[sapphicsnail]

> The enormous public interest generated by garish reconstructions is surely because of and not in spite of their ugliness. It is hard to believe that this is entirely accidental. One possibility is that the reconstructors are engaged in a kind of trolling.

It's towards the end of the article. He doesn't directly mention culture war stuff but he does talk about it being "iconoclastic." I think it's a reasonable interpretation of what he was saying.

[marcellus23]

I don't think it's reasonable. If there's context I'm missing and this guy has written about culture war stuff before, fair enough, but based on this article alone, I'm not seeing any indication of that.

[simiones]

That phrase suggests more that the author believes this is done for spectacle, knowing that it will attract attention to the researcher far more than a nice-looking painted statue would. Basically he seems to be accusing these researchers of doing flame-bait for clicks, like those kitchen-top meal TikTok videos designed to get engagement by making people angry.