I think you're reading too much into it. They're just a cringey nerd who's insecure that no one takes them seriously in real life. They try to explain this by thinking that because other leftists act like weird cranks, they aren't taken seriously by normal people since everyone else assume they're a weird leftist crank when the real reason why normal people don't take them seriously is because they're a cringey insecure nerd. Hence the obsession with optics.