On the topic of Stefbot as a person, I've worked with him three times on videos and I've noticed a few things.
1. He's not good about answering emails and getting back to you. Also seems maybe a little forgetful about interactions with others. Might just be due to how many people he talks to though.
2. Once you get hold of him everything is cool and he's a pretty friendly guy.
3. He's a person who is obviously used to taking the lead on things, but if you are more of an authority (Knowledge-wise) on a subject and you are willing to treat him as an equal and butt heads with him he will immediately back down and listen to what you have to say*. I kept cutting dead air our of the voiceover he did for this video -
The Story of Our UnenslavementHe had a bunch of long pauses and the whole thing sorta dragged a little bit. I went through and chopped every pause that was more than say a second long. He was certain that the audience needed that time to process the information he was giving. I told him that I couldn't in good conscience put my name on a video that dragged out like that. He thanked me for butting heads with him and I did it my way and the video turned out great. He seemed to be happy with it in the end. Unfortunately the video does a lot of comparing religion to the state and it didn't pick up viewer traction like "The Sunset of the State" which I also made. People don't like sharing this vid with friends and family who may still have a god chip on their shoulder so it didn't get the same attention even though it's probably a better vid.
Shit happens.
Anyway, I've dealt with the dude directly several times and found him to be a reasonable person.
Everybody has their quirks. I have a beef with crazy people and I'm not much of a human interaction person unless I know the crowd well. Other people have their own things. Molyneux is obviously a geek like a lot of us are, (Some of his podcasts are peppered with D&D jokes and so on.) and I think he's got some of the classic geek 'foibles'. Very direct and to the point, has to pick things apart and verify, a little obsessive about his topics of interest. You know, like a lot of geeks are. Another geek trait - Being slightly hyper focused and oblivious to our surroundings unless directly addressed. I noticed that a bit as well when we met him at Porcfest. Again, this is little shit.
The fact that he compensates for those little flaws with his obviously amazing oratory skills is perfectly natural. Certain types of people who are maybe a little more impressionable will tend to congregate around a person like that. Also only natural.
But bruh-man be constantly trying to shrug off the "Cult" crap by requesting fairly consistently that people look at the ideas and not the person. I dunno how many times I've heard someone thank him for this and that and he poo poos it for his part.
As for "Charisma", I kinda see what Brasky be getting at, but actually his voice and demeanor were initially a turnoff to me, and definitely a turnoff to Mel. Sometimes the force of a person's personality... Well, we aren't all aware of it, you know? If you've got kinda a big mouth and a swagger people will sometimes be drawn to you. It's happened to me before IRL. How one deals with that sort of thing is more of a measure of "Cultiness" than just being charismatic or having a big personality.
And I wanna make clear that I'm not talking about how I'm all awesome and shit. It's just... Shit that happens. I know that if I sit down with a group of people at a social occasion, and I start talking about something I'm passionate about, ten minutes later, no matter the configuration of the room, people will have turned around and faced me. I don't seek it, it just happens. And we all know it's not about my amazing smile or anything. It's just... I dunno.
I know this though, there were a couple times in my life when I used that attribute to my advantage and it caused some serious fucking disasters for other people. I knocked that shit off about 12 years ago. Molyneux doesn't seem to be the type to pull that sort of shit deliberately. Dude barely notices people he already knows standing three feet away from him, so I can't imagine him working the mojo on people just for the control-freakery of it all.
*I am exactly the same way in regards to this and I know it annoys the shit out of people sometimes. I just sorta take the lead if I think I'm the person who knows best, and it often comes off as arrogance. However, if I don't know what the fuck about something I either never chime in or just listen to and ask advice from the person who does.