- Charismatic leadership? Check!
- Zealous focus on charismatic leadership to whom inner-circle members display unquestioning commitment? Check!
- Members required to relocate in order to increase dependency on the group? Check!
- Preoccupation with bringing in new members? ("Don't forget to apply now for the October deadline!" / "More people should start startups") Check.
- Group receives constant messages to let go of material aspirations ("Success is not about the money"), yet the tone of the group overall is a preoccupation with making money? Check!
- Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged? (Don't downmod this forum, please!) ... Check!
- Mind-numbing techniques like debilitating work schedules used to suppress functions of pre-frontal cortex in order to decrease cognitive resistance to the group ethos? ("You have to work very hard and code all night to succeed") Check.
- The leadership dictates sometimes in great detail how members should think, act, and feel? Check (in case you don't know what you should think about any startup-related issue, consult any of the dozens of articles on here that explain exactly how you should think about every detail. .... Check!
- The group is elitist (see explanation of how "How Not To Die" article is intended only for "smart, flexible people"), claiming a special, exalted status for itself, its members, and especially it's leader, who is seen as being on some sort of special "mission" which only he and the group see the true significance of? Double-check!
- Pervasive and persistent "us-vs.-them" mentality where "them" consists of people who "just don't get it"? Check!
- Leader espouses a "means justifies the ends" creed? Super-check
- Group uses it's own propoganda material as basis to support its own logic? Check ("If you ever read Paul's essay on (insert subject here), you'd know that he said ...").
- Leadership leverages shame to induce feelings of guilt and encourages others to do so as well in order to manipulate residual self-images of members? (See recent "How Not To Die" article which goes into detail about how cool it is to "go public" and then feel the pressure of shame if you fail in front of people you went public to.) Check.
- Members' subservience to the group causes them to cut ties with family and friends, and to give up personal goals and activities that were of interest before joining the group? ("Move to Boston" / "You have to prove your dedication"). check
- Members are expected to devote inordinate amounts of time to the group? check!
- Members must submit their individual schedules to moderated group activities they feel pressure to engange in? ("Startups that meet every week for dinner ...") Check.
- Members are strongly encouraged to live and/or socialize mostly/only with other group members, with implication that doing so is an unspoken prerequisite for advancement in group? Check!
- Pervasive doomsday scenarios with grave repurcussions for failure to comply with implications? Check! (Oh noes! The deadline for the next YCombinator funding season went and we forgot to send in our application! Our 733t startup will have no money for 6 months! This suxors to the maxor!)
- Leader claims to have contact with superior beings who are inaccessible to "normal" people? Check! ("The other day I called my venture capitalist friends ...")
- Extensive use of metacommunication to implant subliminal messages by stressing certain key words over and over? Check! ("Blah blah blah blah STARTUP, blah blah STARTUP STARTUP, blah blah blah STARTUP blah blah APPLICATION DEADLINE blah blah STARTUP APPLICATION DEADLINE!")
- Espouses the idea that there's no reason whatsoever to leave the group? check! (See "How not to die" article).
Weeeeiiiird.