It happens with any e-daddy.
Here's the formula for starting a cult, based on what I've seen in forum threads here:
1. Be aloof. Scarcity increases your worth, and the less you do, the less likely you are to do something stupid.
2. Be funny. People forgive funny people way more than unfunny people.
3. Appeal to people with weak father figures. There's many niches for this, find your own with few competing e-daddies.
Watch as your reputation becomes unimpeachable and people will tirelessly defend you online without compensation for years.
well hey work on being funny and you've got all the ingredients to be jim jones 2.0 :^)
But for what it's worth I think it's more than just internet daddy, there's plenty of those running around and few have discussion around them quite as vitriolic as sam
I think it's a combination of a few things but namely the combination of lots of his fans being autistic dyed-in-the-wool types that associate him with fond 2015-era memories, and the people shitting on sam being equally as spergy.
the sam fanboy brigades are gay and annoying, but they're to be expected, I'd wager half of the spergy fanboys have been following him from platform to platform and are just really committed paypigs that like him telling them the secret to success is to buy etherium and not buy a house (genius), and the other half are just clicking on featured post and defending le based kekistan mass shooter meme man.
it's the people powerleveling their hatred of sam I find more interesting. there's plenty of people perfectly understandably/rightly saying stuff wasn't funny, over the hill, wigger crew is gay, life advice dad bit is stupid, etc., giving well thought-out criticism and feedback
but then you get the "sam is a literal pedophile literally raping children right now, and i can prove it with a five year old infographic", the "sam is a terrible meanie look how he treats his fans and is so transphobic and racist", and some flavor of "nothing this guy ever did was funny god he's so reddit and such a loser, pssh everything he does and ever will do is cringe"
which in and of themselves are fine and fair opinions to have, but when you get people insisting and screaming about it just as hard as his fanboys, over and over and over again, it just makes his diehard fans all the more obstinate and reply to any critique with dilate tranny.
Over the weekend I saw a lot of hyde discussion and kept seeing these same types pop up over and over again, not sure if it's buttmad ex-fans or what but it's pretty cringy and more obnoxious than the fanboys, if you really hate him that much just take a chill pill, he's already dead