Of these three, only love bombing was prominently present, but I think it was actually genuine feeling in the "low rank" members (and I've talked to quite a few). Of uniforms, I think they all had unassuming trinkets/medalions hung from their necks. Food sharing was not present and the mentioned lunch was not more special than any other lunches I went to with other groups of people.

I think there were quite a few other interesting factors at play, and that's why I suggested we could all learn something from a discussion about it. I don't have anything like a complete analysis ready myself, but I detected significant amounts of:

• casual, friendly touch - there's nothing wrong with it and I would like to see more of it in other communities,

• making good use of good looking people and sexual attractiveness - subtle enough to not be pretentious,

• telling people to think for themselves (but I guess on meta-level, you already know the conclusion you are supposed to think of),

• scripted/planned/predictable ways to evoke positive emotions,

• honesty about emotions and subjective experience, and full acceptance of this by other members,

• generally positive atmosphere of friendliness and helpfulness that carries over to the rest of the world, not just the in-group,

• excellent stage/public speaking/PR skills of the top ranking members,

• mixing in genuinely worthy/morally sound cases, like stopping wars (but from LW point of view it looks mostly like cheering than taking action).