Is Surfing A Cult?

I think I belong to at least 3 cults.

The person writing this is Mormon Deadhead who, since he was 9, has reserved his closest friendships for those who have nothing else in common with him other than a proclivity for standing on water for hours at a time.

The official definition of cult (“a system of religious veneration and devotion directed toward a particular figure or object”) doesn’t adequately represent how we use it, at least in the United States.

“Cultish groups are an all-out American obsession,” Amanda Montell writes in her book Cultish, “[but] what does the word “cult” even mean, exactly? As it turns out, coming up with one conclusive definition is tricky at best… a cult could be anything… you could have a coffee cult, or a surfing cult.”