What in your opinion makes one language cult-like vs. another that many people like and recommend to others?
Cults generally have a very negative impact on those who are members vs. the leaders. Usually the members of cults are taken advantage of and are only there to support the people at the top.
The Rust community is very far from anything cult-like.
The documentation is great. Various channels to interact with the community have always been polite and helpful.
Heck, one would think that the author of a leading book on the language popping up everywhere to give helpful answers/clarifications would be seen as welcome and not in-your-face-activism.
The original poster was saying that generally cults will be rather unpleasant for most mid<->lower level members, but are pleasant for the people at the top (generally by extracting value from those lower-level members, whether it's labor, money, or sexual favors).
This seems a bit counterintuitive, of course - "if it's unpleasant, why the hell wouldn't they leave?". Usually cults have coercive tools that either make it difficult for someone to leave, or manage to brainwash them into believing they would be more unhappy outside of the cult.
[1] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/anything...
Edit: acomar points out that the "haven't" negates what follows, so interpret what I wrote above as "the phrase on its own means not X".
I'm appalled at myself for the silly manner in which I phrased that. I guess I intended to say: "I have found it nothing but pleasant", but instead ended up tying myself up in knots.