@vib There's a great book on this subject. This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, By Whitney Phillips, MIT Press. Lib-Gen has PDF. This is an review of the history from theearly 2000s to the present day.

I was really puzzled about the sociology behind it as well and spent much time reading Something Awful and 4chan archives, trying to understanding how online pranksters eventually evolved into a reactionary political movement. I stopped as soon as I realized real sociologists had done a better job.