A lot of it probably started out as performative, but later became sincere -- either as users on the site became further radicalized, or as the site became a magnet for users who actually believed the awful things they were saying.

When I first moved to my current home I installed a big wood stove in the basement to help keep the home warm. Over the next few years I learned a lot empirically about how fire works.

One of the more interesting lessons was how important it is to use the radiant heat from a burning piece of wood to build and sustain heat in other pieces of wood. It works a bit like fuel rods in a fission reaction. When you keep the logs separate they will burn, but not vigorously. But if you bring two glowing logs close together, you can see them mutually heat each other and drive up the rate of combustion.

I think something like that happens with these concentrated communities.

That's a really striking analogy.

It's hard to say, but it does seem like the pathway from edgelord to actual nazi is disturbingly short and straight. Even if a lot of that content wasn't authentic, there is a non-trivial chance that they'll come to believe it eventually.

“Ironic nazis” aren’t a thing, they’re just nazis. The original nazis used “irony” and “edgelord” recruiting tactics in the same way that the modern neo-nazi does, with the same intents and purposes. There’s no difference in the tactics, just like there’s no difference in the contingent of concerned free-speech absolutists convinced that we need to listen to their “jokes” and take them in stride as they advance their radicalization campaigns. The “irony” is important, because it allows their recruits to performatively voice their hatred in a safe manner, much like a child riding a bike with training wheels. The goal of radicalization is to move them away from the irony, but keep the hatred.

https://www.thewrap.com/daily-stormer-founder-ironic-nazis-a...

Edgelords get rejected by all the non-nazis.

This is when i tend to apply Popehat's law of goats.

The Rule of Goats: even if you say you're only fucking goats ironically, you're still a goatfucker

It's only an act for so long. If it ever was an act.