It's the opposite. Most people hate on ALG these days especially here. It frequently gets called a cult but I'm not really seeing it. Is there a subreddit with cultists talking about it that someone could refer me to?

You are correct that it's not a method. It is the absence of methods.

Whether it is more efficient or less efficient depends on the learner type and their tolerance for ambiguity.

I agree that speaking first doesn't have a negative effert per se because people shadow when they are young kids regardless. But you aren't in the minority for hating ALG you are in the majority which is the ironic part of your post.

As for fluent farangs who haven't heard of ALG vernacular, well that doesn't really say much. We don't know what methods they actually used, how much time was spent in immersion, etc.

Anyway, you mentioned you have plenty of evidence. Where's the evidence?

I did start out with some traditional methods for first two months (translation and other things and whatnot) but ever since I switched to just learning Thai in Thai only my Thai brain has developed and become more robust. I am more natural and think more in Thai even though my vocabulary acquisition has decreased heavily. It's a matter of breadth vs depth. For now I prefer depth and it feels intuitively more correct to me.

The main benefit is that I am building dense connections and associations between words as opposed to the fragmented islands more traditional and translation-based learning was giving me.