"... the commercial war of the future won't be about [product] value or quality, it'll be about identity. Are you the kind of person who buys this product rather than, is this a product that does more for you."

"Politics now is powered more by negation than it used to be. For a lot of voters, the power of negative partisanship has made it easier for people to explain what it is they're against than it is to explain what they are for."

"You make that shift from fandom to cult member when your identity or membership in that group is defined by negation; defined by what you are not, by what you stand against."

"Cults are not just for something. They are against something."

"When you have that clear division of who is good or who is bad, that goes so deeply to what makes cults so powerful. Here's your ingroup and here is your in-group defined by the out-group. That kind of out-group animosity not only goes aerodynamic on social media for a variety of reasons. I also think it sits very well with us when we are confused about the world and how it works."