Cult

What is cult and why is it cult? Cult is generally described as something that is popular with a small group of people outside of the mainstream public concensus. Eg Star Trek is a cult TV show, because there is a hardcore audience of trekkies who love the show all the time even theough the show comes and goes in and out of general public favour. Certain bands have a cult following too, REM before they signed to a maijor label had a huge cult following that was way larger than many of the so-called 'big' bands at the time, and they've gone on to find great success in the public mainstream while retaining most of their original cult following. On the whole I think that the label cult gets applied by the media when it can't understand why somehting is more popular that they think it should be. This is not a bad thing, on the contrary it shows what things to look out for because it might just be really good.