What about when you infantilize your employees and implicitly insult their intelligence by having them do exercises designed for 3rd graders? Is that the time to top it off with criticism for them taking themselves too seriously?
One way you know you're in a cult and being manipulated is that you or someone else is being singled out as an example of someone who's unwilling to adhere to whatever ridiculous stunt they're being asked to perform. The person asking them to do it is usually a psychopath using the oldest trick in the book: The ability to manipulate people by leveraging the innate human need for approval from the group.
And it's always those with emotional intelligence who are singled out for abuse. Of course, the psychopaths running the experiment also have "high EQ" - of a very particular and malevolent sort.
Rating: Cheap trick, poorly executed. 2/5. And not nice.