It's hard to explain, but this article cuts right to the heart of what's wrong with society right now. Brilliant stuff. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/09/how-memes-lulz-and-ironic-bigotry-won-internet/616427/

A foundational element of being a "mom's basement" type of heavy internet user is fooling and triggering people. It's deriving joy from causing chaos on the intertubez. It's going back to your network and having a good laugh at how gullible and sensitive people are.

The problem is, the internet is no longer this seperate universe that people log into for a bit. The average person uses their smartphone for over 3 hours per day (Gen Z even more). Online and real life has effectively merged for many people.

And here we arrive at the problem. For problematic men looking for "lulz", simple trolling on the internet doesn't do the job anymore. That dopamine hit isn't strong enough.

It's easy to dismiss these people as edgelords and fringe conspiracy nuts, but at a certain point all the QAnon, militiamen, flat earther, anti-vaxx, doomsday prepper, incel, pizzagate believers collectively reach critical mass. They become a non-trivial portion of the population

I'll leave you with this perceptive thought from @helenlewis, who wrote the piece at the start of this thread.