>>155384The nature of what happened during "happenings" wasn't inter-site, it's inter-board.
What spurred the general anti staff feelings, /v/'s crackdown exported as standard operating procedure to unrelated boards and their culture, also allowed it to concentrate during a happening. For example /pol/ grew by fits and spurts, driven by current events. No one in 2012 was seriously fleeing Reddit to come balloon /pol/'s population during the Zimmerman trial, /pol/ burgeoned with crossboarders coming for the event of it all. Afterwards some would stay on /pol/, some would quit posting until the next happening, but regardless /pol/'s makeup of old /new/smen was shaken up right quick.
And while I had personally quit /v/ almost as soon as /vg/ came into existence, like plenty of other people when the nascent gamergate rolling general appeared on /v/, I was crossboarding right there myself to gawk and argue at the meta of it all. Making early versions of the points I'm making right now and further up the thread.
And this is all in addition to my original point that /v/ itself had been primed with a certain selection of posters, even if a minority, that were ready to find themselves in those threads all deathly serious about agitating for change out off-site.
>very prone to mask as established localsIn my experience, besides my points about betrayal needing real context and broad fast movements necessarily being organic, they aren't very successful at larping when they try.