I have to wonder how many of these morality spirals aren’t instigated by actual trolls.
An example of this was the explosion of transgender issues into the mainstream soon after gay marriage was legalized. I recall reading a fringe right-wing blogger about the “lesbian vs transgender conflict”, a few years before the “T” in LGBT became more prominent. This prominence may well have been engineered by trolls in an attempt to alienate a group of people who were rapidly being accepted into mainstream society.
Infiltrate a community, set off a purity spiral. Collapse the community, and then, as a bonus, complain about “virtue signaling”, “wokeness” and “cancel culture”. Repeat.
Now imagine that both sides are doing it. Now imagine that there have been several iterations of this process. Now imagine that the people involved have gone through so many iterations that they've lost sight of which side they started on.
S/he was right to start with. Sure, people do it unconsciously but you're foolish if you don't think there are also people who do it systematically and even document the process.
An example of this was the explosion of transgender issues into the mainstream soon after gay marriage was legalized. I recall reading a fringe right-wing blogger about the “lesbian vs transgender conflict”, a few years before the “T” in LGBT became more prominent. This prominence may well have been engineered by trolls in an attempt to alienate a group of people who were rapidly being accepted into mainstream society.
Infiltrate a community, set off a purity spiral. Collapse the community, and then, as a bonus, complain about “virtue signaling”, “wokeness” and “cancel culture”. Repeat.