For what it's worth I don't think you've deliberately set out to become a "cult leader" -- you seem like a sincere person who just happens to be going about life in a rather nonstandard fashion. You've got some issues with unacknowledged privilege and such, and I've gotten impressions from you of an undercritical attractance to power and people who have power, but that's hardly unique.

I think mostly it's that you confuse people via sending off a lot of signals they don't expect -- like they think you must have some weird ulterior motive for not having gone to college, and instead of seeing public discussion of your own intellect as merely the result of somewhat atypical social skills, it's seen as inexcusable arrogance.

That said, because of my own negative experience(s) with people who've seemed, shall I say, rather "sparkly" at first, but who HAVE turned out to be seeking puppy-dog supplicants (or worse), I tend to be very very cautious these days when I encounter someone who seems to attract a fan club.

With you I've gone back and forth in my head many times as to whether you are what you first struck me as (a sincere, if a bit arrogant, highly ambitious guy) or something more sinister. It's been difficult to tell as you're sort of surrounded by this buzzing cloud of subcultural interference, but at this point I've sort of determined that if there's anything sinister there it's not a special sort above and beyond what you'd find in any given random middle/upper class American geek.

I think you get called out as a symbol of "smartypants white boys obsessed with trying to save the world from their basements" because you've ended up more visible than most. But, no, that doesn't make you a cult leader, it just makes you someone who would (like many of us living in wealthy, industrialized nations) benefit from making a greater effort to understand the effects of power and privilege.