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It doesn't even take that much wealth or power. Look at Vox Day. In my internet wanderings I recently found myself commenting on one of his posts for the completely benign purpose of helping to expand upon his "sigma" theory, as I felt it was incomplete and needed improvement. His followers immediately attacked me, displaying 100% cult-like yes-man behavior. Most responses were essentially, "You disagree? Then you didn't read it carefully enough. Go back and read it again and STFU, loser."

It was really spooky. He's got this self-reinforcing belief system where "people who agree with Vox" are called "sigmas", who are respectable, but "people who disagree with Vox" are defined to be "gammas", who are useless and wrong people who are held in contempt and derision. Some of those guys are really nasty characters.

I tore them all a new asshole, and even Vox seemed to realize on some level that I was right as he didn't really have much of a response.

(Search for the word "flamethrower" in the comments if anyone wants to find that article and read the posts, it's hilarious.)