Usually their hot topics are bitching about housing and simping for TOP but these days I’ve noticed a lot more posts to the extent of “labour sucks and now I have no choice but to vote for national >:(”. Unsure if this reflects a general change in sentiment or if certain parties are spending their excess donations on buying out accounts. Worth mentioning I’ve noticed inflammatory topics posted by accounts that have been dead for years.
You’ve just described the entire reason brigading exists, to give that impression.
The place leaned centre right at best on a number of issues, so you could always see when something quickly surged outside of usual activity levels.
The Marama thing was actually the most obvious example. For several days there was almost nothing else on there. Low effort memes posted in the middle of the night with shit that showed they’d clearly jumped in from elsewhere, like using the Australian greens party logo instead of the NZ one.
There’s two reasons why the Marama thing took off.
First, the moderators deleted a number of posts on the topic when it first happened, so when a post finally stayed up long enough to gain traction, people were pissed at the moderators. r/subredditdrama also brought a number of users from outside NZ.
Second, it was so bad that it drew a number of lurkers out of the woodwork to comment. People posted at odd hours because not everyone keeps the same hours you do.
Take off the tinfoil hat, and accept that a number of people genuinely hold different views to you.