>>127214
The more I think about it the more I feel like they were simply caught up in the zeitgeist. In hindsight, 2008 was a pivotal year for the politicization of the internet. Around the same time the Chanology protests were happening there were protests in Colombia against a local militia which started with a group on Facebook, There were also early minor protests fuelled by Facebook and Twitter in Egypt which would eventually lead to the Arab Spring, and 'candlelight protests' in Korea against the lifting of a ban on US meat, where, thanks to the influence of the Internet, school age girls were among the first to protest, and thus became a symbol of the movement.

2008 is also when divisive rhetoric kicked in in the West. People talk about how Trump made people crazy, but Obama made people crazy before that. On the one hand there was his personality cult who wouldn't countenance any criticism of him, and figured you were racist for doing so, and on the other hand there was the (admittedly small) violent opposition who were actually racist and believed he was a Muslim spy or whatever. I was on a number of small forums at this time, and the first political debates that made me want to tap out of politics were scuffles over Obama.