@gabriel Psyop or not, it did get people to obsess over politics to a very unhealthy degree (myself included) and did destroy a lot of Internet communities, so I will always look at the thing negatively. I was only suckered into it because the hobbies I were into were suckered into it and everyone had the mentality of "everyone is the enemy unless proven otherwise, so you might as well pick a side".

I wished it never happened. My life would be so much better if it didn't (though I argue that COVID was 1000x worse than the culture war).

I'll leave the possibility that it DID happen organically, but only in niche blogs/forums and maybe politicians and CEOs discovered that they could take advantage of it by bringing it to the mainstream.

But either way, I feel like that it has gotten to the point that even if you did get rid of the top of the pyramid, people would still be fighting over these issues and I don't know the best way to address it, at least a way that pleases most people.