Severance’s Corporate Dystopia: An Anatomy of Control and Obedience

A woman wakes up on a conference table in a sterile, fluorescent-lit room. She doesn’t know her name or how she got there. A calm voice on an intercom poses disorienting questions (“Who are you?”) as she panics. This isn’t an abduction scene – it’s Lumon Industries onboarding a new hire. Welcome to Severance, the Apple TV+ series that turns the modern workplace into a chilling psychological battleground. In Lumon’s severed-world office, employees sacrifice their very identities at the altar of productivity, splitting their memories between work and home. The result is a Kafkaesque experiment in control, where “innie” workers exist only to serve the company, cut off from any life beyond the office’s windowless halls. It’s a setup ripe for exploring how far mechanisms of intimidation and manipulation can go. In this analysis, we’ll journey through Severance’s cinematic nightmare with the eye of a clinician-storyteller – unpacking the psychological, anthropological, evolutionary, and sociopolitical underpinnings of Lumon’s power. Along the way, we’ll draw parallels to our own world, including an eyebrow-raising comparison to Elon Musk’s dominion over X (formerly Twitter), where reality can sometimes feel just as dystopian.

The Severed Self and Psychological Control

In Lumon’s underground offices, employees are reduced to childlike versions of themselves – blank slates known as “innies” – who know nothing beyond their work tasks. This radical setup presents a perfect Petri dish for psychological manipulation. Isolation and dependency are the first tools at play. Each innie has no memories of family, friends, or life outside; their entire universe is the company. Psychologically, this induces a state not unlike a hostage situation. Indeed, the innies gradually show signs of Stockholm syndrome, the phenomenon where captives develop loyalty and affection for their captors. With nowhere else to turn for any social or emotional support, even cruel overseers become figures to appease or even adore. We see this in the way Mark and his team initially speak reverently of Kier Eagan (Lumon’s quasi-mythical founder) and cling to company platitudes – the only “truth” they have ever been allowed.

Lumon’s methods of intimidation are subtle at first. Take the break room: a benign name for a windowless cell where employees who misbehave must repetitively recite scripted apologies. When Helly R., the fiery new hire, resists the company’s control, she’s forced to sit and read lines like “I deserve to be punished” over and over, until she exhibits genuine remorse. It’s psychological torture wearing the mask of a corporate disciplinary action. Psychiatrist Robert Lifton would instantly recognize this as a “cult of confession” – a thought-reform tactic where members are coerced to confess sins as a means of breaking their will. In Lumon’s case, the “sins” are any flickers of autonomy. By shaming and exhausting Helly into compliance, management tightens its grip on her mind. The induction of guilt and shame is a powerful control device; Helly walks out of the break room emotionally exhausted, teary and docile, at least for the moment.

Over time, such tactics breed what psychologist Martin Seligman famously termed learned helplessness – a state in which a person (or even a dog in Seligman’s early experiments) becomes conditioned to believe escape is impossible and thus stops trying. We witness this despair creep into the innies. After repeated escape attempts are thwarted by omnipresent barriers, Helly reaches a point of utter desperation: in a gut-wrenching scene, she tries to take her own life rather than endure another day as Lumon’s pawn. Her drastic act tragically illustrates Seligman’s principle that when an individual feels they have no control over outcomes, they may succumb to hopelessness or self-destruction. Conversely, other employees respond by ingratiating themselves with their oppressors. Mark S. initially tries to be the “good worker,” clinging to the sense of safety in following orders. Irving, the most indoctrinated team member, recites the Employee Handbook like scripture, chastising coworkers for minor rule breaks. These are coping mechanisms – if rebellion is futile, compliance feels safer. By making any resistance painful and futile, Lumon conditions its workers to simply surrender. Why bother fighting when nothing will change? – this defeated inner monologue is the hallmark of learned helplessness.

Yet, even as their spirits are pressed flat, the innies’ psychological need for meaning is manipulated to keep them productive. Lumon dangles bizarre little rewards for compliance: caricature portraits, “Music Dance Experience” parties with blaring music and flashing lights, even a waffle party (a private, decadent waffle feast cum strange masked ball for top performers). In one darkly comedic touch, employees who meet quota get to collect finger traps – yes, those simple Chinese finger trap toys – as trophies. The absurdity of grown adults coveting cheap trinkets underscores how infantilization is used to control them. Lumon has effectively turned its staff into children in a Skinner box, pressing levers for jolly ranchers. The finger trap is an especially apt metaphor: the harder you struggle against it, the tighter it grips you. Likewise, the more an innie tries to defy Lumon, the more aggressively the company retaliates, “trapping” them further in punitive procedures. As one observer noted of the finger trap reward, “the further you pull apart your fingers, the tighter the trap’s grip… The only way out is to bring them together”. In practice, that means the only way out for innies is to submit – to stop resisting and align themselves with the company’s demands.

Psychologists have long known that human obedience can reach disturbing extremes under the right (or wrong) conditions. Classic studies by Stanley Milgram in the 1960s showed that ordinary people would deliver what they believed were painful electric shocks to a stranger if an authority figure simply insisted they do so. Under pressure, 65% of participants in Milgram’s experiment obeyed completely, administering the maximum shock level despite the victim’s screams. Lumon’s corporate hierarchy exploits this same obedient streak. The innies are surrounded by authority symbols – from their supervisor Milchick’s calm but firm directives to the looming portraits of Kier Eagan watching from the walls – all signaling that compliance is not optional. In one instance, Milchick merely raises an eyebrow and says, “That’s not appropriate, is it?” to quash Dylan’s curiosity about department secrets; immediately, Dylan falls in line. The psychological principle at work is what Milgram demonstrated: under authoritative pressure, people tend to enter an “agentic state,” deferring responsibility to the authority and doing as they’re told, even against their own moral compass.

Another famous experiment, the Stanford Prison Experiment (1971), provides a chilling parallel to Lumon’s micro-society. In that study, a simulated prison environment led college students to adopt abusive guard and submissive prisoner roles so rapidly and extremely that the two-week experiment had to be terminated after only six days. The lesson? Context and roles can transform behavior dramatically. Lumon creates a similar dynamic: managers like Ms. Cobel (who oversees the severed floor under a veneer of maternal concern) and Milchick (ever-smiling enforcer) embody the “guard” role, wielding unchecked power over the “prisoner” employees. The innies, for their part, internalize their prisoner status, tiptoeing around rules and begging not to be sent back to the break room. The environment is engineered to erode their sense of self and replace it with a reflexive deference to authority. Even the smallest freedoms are controlled – when Mark’s team finds out another department got a perk (like caricature drawings) that they didn’t, they react with childlike indignation rather than recognizing the indignity of needing permission for such trivialities. By controlling information and communication (no personal memories, strictly monitored inter-department interactions), Lumon achieves what Lifton called “milieu control”, isolating the workers from any reality check that might contradict the company’s version of truth. In short, the psychological landscape of Severance illustrates how intimidation, conditioning, and authority can conspire to strip individuals of autonomy – and how surprisingly easily the human mind adapts to even oppressive norms.

Rituals, Myths, and the Anthropology of Obedience

Why does Lumon’s office feel so much like a cult? The answer lies in anthropology and the study of how human cultures enforce group cohesion. The show masterfully portrays Lumon as not just a company, but a tribe with its own rituals and myths. From the moment employees step off the elevator, they enter a world governed by quasi-religious reverence for the company founder, bizarre ceremonies, and sacred objects – all tools for social control as old as civilization itself.

Central to Lumon’s mythos is Kier Eagan, the long-deceased founder whose presence permeates everything. Innies are taught to view Kier as a benevolent patriarch and nearly superhuman figure. His quotes adorn the walls (“Work is the cure for the soul’s ailments,” etc.), and his statue-filled “Perpetuity Wing” serves as a museum shrine to his life. This founder-worship mirrors real-world cults and religions in which a charismatic leader’s legend is mythologized to inspire devotion. Anthropologically, humans have long created founding myths to legitimize social hierarchies – from ancestral heroes in tribal societies to nation-founding fathers. At Lumon, Kier’s legend provides an infallible authority to justify every demand on the workers. After all, if the great Kier said it, who are they to question? This is akin to what Lifton called the “Sacred Science” of totalist groups: the group’s doctrine (here, Kier’s corporate philosophy) is treated as ultimate Truth, beyond question. By positioning its mission as sacred, Lumon discourages any critical thought. An employee doubting the company is not just breaking a rule – they’re committing heresy.

The show also highlights rituals as a means of indoctrination and control. Consider the absurd “Music Dance Experience,” in which Milchick rewards the Macrodata Refinement team for hitting a target by throwing a five-minute dance party under garish colored lights. He even gives them a menu of musical genres to choose from – a tiny illusion of choice in an environment where they have none. What purpose does this serve? Beyond momentarily boosting morale, it’s a classic use of ritual to reinforce group identity. Émile Durkheim, a founder of sociology, noted that when people participate in collective rituals, they experience “collective effervescence” – a bubbling up of group unity and energy. In these moments, individuals feel swept up in something larger than themselves, strengthening their bonds to the group. Lumon’s dance party is silly on the surface, but in practice it unites the employees (briefly happy and dancing together) and channels their frustrations into a scripted celebration, however forced. It’s no different from an initiation ceremony or a team-building chant – a performative act that says we are part of the same tribe. Anthropologists have observed that even costly or bizarre rituals can serve as “hard-to-fake” signals of commitment to the group. By eagerly dancing when told to, or by reciting Kier’s commandments during daily interactions, the employees continually signal their loyalty (or at least feigned compliance) to Lumon’s culture.

Even more striking is the Waffle Party ritual. At the end of Season 1, Dylan receives the honor of this mysterious reward: he eats a plate of waffles in a room set up as a replica of Kier Eagan’s bedroom, then dons a Kier mask while four dancers in strange erotic costumes perform for him. The Waffle Party comes off like a secret society rite – part tribute to the founder, part indulgence offered by the company. Its opaque symbolism (the masks represent Kier’s family members, the seductive dance, etc.) hints at a deeper lore that only upper echelons might know. This blends mystification with reward, a potent combination for control. By shrouding certain practices in secrecy, Lumon creates an inner-circle mystique: employees are tantalized that if they prove themselves, they too might glimpse the “deeper truths” of Lumon (a technique akin to “mystical manipulation,” where experiences are orchestrated to seem magical or significant). At the same time, the ritual itself – however bizarre – serves as a pressure valve for the innies’ anxieties and as a reminder of the company’s total control over even pleasure and sexuality. It’s company-sponsored debauchery in Kier’s sanctum, reinforcing that all aspects of life, even celebration, happen on Lumon’s terms.

Anthropologically, Lumon’s culture shows strong parallels to a cult. They have their doctrine (the handbook of Kier’s wisdom), their rituals (the break room confession, dance parties, waffle party, even the eerie daily handshake protocol), and their enforcement of conformity. Any deviation or dissent is met with swift social correction or punishment, reflecting what Lifton called the “Demand for Purity”: members must conform completely, striving to meet the group’s ideals, and those who stray are shamed until they repent. Harmony Cobel (a true believer in Lumon, who poses as a sweet neighbor “Mrs. Selvig” in Mark’s outie life) often speaks in almost religious reverence of the company’s mission and Kier’s vision. She expects the same unquestioning zeal from the workers. In one scene, we see a twisted corporate loyalty oath in action: Helly’s outie (who, in a late twist, is revealed to be Helena Eagan – Kier’s descendant and a Lumon executive) records a video message to her innie, coldly telling her “You are not a person. You are my product.” Helly’s outie declares that the innie will never be allowed to quit. This moment encapsulates the anthropological horror of Severance: the individual has been fully subsumed by the collective. The personhood of the worker is denied outright – only the role in the group matters. It’s a disturbing echo of real historical abuses where institutions treated people as interchangeable cogs or property in service of a “greater” ideology.

Finally, let’s not overlook the language of Lumon, which serves as a tool of cultural control. The employees use euphemisms and jargon that feel just a step away from Newspeak. MDR workers don’t “delete data” – they “refine macrodata,” a term no one truly understands but all accept. Bad employees are “severed refiners who fell ill of heart” (according to Kier’s quote) rather than, say, disobedient or exploited ones. This is what Lifton called “loading the language,” a tactic in which groups redefine words and use thought-terminating clichés to shape how members think. By giving workers a peculiar lexicon, Lumon subtly ensures that even the way they conceptualize their work and situation is on the company’s terms. If you can’t name a thing as unjust, you’re less likely to rebel against it. The innies don’t have the word “prisoner” or “exploited” in their vocabulary; they speak of “remedies” and “protocols” and quote Kier’s pseudo-inspirational adages. Language becomes both a comfort (“this is just how things are here”) and a leash.

In sum, Severance demonstrates how a controlled culture can be constructed through ritual, myth, and language. The anthropological and sociological insight is that humans, whether in a tribe or a tech corporation, are deeply susceptible to group influence. Give people a strong identity (“Lumon family”), a unifying purpose (“refine the data to help humanity”), and a set of bonding rituals, and you can inspire devotion even in bleak conditions. Lumon’s employees aren’t just cowering in fear; many are genuinely invested in the bizarre little world that’s been built around them. As creatures of culture, we find meaning and belonging wherever we can – even if it’s in the basement of a cultish company that keeps us captive. It’s a sobering reflection of how easily a sense of belonging can be weaponized to keep people in line.

Hardwired to Obey: The Evolutionary Perspective

While Severance is science fiction, the behaviors it portrays tap into very primitive aspects of human nature. Why do Lumon’s employees comply with such an oppressive system? Why doesn’t every “innie” immediately rebel against the obvious injustices? Part of the answer may lie in our evolutionary wiring for social hierarchy and survival. Humans evolved in groups, and for our ancestors, group cohesion and following a strong leader could mean the difference between life and death. Those ancient pressures have sculpted a psyche that is highly sensitive to authority, status, and belonging – tendencies that Lumon exploits to the fullest.

Evolutionary psychologists suggest that obedience to authority had adaptive value. Imagine a small tribe facing a crisis; if each member went their own way, the group might perish. But if they all followed a competent leader’s direction, they had a better shot at survival. Over millennia, natural selection may have favored individuals who were inclined to follow group leaders (within reason) because organized action often wins out over chaos. As one analysis put it, the capacity for hierarchical obedience is almost a prerequisite for large-scale social organization, and it conferred survival advantages. In Lumon’s offices, we see this ancient script play out in a perverse modern context. The innies respond to Cobel and Milchick as if they were tribal chiefs or alpha figures. Notice how even the rebellious Helly, when sharply commanded by Cobel to cease her antics, freezes for a moment – her instincts battling her resolve. The other employees often look to Mark (as their department chief) or to Milchick for cues on how to react in uncertain situations. This deference isn’t just because of corporate protocol; it’s visceral. The same instinct that makes a troop of chimpanzees bow to the alpha or that made early humans heed their chieftain causes modern office workers – even ones trapped against their will – to hesitate before disobeying a direct order.

Fear is another primal factor. Intimidation works on us so well because fear triggers ancient survival circuits in the brain. Lumon’s punishments (the dread of the break room, the looming threat of being “retired” or worse) activate the innies’ fight-or-flight response. But flight is impossible (there’s nowhere to run), and fight is dangerously costly (as Helly learns). This essentially leaves a third option common in prey animals under threat: freeze or submit. In evolutionary terms, a smaller animal facing a stronger predator often survives by showing submission or playing dead. The innies often take on a similar freeze/submission response when confronted by their “predators” – they lower their eyes, still their rebellion, and try to appear harmless. It’s heartbreaking to watch Helly’s transformation: initially fiery and defiant, she becomes increasingly resigned, like a captured wild animal realizing the cage isn’t opening. Mark, too, instinctively flinches and acquiesces when Cobel (masquerading as his kindly boss “Mrs. Selvig”) exerts pressure – his subconscious recognizes her as a dominant figure long before he consciously learns who she really is.

Moreover, humans are deeply social creatures with a need for acceptance. Evolutionarily, being ostracized from the group was a death sentence. Thus, we evolved a powerful aversion to social rejection. Lumon leverages this by making the group itself an enforcer of conformity. When Helly repeatedly tries to escape or shirk work, it’s her fellow refiners who initially scold her – Irving sternly quoting the handbook about being a team player, Mark warning her that she’ll ruin things for all of them. They do this partly out of self-preservation (one troublemaker brings punishment on the whole group) but also because, on a gut level, they feel her nonconformity threatens the cohesion of their little unit. In evolutionary terms, Helly’s behavior risks “lowering the tribe’s chances” and must be reined in. The social pressure to conform has been demonstrated in countless experiments, notably Solomon Asch’s line judgment studies where people denied obvious reality just to go along with a unanimous group opinion. In Severance, Asch’s findings are mirrored when Mark’s team, despite private doubts, initially toe the company line about everything. They perform the ridiculous waffle party celebration; they dutifully attend a “wellness session” where Ms. Casey makes them repeat affirmations about their outie selves; they participate in the oddly reverent reading of daily metrics – all because everyone else is doing it. Only when a critical mass (Mark, Helly, Dylan, and Irving together) realizes they are the majority in seeking truth do they collectively break the norm.

It’s also worth noting an evolutionary perspective on indoctrination of the young. The innies, in a sense, are newborns – adult bodies with infant minds created at the time of severance. From their “birth” on that conference table, they are immediately indoctrinated with Lumon’s worldview. This resembles imprinting – the phenomenon where young animals and humans rapidly adopt the behaviors and beliefs of caregivers or the immediate environment. With no prior identity or baseline, each innie latches onto Lumon’s teachings to make sense of their world, much like a duckling will follow the first moving figure it sees after hatching. Mark’s first memories as an innie are of a kindly orientation with Petey (his predecessor) and a video of his outie saying working at Lumon is a noble choice – seeds planted to orient his loyalties. Evolutionarily, the ability to accept guidance from elders/authority when you’re new or vulnerable is crucial for survival. Lumon artificially creates that vulnerable state (through severance) and then fills the void with its propaganda. The result is that the innies, despite being grown adults physically, have the pliability of children. They recite the employee handbook commandments with wide-eyed earnestness, compete for gold stars (finger traps) and approval, and fear the figurative “parental” wrath of management. We’re seeing play out in extreme form what our species has always done: socialize the young (or in this case, the blank-slate adult) to fit into the group’s norms.

Finally, from an evolutionary standpoint, hierarchy and dominance behaviors pervade Lumon. The bosses carry themselves with erect posture, calm control, and sometimes forced warmth – classic dominant behaviors with a veneer of benevolence (the “strict but caring parent” archetype). The workers display submissive body language: hunching at their desks, making themselves small in elevators, knocking before entering offices and waiting to be addressed. These cues would be recognized by any primatologist; they’re not far off from how lower-ranked primates behave around an alpha. Evolution endowed us with an ability to recognize dominance quickly – tone of voice, eye contact, stance – and Severance shows how those instincts continue to operate even in a bizarre scenario. Mark doesn’t intellectually believe his bosses are superior beings, but his tone and deference toward Ms. Cobel suggest a subconscious acknowledgment of her higher status. Similarly, Milchick’s unnerving smile – always showing he’s in control, even when giving “rewards” – asserts dominance; it often cowes the workers more effectively than shouting would.

In essence, Severance’s nightmare is so compelling because it scratches at the deep layers of our psyche. Beneath the high-concept sci-fi premise lies an ancient story: individuals trying to survive within a dominance hierarchy. Our species’ long history of tribalism, obedience, and survival has left us with instincts that Lumon’s regime manipulates expertly. We see how fear, the need to belong, respect for authority, and even love for ritual are not modern inventions but primal parts of us. This evolutionary lens doesn’t excuse the inhumane system – rather, it warns us that under certain conditions, our Stone Age tendencies could betray us, making us complicit in our own subjugation. Recognizing these impulses is the first step in resisting them, a lesson the innies slowly learn as they awaken (literally and figuratively) to the idea of freedom.

Corporate Authoritarianism and Sociopolitical Parallels

At its core, Severance delivers a scathing commentary on workplace culture taken to authoritarian extremes. Lumon Industries operates like a microscopic totalitarian state tucked inside a corporate office. The sociopolitical mechanisms of control on display echo those used by oppressive regimes and cults throughout history – propaganda, surveillance, punishment, and the construction of an all-encompassing ideology. By analyzing Lumon’s tactics in political terms, we see a reflection (albeit dramatized) of real-world power structures and the ease with which people can fall under their sway.

One of the most striking parallels is information control. Totalitarian governments often isolate citizens from outside information, feeding them only the official narrative. Lumon does exactly this: innies are forbidden from knowing anything about the outside world or even their own outie lives. All news and knowledge comes from sanctioned sources (the orientation materials, the employee handbook, the occasional cryptic corporate announcements). This leaves employees in a state of learned ignorance – they don’t know what they don’t know, which makes them easier to rule. As the saying goes, “knowledge is power,” and Lumon hoards both. Even within the severed floor, different departments are pitted against each other with mistrust and separated, preventing workers from uniting or sharing too much information. This is reminiscent of the way authoritarian regimes may foster suspicion among citizen groups or use bureaucracy to silo individuals, so no one can piece together the full picture of what’s happening.

The company’s use of propaganda and indoctrination is overt. The perpetuity wing, with its hyper-sanitized dioramas of Lumon history, looks like a propaganda museum exhibit – portraying Kier and his family as near-saints who carried humanity through crises. Employees are required to regularly consume these stories and even revere them; it’s not unlike how dictatorships enforce the veneration of “Dear Leaders” with monumental portraits and mandatory history lessons touting their greatness. By controlling the narrative of the past (Lumon’s origins and purpose) and present (“We’re curing humanity’s ills!”), Lumon secures obedience for the future. The innies genuinely believe – or want to believe – that their tedious, inexplicable work serves a higher good. This belief in the mission is a powerful motivator; as in any regime, convincing people that their sacrifice is for a noble cause will smooth over a multitude of sins. It’s telling that when doubt starts creeping in (Mark’s team begins to suspect their work may be harming people in the outside world), their allegiance to Lumon crumbles. The illusion of serving the greater good was a pillar of control; once it cracks, the whole edifice of obedience starts to shake.

Lumon also employs surveillance and intimidation in classically authoritarian fashion. We get the sense that everything on the severed floor is monitored – every email (those goofy grievance submission forms), every movement (Milchick has an uncanny habit of appearing exactly when someone steps out of line). The constant surveillance creates a panopticon effect where employees police themselves, never sure if they’re being watched at any moment. And when overt intimidation is needed, Lumon doesn’t hesitate. The swift severity of the break room punishment sends a message to all: dissent will be crushed. The terrifying legends of employees supposedly sent to the mysterious “Testing Floor” or those who were “reintegration risks” instill a background fear, much as state propaganda might whisper about dissidents disappearing in the night. As one former Lumon worker tells Mark, “There’s something down there… worse than the break room,” implying torture or worse occurs to those who truly defy the company. This looming threat keeps employees in check without the company having to lift a finger – the idea of punishment can be as powerful as the punishment itself.

The sociopolitical structure of Lumon’s severed program is also a pointed allegory for exploitation of labor. The innies are, quite literally, a servant class created to toil without respite so that their outie counterparts (and the company at large) reap benefits. It’s a dramatized version of the separation between a privileged class and a worker class. Here, each person contains both – a free individual and a trapped worker – but the company’s innovation is to physically split them so the worker can never revolt against the boss (because they’re the same person!). In political terms, it’s the ultimate mastery of the class divide: the laborer has no chance of class consciousness or rebellion, since their oppressor is their own self and an omnipotent corporation. While real-world workers aren’t surgically severed from their private lives, many can relate to the pressure to “leave your personal life at the door” and devote your whole being to the company while on the clock. Lumon just makes this literal. It raises uncomfortable questions about consent and coercion: Yes, these people “agreed” to severance (their outies signed the contracts), but the innies – the ones doing the suffering – never had a say. This invites parallels to how marginalized or desperate populations may be coerced or economically forced into exploitative working conditions that they technically “consented” to. Severance asks: what good is consent from a free person, if a captive person bears the consequences? It’s a scenario that magnifies the ethical dilemmas of labor rights, bodily autonomy, and informed consent that our society grapples with.

The show doesn’t stop at the workplace – it hints at political collusion and power beyond Lumon’s walls. We learn that the severance procedure is a controversial policy issue in the world of the show, with politicians debating its legality. Lumon wields significant influence to protect its interests, reminiscent of a powerful corporation lobbying (or manipulating) government to maintain its agenda. One can’t help but think of real tech giants and pharmaceutical companies shaping laws to their favor. There’s also a cult-like extracurricular presence: Lumon runs outreach centers, wellness programs, perhaps even entire communities influenced by Kier’s teachings. Harmony Cobel attends what appears to be a Lumon church of some sort, complete with Kier-inspired hymns and devout followers. This suggests Lumon isn’t just a company; it’s the core of a sociopolitical movement or sect, blurring the line between corporation and cult. In the world of Severance, corporate power, religion, and government oversight are entangled in a way that amplifies the theme of control. It paints a picture of a society at risk of sliding into a kind of techno-corporate authoritarianism, where companies don’t just employ people – they own their very consciousness for a portion of time.

Despite this grim picture, Severance also shows the seeds of resistance – a classic narrative in sociopolitical struggle. Just as oppressive regimes have underground rebels, Lumon faces its own insurrection from within. Petey, a former severed employee, somehow manages to reintegrate his memories and goes rogue, trying to expose Lumon’s secrets. Mark, Helly, Dylan, and Irving form a nascent rebellion cell, complete with clandestine meetings in the storage closet and whispered plans to smuggle messages to their outies. This arc follows a time-honored sociopolitical story: the oppressed developing class consciousness and banding together. When the Macrodata team secretly activates their out-of-work memories (a triumphant moment of breaking their mental chains), it’s as if the scales fall from their eyes – a revolutionary awakening. The finale of Season 1 feels almost like the tearing down of the Berlin Wall in miniature, as each innie briefly tastes freedom and truth. Of course, the struggle is far from over (and Season 2 presumably dives into the fallout), but the point is clear: authoritarian control is powerful but inherently unstable. It requires enormous effort to sustain lies and oppression, and it breeds the very dissent it seeks to quash.

From a sociopolitical perspective, Severance serves as both a cautionary tale and a mirror. It cautions us about unchecked corporate power, the seductive danger of trading freedom for the illusion of work-life balance, and the extreme endgame of toxic workplace culture. It also holds a mirror to subtler forms of control we might accept daily – think of employee wellness programs that double as surveillance, or “corporate values” that employees must profess with quasi-religious fervor, or even the way we often have to put on a “work persona” that splits from our true self. The show exaggerates these to dystopian proportions, but the roots are visible in our reality. By recognizing the mechanisms – propaganda, intimidation, isolation, ideological fervor – we can become more vigilant about defending our autonomy in both the political and workplace spheres. As Mark and his friends demonstrate, the first step to dismantling an unjust system is to see it clearly. In Lumon’s case, that literally meant recovering suppressed knowledge. In our case, it means staying alert to how power operates on us, even in the guise of a 9-to-5 job.

From Lumon to X: When Fiction Mirrors Reality

The fictional horrors of Lumon Industries may seem far-fetched – but real-life tech titan Elon Musk has been drawing uncomfortable parallels with his own empire at X (formerly Twitter). It’s a reminder that the line between dystopian fiction and corporate reality can blur when a dominant figure cultivates an atmosphere of absolute control and cult-like devotion. Let’s step out of Severance’s script for a moment and into today’s tech landscape, where Musk’s leadership of Twitter/X showcases some striking resemblances to Lumon’s intimidation and manipulation tactics.

When Elon Musk took over Twitter in late 2022, he wasted no time in establishing a “my way or the highway” regime. Thousands of employees were unceremoniously laid off, entire departments gutted, and those who remained were given an ultimatum: commit to an “extremely hardcore” workload and unquestioning loyalty, or leave. This real-world power play was essentially a forced pledge of fealty, not unlike a new Lumon CEO clearing house of any disloyal elements. One former Twitter executive, Rumman Chowdhury, described Musk’s mandate for engineers to print out their code for review as “performances of loyalty” – symbolic acts to prove who was on his side. “It’s a fear and intimidation tactic,” Chowdhury said of Musk’s management style, noting that it created a climate of anxiety among staff. The parallel to Lumon’s break room or its constant surveillance is hard to ignore: when employees fear punishment (be it firing or public shaming by the boss), they tend to toe the line. Musk has been known to publicly call out or mock employees on X who disagree with him, a move that amplifies the fear factor – it’s the equivalent of a very modern pillory, in front of 100+ million followers.

Beyond internal company culture, Musk wields influence over the X user ecosystem in a manner reminiscent of a cult of personality. He has ardent followers who treat his every word as gospel. In Severance, Kier Eagan is the distant figurehead instilling devotion; in our reality, Musk himself tweets from the figurative mountaintop, and legions echo him. Psychologically, this reflects what social scientists call charismatic authority. Musk’s public persona – visionary entrepreneur, free-speech warrior, meme-loving provocateur – has galvanized a subset of users and fans who rally behind whatever he says or does. We’ve seen how when Musk started using certain phrases or ideas (for example, calling something “woke mind virus” or declaring pronouns “an aesthetic nightmare”), many of his followers parroted those exact terms in online discourse. Research on charisma suggests that followers often mimic their leader’s language and attitudes, effectively “catching” the leader’s emotional and rhetorical style. Indeed, a recent study in Frontiers in Psychology described charisma as contagious, noting that by observing and emulating a leader’s behaviors and rhetoric, followers internalize those norms. On X, one can witness this phenomenon daily: Musk’s fan base frequently adopts his slang, his targets (journalists, “woke” institutions), even his goofy meme formats, as if singing from the same hymnal. It’s not mandated by any HR department, of course – it’s a spontaneous order arising from the belief system that’s formed around Musk as a figure.

This belief system is potent. Musk is hailed by admirers as a genius who’s advancing humanity (through EVs, space travel, etc.) and saving free speech from supposed censorship. In other words, he’s given a mythic narrative not unlike Kier Eagan’s legend of curing societal ills. Such narratives create a moral halo that can justify extreme actions. When Musk demands something – whether it’s an all-nighter from employees or a radical change to the platform that upends user experience – his true believers frame it as necessary for the grand vision. In sociopolitical terms, this is the classic trade-off in a cult of personality: the great leader can do no wrong, and any sacrifices made in following him are for a higher purpose. As Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak put it, Musk (like the late Steve Jobs) “wants to be seen as the important person and be like a cult leader”, and “a lot of people will follow them no matter what they say”. Wozniak’s choice of words is telling: cult leader. It captures how Musk’s influence has transcended the normal CEO-fan relationship into something more fervent and identity-forming for his followers.

Under Musk’s reign, Twitter – now rebranded as X – has also become an experiment in pushing ideological and behavioral boundaries. Musk often touts “free speech” as his guiding principle and has reinstated controversial figures, while simultaneously showing little tolerance for criticism directed at himself. Detractors have been banned or throttled, sometimes on a whim. This has created a peculiar dynamic of control over the public square: Musk positions himself as liberating the masses from prior moderation “oppression,” yet he has centralized power over what speech is amplified or quashed based on his personal impulses. In a sense, he has become the sole arbiter of truth on X, much as Lumon decides what is real for its workers. The community of users often falls in line, either out of support or out of fear of being dogpiled by Musk’s loyalists. The result is an environment where one man’s mood swings and convictions trickle down into millions of people’s online behavior. It’s not a chip in the brain like Severance’s severance procedure, but the synchronization of thought can be almost as uncanny.

Crucially, Musk’s takeover of Twitter also demonstrated the echo chamber effect that strong personalities can create. He often tweets catchphrases or rallying cries which his followers then amplify in a chorus, drowning out dissenting voices. For example, when Musk derided a certain safety feature or policy, within hours you’d see his boosters repeating those points en masse, sometimes verbatim. This is how a belief system propagates: through repetition and social reinforcement. Sociopolitically, it’s analogous to how state propaganda gets circulated by party members until it becomes the accepted norm among the base. On X, we have a crowdsourced propaganda machine centered on Musk’s ideology of the moment. It’s effective – even people who disagree with him are forced to engage on his terms, responding to his framing of issues.

Another parallel between Lumon and Musk’s X is the us-vs-them mentality fostered among followers. Lumon teaches innies that those who quit or “resist” are tragic figures or even threats (witness how the Macrodata team was long taught to fear other departments due to some past insurrection). Similarly, Musk’s hardcore fans often view critics (whether journalists, former employees, or skeptical users) as enemies of progress or part of a conspiratorial “woke mob” out to get their hero. This creates a self-reinforcing loyalty loop: the more Musk is criticized in the media, the more his fans double down in his defense, believing they are protecting a visionary against unfair attacks. That dynamic only increases Musk’s power within his ecosystem, as he can call upon an army of digital defenders at any time. Dominant public figures from politics to business have long benefited from this effect – it’s not new – but Musk’s engagement with his base is so direct and unfiltered that it feels like a new paradigm of leader-follower symbiosis. He tweets, they respond instantly; he jokes, they laugh; he rages, they mob the target. It’s a feedback loop of influence that blurs whether Musk leads the crowd or the crowd, through its adulation, leads Musk to ever more extreme performances.

Ultimately, the comparison between Lumon’s tactics and Musk’s real-world behavior underscores a key insight: whether in fiction or reality, charisma and power can foster a cult-like environment if checks and balances are weak. Lumon had no oversight – a private, family-run fiefdom hidden from the world, free to entrench its own cultish rules. Twitter, once a public company with a board, became Musk’s private playground, and we saw a swift erosion of transparency and accountability. In both cases, a singular vision (or ego) dominated, and a sort of mythology grew around the leader’s persona. For Musk’s followers, believing in him fulfills a craving for strong leadership and bold action (just as Lumon employees “needed” to believe Kier’s greatness to make sense of their suffering). The danger, of course, is that such belief can slide into indiscriminate loyalty, where harmful actions are rationalized or important dissent is silenced.

As fans of Severance, we recoil at Lumon’s excesses while perhaps uncomfortably recognizing seeds of the same in our world. The show’s lesson and the Musk parallel both boil down to awareness: We must be mindful of whom we anoint as our Kier Eagans and Elon Musks – those figures we allow to shape our realities. It’s all too easy to get severed from our better judgment when swept up by a powerful personality or a dominant organizational culture. By keeping our critical faculties intact (our “outie” perspective, so to speak), we ensure that no CEO, founder, or public figure becomes an unchecked emperor of our minds. After all, as both Lumon’s innies and Twitter’s workforce learned, reclaiming one’s autonomy is far harder than preserving it in the first place.

References:

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