I agree that Charles is self-centred and that there is a cult of personality around him to a certain degree but it really depends on which part of the community

I agree that Charles is self-centred and that there is a cult of personality around him to a certain degree but it really depends on which part of the community you are in as to whether it's "this is an influential person in the space so let's listen" or "our god king is speaking". The Project Catalyst community, the official IOG developer discord, and even the Cardano subreddits (r/Cardano, r/Cardano_ELI5, r/CardanoDevelopers, etc) to a less extent aren't caught up in this cult mentality so much. When Charles says something stupid, innapropriate, or unbecoming, people are not afraid to address it in these spaces. On r/CryptoCurrency or on twitter it's a different story but Twitter is a cesspool (especially for any cryptocurrency) and while we try to call out the zealots on r/CC, it's not particularly easy. In those dedicated Cardano spaces though, there is a marked effort to avoid the cult mentality and redirect that energy towards focusing on actual projects. Very few people (in these communities) have the belief that somehow Cardano is going to be the dominant cryptocurrency or is going to "take over the world" so to speak. There is a strong belief that the project will be successful and a strong ecosystem is forming around it but not that it renders other chains irrelevant or that it must grow at any cost including via the minimisation or attacking of other networks. The general consensus is that it will make a strong showing and settle into a reasonably solid position in the greater financial ecosystem where it'll be intertwined with and coexisting with legacy financial systems and the other major cryptocurrency networks. TLDR: Every topic/space has zealots unfortunately but looking at their core communities I've found Cardano to be generally fairly resistant to this behaviour. It's not a perfect community by any means but out of all the communities I'm involved in, I've seen more people in the Cardano ecosystem go out of their way to walk others away from maximalist behaviour or zealotry than any other community. I've been around for quite a while and I've seen how the different communities have evolved so I like to believe I've gotten a reasonably comprehensive view of the communities but no person can see everything and in the end this is all anecdotal experiences.