I think you're overcomplicating it. People like Eliezer Yudkowsky and Paul Graham are certainly not cult leaders, but they have many strong opinions that are well outside the mainstream; they don't believe in, and in fact actively scorn, hedging/softening their expression of these opinions; and they have many readers, a visible subset of whom uncritically pattern all their opinions, mainstream or not, after them.

And pushback against excitement over Hofstadter can stem from legitimate disagreement about the importance/interestingness of his work. The pushback is proportional to the excitement that incites it.