Nitramy
The Umbrella that Smites Evil
The term is 'preference cascade.' A certain threshold is reached, and fear/desire to be part of the 'in-group' stops being enough to keep people from either saying what they really think, or recognizing is really true.
Then the social pressure/in-group pressure starts going the other way, and all the pent up frustration starts to vent very quickly. A lot of people who had visibly been part of the old 'in-group' decide they need to very visibly prove they are part of the new in group, and that adds to the force of the snap-back.
This is how you set up the conditions that result in mobs attacking adult 'trans' people, and known 'trans-advocates.'
It'll be interesting, seeing if online interaction methods can have a positive effect, as they might let some of that frustration be vented in a place other than street-mobs. Probably not enough of a positive effect to counter-balance how much they've served as echo-chambers/rabble-rousing spaces.
And those of us who've been trying to argue for sanity will then start finding ourselves arguing with the sudden glut of over-zealous anti-intersectionalists about how no, you don't need to destroy all these people's lives, just prove they're wrong. And prosecute those who actively helped mutilate children.
This was the exact outcome I was hoping in #gamergate: the anti-academic snapback would hit hard enough that entrenched "gaming" academics would just fucking stop or it would be their heads on the chopping block. Because FUCK DIGRA with a rusty chainsaw.
Anyway, as long as those fuckers are controlling the narrative, it's relatively easy to prevent the preference cascade from taking place. Once it starts, though... there's no stopping Mr. Bones' Wild Ride.