I read this as "Modern slavery was not on my radar until reading this thread. " as you didn't know modern day slavery didn't exist.

I found this highly unlikely considering your education and resume. You clarified in this reply that it was the amount.

However, I don't think you were being manipulative. You're education, papers, past comments, and twitter comments come off as an intellectual nerd.

I thought you were doing a whataboutism combined with the "wide eyed naive" character technique. I'm sorry.