From what I could see it was the negative focus on Ken Wheeler resulted in a lot of people who found his manner pretty grating abruptly felt comfortable express

From what I could see it was the negative focus on Ken Wheeler resulted in a lot of people who found his manner pretty grating abruptly felt comfortable expressing this. (tbh I'm surprised it hadn't happened earlier, guy seems like a good egg but I find him pretty obnoxious). Their dislike, got conflated with the initial hypothesis and at that point you have hundreds of people confused about what's happening and writing up their own rough guesses. Some actual racists began messaging in support of what they interpreted the events as, misrepresenting Ken and others in the process. About 95% of it is just the general toxicity of Twitter reaching a part of the website that generally avoids it.