Thanks for the link—fascinating stuff.
I consider myself a conspiracy theorist, and know that many here disagree with me on many on these topics—and we are talking a long list.....
It is very easy for discussion of any of them to digress into name calling and finger pointing as discussed in your link.
I also consider myself an expert on cigars, and hang out at the reddit cigar and cuban cigar forums.
As your link suggested, there are very predictable “hot button” issues that can get crazy in a hurry—which as your link said sound harmless.
In the cigar groups a general statement like “Cuban cigars are better than non Cuban cigars” can turn into a wild war of words with fanatics on both sides of the issue (as one example).
Scary stuff—and probably easy to manipulate for sure...