philosophy, but instead really bad philosophy.

      I feel the same way about theology and religion: whether people like it or not, the religious impulse is a cultural universal. Do we utilise it for good, or surrender the territory without a fight to religious conservatives?

      • hypercracker
        ·
        1 month ago

        Yeah this recuperative perspective on philosophy was very popular on places like the badphilosophy subreddit. It is significantly undermined by “good” philosophy largely being total dogshit. The effective altruists are what this “good” philosophy looks like.

        • WertformProphetin [she/her]
          ·
          edit-2
          1 month ago

          No one likes effective altruistists, least of all most academic philosophers. They're a punchline.

          Not that this in any way undermines my point. It's very anti intellectual to point at one shit philosophical movement and wash one's hands of the responsibility of thinking.

          • hypercracker
            ·
            1 month ago

            But that’s the entire point, the account of philosophy you are espousing attempts to capture for itself the entire concept of thinking.

            • WertformProphetin [she/her]
              ·
              1 month ago

              That's... that's always been the point, yes. I mean the word itself means love of wisdom, which is quite literally thinking well.

              All specialised disciplines of inquiry are downstream of and emerge out of philosophy, and any self-reflexive internal dialogue within these disciplines is inherently philosophical.

              Most languages don't make the hard difference between Science and Philosophy like we do in English, and trying to sustain the difference in any absolute sense is basically impossible.

              Philosophy is just radically open thought: the willingness to investigate seriously and update one's views, and, as best as possible, to keep one's ego out of what one finds.

              • hypercracker
                ·
                1 month ago

                I think that’s a very self-important account of philosophy that lends the academic practices generally associated with philosophy far, far greater relevance and weight than they should be given. Philosophers like to think of themselves as being at the base of some hierarchy of truth, beyond even mathematicians. It’s nonsense.

        • Baaahb@feddit.nl
          ·
          1 month ago

          Lol effective altruists like the whole FTX Sam bankman fried thing? Gtfoan you've lost the plot.

  • Belly_Beanis [he/him]
    ·
    1 month ago

    Tabletop miniature games. >!Except we probably are a cult send help they wont let me do anything except basecoat.!<

    • keepcarrot [she/her]
      ·
      1 month ago

      This gets double bad if there's two of you (tabletop games) and one of them.

  • SuperZutsuki [they/them]
    ·
    1 month ago

    Acro yoga and contact improv, but that probably has more to do with everyone being mega hippies that probably are already in a cult

    • TraschcanOfIdeology [they/them, comrade/them]
      ·
      1 month ago

      Many martial arts have a heavy lifestyle component to them, so they feel kind of culty to people who compartmentalize those bits of their life and other parts. But if you use your martial art as meditation or spiritual practice, you do you.

  • ShimmeringKoi [comrade/them]
    ·
    1 month ago

    Leftists thought. "You live in the metaphorical Matrix and almost everything you think you know about the world and how it works is wrong" is a tough conversation

    • ShimmeringKoi [comrade/them]
      ·
      1 month ago

      "Your entire conception of the world and your place in it is part of an elaborate prank that spans the history of all hitherto existing societies."

    • roux [he/him, they/them]
      ·
      edit-2
      1 month ago

      I just went on a commie wall of text posting spree sort of venting about the current political conditions in the US regarding people cucking up to either the Dems or the Reps and after posting I sort of looked back and realized it does look a bit culty if you are still drinking the proverbial Kool-aid lol