A funny thing I noticed about myself when reading this article, the last part of it. When I read this sentence:

Cults feed on groupthink, nervousness, desire for reassurance.

I momentarily thought "And rational behaviour does not, therefore, it is not a cult." And less than quarter of seconds after, I felt on the back of my chair, holding my head and screaming like it hurt (I think it really did, but it was just a sort of placebo/nocebo effect). When the not-pain released my head, I thought that I did not understand the point of the post on a gut level, if I'd allowed myself to think like this even for a moment. If my brain plays tricks like that, and I notice it just because I read about it very recently, then how I can be sure It won't play them when I encounter an actual nonobvious cult next year?