First, a cult is the flipside of a wise crowd. The cult patterns seemed accurate, and I watched people applying the cult model to others over and over.
Any intense group, family, business, or team starts to resemble a cult, in little or larger ways.
It's a matter of degree. However, as soon as you spend your free time on someone else's project, you are essentially starting to slide down that slope.
I watched as entire groups went off the rails, unable to think straight or produce accurate results. There was a straight causal effect: as the group became more cult-like, they became more useless.
https://hintjens.wdfiles.com/local--files/books/social-architecture.pdf