I think there are 2-3 different things going on here:
(1) Yishan is a master troll in the style of some of the very best from Usenet and old Slashdot. Every few months you'll see him pop out a other banger tweet with 2M+ views just for the glee of the engagement. (He wrote the 'best Paris baguette' counterfactual tweet for example.)
(2) Yishan is also very good at using those troll style skills to shift the Internet user media zeitgeist. Think like Paul G's "submarine PR" but for the median reddittor opinion instead of the press. He famously shifted the opinion on /u/ekjp with just 2 or 3 well crafted posts. Hard to remember how much that crowd hates her and how they've mellowed now.
(3) Yishan has also said, I think with total sincerity and outside any kayfabe, that his wife has long covid and that he's very sensitive to the serious long term health issues she developed. See e.g. https://twitter.com/yishan/status/1571393616928714752
(1) You can't really go based off "views" on Twitter. They don't really mean anything, just that someone scrolled past the tweet. I found that baguette tweet you were talking about, and it only had a couple thousand likes. Nothing about him seems like a master troll, that's a cop out in the style of "joke's on them I was only pretending".
(2) I think that was more down to him being the former CEO with access to inside information rather than a master manipulator...
(3) His wife having long COVID doesn't give him a free pass to promote literal conspiracy theories, where all the world's governments and press are working together to hide the truth from everyone.
(1) Yishan is a master troll in the style of some of the very best from Usenet and old Slashdot. Every few months you'll see him pop out a other banger tweet with 2M+ views just for the glee of the engagement. (He wrote the 'best Paris baguette' counterfactual tweet for example.)
(2) Yishan is also very good at using those troll style skills to shift the Internet user media zeitgeist. Think like Paul G's "submarine PR" but for the median reddittor opinion instead of the press. He famously shifted the opinion on /u/ekjp with just 2 or 3 well crafted posts. Hard to remember how much that crowd hates her and how they've mellowed now.
(3) Yishan has also said, I think with total sincerity and outside any kayfabe, that his wife has long covid and that he's very sensitive to the serious long term health issues she developed. See e.g. https://twitter.com/yishan/status/1571393616928714752
I don't doubt the sincerity of his beliefs here.