the.com/cult
a group with a leader who's always right and an exit that's always hard.
means a social group defined by devotion to a person or idea so total it overrides outside judgment, family ties, and sometimes reality.
from from latin cultus, meaning care, adoration, worship — the same root as cultivate; the word literally meant tending something carefully before it meant tending someone dangerously.
legal definitionnone exists, which is the whole problem
jonestown 1978909 people died, kool-aid was actually flavor-aid
academic termsociologists prefer new religious movement, less loaded
soft versionfandoms and startups get called cults affectionately