^ this. The specific example in my mind was TikTok short-form manosphere content that flooded the internet in 2023.
It doesn’t even need to have fake views. Content tagged with rising extremist views will naturally foster higher engagement—some of it from the absurdity; some of it from the growing group of people who believe it. Andrew Tate was a large part of promoting violent misogyny and patriarchy. The views never changed; they just became far more familiar.
“When trump dies” is just the liberal rapture. Trump is the symptom, not the disease. Of course Vance is weird and uncharismatic to us, but Trump talks like a moron and his supporters eat it up.
It’s not about quality. Most people use content just to fill a void. Look outside at the people around you. Just about everyone is looking at their phones on rides, listening to podcasts when walking. It’s just filler.
The alt-right took over the social sphere just by taking up space. All the manosphere/trad-life/christo-fascist/slopaganda crap flooded the internet, and then it became the norm—not because it was convincing, but because it was recognizable. People parrot what they hear; And that’s especially true for the majority of unintelligent folks who wish to masquerade as intelligent. It just so happens the masses heard a lot of “women/people of color/queers are destroying our great white Christian society”.
There’s nothing about this that’s inherent to bigotry or conservative ideology; It’s just that USA conservative-aligned businessfolk bought up the outlets and skewed the scene a little bit in the favor of alt-right ideology. Over years that compounded, and now it’s seized the entire conversation. Perhaps lefties/liberals were hesitant to use those methods because they play to emotions, and not intelligence; But this is the reality of our current social sphere.
Idk if it’s still a thing, but I recall one could adopt sections of highways, where they’d pick up litter, maybe make occasional payments for maintenance; and in exchange they get a sign shouting-out the person or business. A comment below by Zorcron mentioned this was an act of environmental activism, so it sounds like this is a bit of the same situation here.