@sickburnbro @TrevorGoodchild @TornadoOfTerror Taking BAP and Yarvin as the core examples, they seemed into the scene when they were at the margins and also anonymous, but with all of the anons banned, the people who rose to the 'top' of that sphere were the ones best at networking with each other and most willing to sacrifice being truthful, useful, and funny in order to keep their accounts.

Once that was in play, they had *influence*, and the culture was no longer one such that bad takes resulted in having to deal with random anons from /pol/ calling them fags. Combined with the fact that they had started facefagging, which makes people a lot less eager to challenge power, there were incentives to start pushing things in the direction of their tribe.