Not sure the whole internet was woke, the nazis and pedophiles have been here for quite a while too. But they were on the fringe and shunned by the larger internet culture until relatively recently. Trump started courting the votes of the worst side of the internet. Then the pandemic brought a bunch of “normies” online whose brains weren’t ready for the culture shock, and rather than accepting the freaks and geeks, they decided the nazis were the normal ones.
This has been well before the pandemic and even before Trumps presidential bid. But also before corporate social media being dominant i remember being exposed to self identifying nazis in video games around the time when facebook was mostly farmville invitations.
Once the Nazis realized the power of corporate social media and its algorithms and the corporations realized the money they can make with peddling hate-speech, it became more present, but it always was there and certainly not shunned away to the fringes.
Not sure the whole internet was woke, the nazis and pedophiles have been here for quite a while too. But they were on the fringe and shunned by the larger internet culture until relatively recently. Trump started courting the votes of the worst side of the internet. Then the pandemic brought a bunch of “normies” online whose brains weren’t ready for the culture shock, and rather than accepting the freaks and geeks, they decided the nazis were the normal ones.
I think they always have been there and certainly not on the fringes.
Take this question about “stormfront” for instance from reddit nine years ago.
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskEurope/comments/45krzb/why_do_many_of_the_european_subreddits_seem_like/
This has been well before the pandemic and even before Trumps presidential bid. But also before corporate social media being dominant i remember being exposed to self identifying nazis in video games around the time when facebook was mostly farmville invitations.
Once the Nazis realized the power of corporate social media and its algorithms and the corporations realized the money they can make with peddling hate-speech, it became more present, but it always was there and certainly not shunned away to the fringes.