i can actually speak to the /r9k/ thing as that is, for better or for worse, kind of my home turf
/r9k/ had discussed kent a bit before now but really got into him with a thread on july 3:
https://archive.moe/r9k/thread/20121373
now kent discussion is contained to /kent/ general threads because talking about this dude is so popular
their initial interest was in the elliot rodger comparison--/r9k/ idolizes elliot rodger and sees him as a "robot" that achieved some small measure of retribution against the normies, which is their sort of collective fantasy (i.e. the beta uprising). the whole "dude films himself in idyllic setting and monologues about how the world hates him" thing is straight out of the elliot rodger playbook, and kent provides a point of interest to this community because he is not (yet) dead and keeps providing material. worth noting that wizardchan saw and discussed the elliot rodger videos shortly before he went on his rampage, and there is a substantial amount of overlap between wizardchan and /r9k/
i think opinion on kent is pretty divided at /r9k/. you've got a number of different approaches to the guy, but many of them overlap in some way or another.
1. people who think kent is a master ruseman who is somehow making youtube $$$ (or "go viral") off his edgy elliot rodger impersonation
2. people who think kent has obvious problems and mainly want to laugh at him. or, normies.
3. people who want to le epic troll kent into killing himself or (ideally) killing other people and then himself.
4. people who sympathize with kent's opinions, experiences, and feel like he really captures the essence of their complaints about life & society
people in the (1) subset tend to get shot down very quickly, as it's pretty hard to argue that kent makes any kind of money off of his videos or benefits in any meaningful way from the exposure.
the people in (2) are not that unlike people here.
the people in the (3) subset are who you probably see all over kent's comments, though i think some of those people are from /r/cringe too. they will not stop treating him that way, no matter what you do, kind of an unstoppable force vs. immovable object situation. they buy into the "second coming of elliot" thing so hard that they are actively engaged in making that into a reality, even though kent has stated that he isn't going to do that. i'd say that among these people, some of them are just in it for lulz and think they are being very edgy and funny, and some of them are quite genuine. in any case, they are going to keep tormenting kent until he either does something drastic or they find something else to obsess over.
the people in (4) are probably the only real novel thing /r9k/ adds to the spectator-phenomenon of kent. these are people who can listen to a kent video and say "i know these feels." they, like kent, view themselves as outcasts and rejects, wholly unlovable (despite vacillating on whether or not they are deserving of love in the first place). they define their happiness largely in terms of social acceptance, and particularly romantic acceptance. and, perhaps most importantly, they see other people as the source of their problems, and that while they can understand themselves to be pathetic and worthless, still feel like they are that way because other people treat them unfairly.
i think the duality of subsets (3) and (4) provides a pretty clear picture of /r9k/ as a whole: a place that attracts people who want to wallow in self-pity and despair, as well as a place that attracts people who find some kind of meaning in that self-pity and aggressively resist any perceived threat to that lifestyle. if you can permit a brief academic tangent into the discipline of dank memeology, it's also been expressed in the dichotomy between "wojak" (the >tfw face) and pepe (rip pepe)--if wojak was all about feeling sorry for yourself about >tfw no gf, pepe is all about the rage of >tfw no gf. one coin, two sides.
mr. bones' wild ride has only begun
