going off my vague and admittedly rusty memory, there were at least three major examples of this that I personally encountered:
-
- The Marvel Civil War story arc in the comics
-
- The Twilight Saga Edward Vs Jacob marketing for the movies (which admittedly was handled somewhat tongue-in-cheek. I seem to recall a fast food commercial taking it to what I hope was an intentionally absurd degree)
-
- The MCU retread of Civil War from the comics, adapted to the silver screen
-
*** 4) Edit: Injustice: gods among us (thanks to u/Kinglion for pointing that one out)***
Whether this was intentional or not is beyond the scope of this screed, but it is interesting to note how many real-world examples of this phenomenon occurred during and after these campaigns, gamergate, the ghostbusters fiasco, the trump/anti trump movements, etc.
maybe it's nothing, or maybe it's something. I honestly have no idea, but the timing is certainly interesting at the very least.
Pretty sure these dynamics are baked into our society, to keep things stable and the population distracted, while the real impactful decisions about the direction of society are made by business men who pretend to be above such conflicts. Gamergate exposed the highly political nature of big business, while they pretend to simply be following the will of the people.
there does seem to be an attitude that it's their role to shape the will of the people rather than follow it...