I remember the whole beginning of this and how everything transpired.

What really happened is this...

When the "alt-right" movement was first gaining popularity in the beginning of Donald Trump it was incredibly anti-women relative to the mainstream. Anyone who was a dissident toward the female influence in mainstream society was dialed-in to the "alt-right" movement at this time. That would have included guys like Imp1 and all the gamergate crowd. The pinnacle move Trump did to bolster this support was when the girl asked Trump about if someone should earn the same as men and Trump responded that if they did the same work they should get paid the same. Such an obvious and true statement at the time was considered misogynistic and it was "offensive" but it secured the support of all the men who were fed up with our gynocratic society at the time. This crowd started pushing 2D > 3D or the whole liking anime girls better than real girls. At first it was a bit of a running gag with some truth to it but in reality there was a lot more truth to it than people originally let on which is why it stuck so well.

Where things started going downhill is when Trump was gaining serious support among the average "normie" people of America. The suburban moms and the blue-collar average joe guys. The Q types, along with the women who all think they're NAWALT (Not All Women Are Like That; IE. they think they're exceptional and not like the liberal women). These people don't understand much of what's going on in society and found the anti-female supporters of Trump to be offensive and believed these supporters were detracting from the movement with their misogyny. Trump himself pivoted entirely away from the pro-male crowd to bolster his female support. This led to Trump supporters naturally trying to distance themselves from the anti-female crowd and attacking the nerds for their taste in anime was how they'd do it. Women always attack men who don't like women because that's an affront to women and cucked men who worship women (simps) generally attack men for the same because these men think a man's value is based on what kinds of women he can get so if they only like 2D women, it's because he can't get women so he has no value as a man. These are generally your low-class tradcucked men and room temperature IQ "professional" men. This is what eventually dominated the Trump movement and that's why eventually it seemed like the pro-2D crowd died off and went away because they no longer were a part of any large political movement. These people are still around but a lot of them aren't involved in politics because none of the current favorites within any party are pro-men/anti-women anymore.