[tjpnz]

>We essentially have some teenager on 4chan trolling an entire audience of probably hundreds of thousands of individuals.

That's the most plausible explanation and I've explained it that way to several people already. Doesn't work though - you'll either be dismissed or discover later on that they've found a way of reconciling it with their already crackpot worldview.

[matwood]

Maybe that's how it started, but I think foreign actors work to amplify what's happening. I can't help but thinking of this paper though:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6137759/

> Conclusions. Whereas bots that spread malware and unsolicited content disseminated antivaccine messages, Russian trolls promoted discord. Accounts masquerading as legitimate users create false equivalency, eroding public consensus on vaccination.

Substitute any other absurd topic. By having any discussion at all, it legitimizes position.