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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 6, 2023

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The accusations of right-wing "gayops" smack so heavily of "big if true." I can believe that it may be possible, but if so, then trans activism has a bigger problem than a stupid wizard game if they can be reliably punked by 4Channers in such a way.

I very sincerely doubt it's a possibility. There are plenty of people in the crowd dogpiling Pikamee who have internet presences dating back years, that don't seem to be fake (but I can't prove a negative). I have yet to see a convincing argument that the majority of people dogpiling were, say, avatarless randomly-generated usernames who joined Twitter yesterday.

Of course, the standard response to an argument against a conspiracy theory is to double down on the conspiracy further and postulate an even bigger conspiracy to cover up evidence of the conspiracy being a conspiracy. I have no doubt they'll just say the 4channers will have planned this out years in advance or something. It reminds one of a JFK truther going to heaven, being told by God Himself that JFK was shot by Lee Harvey Oswald, and concluding that the conspiracy runs deeper.

Good point, I didn't realize that the proportion of "Twitter eggs"* would be a factor of evidence.

*GamerGate-era term for new and anonymous Twitter accounts--back then, I think the default avatar for new accounts was an egg.