I’ll start first: at the height of reddit going absolutely mad and frothing at the mouth I heard r/genzedong mentioned a lot as this evil evil tankie place, so I checked it out. Was a bit overly china fanboy-ish for my taste back then but alright overall and leagues more civil than people on other subs. So I started lurking over there to preserve my sanity until it basically became my most frequently viewed sub. I’ve kinda warmed up to the whole idea of socialism during my stay. And then it got quarantined. I’ve heard of lemmygrad even before the quarantine, so I switched to this place instead. As of this moment, lemmygrad remains my primary source of news and entertainment where I dont have to risk running into some flavour of wehraboo.
short answer:
I turned left because of the invasion of Iraq, reading, and music. I didn’t really become more aware/sympathetic to the ML side of things until much later, probably until just after Occupy.
Genzedong on reddit I came across just because I was looking at other leftist subs anyway. Parenti’s shotgun/dessalines (iirc) would mention lemmygrad. Once GZ got banned on reddit I joined. I still use both. I miss the old genzedong tbh.