Exactly. I knew kids from middle school who ended up getting really radicalized and became white supremacists. Moved away but at least one of them became a murderer so... yeah.

It reminds me of how everyone was amazed by Gamergate in the 2010s and then the rise of trump around the alt-right. Or the current "angry males" bullshit with tate and the wannabes.

Mostly it just made me think of being a gamer in the late 90s/early 2000s. Plenty of message boards were full of "weird comments" and some folk even pointed out how blatantly a few neonazi handbooks were being followed in terms of recruitment. Like, I distinctly remember feeling really uncomfortable in my Unreal Tournament clan because one of the guys "was an asshole" but nobody else thought it. I didn't want to deal with him but I also couldn't play UT unless I did. Fortunately I ended up breaking ties because nobody else wanted to play OFP/ArmA after UT2k4 was "fun but not the same".

Its been the same shit for decades. And even today, if you care about something as simple as "maybe don't call people 'gay' as an insult" or "that comment is insensitive", people lose their shit and call you the modern day equivalent of an SJW. And, in the interim, neonazis are following those same publicly available recruitment handbooks and are doing a great job of making people comfortable with spewing bigotry because "it is just a joke". Until it isn't.

And we also see the same "oh, they are just misguided" kid gloves. It makes me IMMENSELY angry when influencers like Disguised Toast or Ludwig or Charlie/Moistcritical (although, he has let his chud flag openly fly a few times) will try to position themselves as "a left leaning centrist" but will openly praise and defend people like ishowspeed or sneako who threaten women with rape and scream misogyny but "are really talented and great at building their brand" or "just have a difference of opinion". Rather than call them deranged right-wing lunatics.