Lord Liaden

Jimmy Carter has been called the best ex-President the United States ever had. He wasn't well suited to managing the myriad dilemmas a POTUS faces, but in since using the profile and contacts he gained thereby to promote and direct humanitarian causes, Jimmy found his true calling.

The closest thing to the Swarm supervillain concept that I've seen for Champions was written by the esteemed Scott Bennie for Digital Hero #24, the adventure, "And There Was Blood Everywhere!" A brutal, ruthless ethnic civil war in a fictional African country has fed ancient malevolent spirits on blood, hatred, and suffering, giving them the strength to manifest as a two-kilometer-wide cloud of billions of blood-bloated biting flies, controlled by a central intelligence. The cloud seeks to spread and feed even farther. Some of the swarm have infested the corpses of the dead, and can animate them like puppets through a sort of magical telekinesis. The resultant "fly zombies" are superhumanly strong. Needless to say, any "pest controllers" called for this problem would be facing a situation like the climax of the movie Ghostbusters.

The sarcasm in that title is well warranted. Who would be startled by that at this point? The man's been ravingly delusional for years at least. Although the implication that Trump's accepting prognostications about his future from the "MyPillow guy," Mike Lindell, does sound like even further deterioration.

Another good template for a Surfer-type would be the mightiest hero of Canada, Celestar, from Champions Of The North. A being of "living cosmic energy," Celestar isn't quite Surfer-class in magnitude or versatility of powers, but his style is very cosmic-blast-throwing, and he's spent an extended period in space, which he's well-suited to.

You know, there's an alien species in the Champions Universe that could fit into that role. The Krsst are a hive-mind species that evolved from creatures somewhat similar to army ants or bee swarms. Each hive effectively constitutes a single organism, usually covering roughly a 2-4 meter radius area when assembled. Krsst hives communicate by direct transmission of nerve impulses from individual to individual, along with a battery of scent cues. They are sensitive to poisons and drugs, and a good dose of soapy water can disrupt the swarm’s scent communication. (See Champions Beyond p. 274.) Mutate a Krsst hive for the desired powers, add plot-appropriate personality traits, and drop them on Earth.

He did a pretty good job.

The example that usually comes to my mind is former UNTIL Major Steven Thesken, once in command of the agency's Project Shiva, their special project devoted to countering Destroyer. Shiva was disbanded after DD's apparent death in 1992, but Thesken was convinced the Doctor was still alive and continued to search for him. By the year 2000 Thesken was getting closer to the truth than Zerstoiten liked, so he had his minions kidnap Thesken and bring him to one of Destroyer's labs. After over a year of excruciating tests, procedures, and brainwashing, Thesken was transformed into Titanos. He'd been made superhumanly strong and tough, and able to grow to 25' tall with proportionately greater strength. His original personality and memories were erased, and replaced with absolute loyalty and devotion to Doctor Destroyer.

I for one find your soapbox quite entertaining. As a point of trivia, I remember the Surfer doing that once before, 'way back in 1969 for Silver Surfer issue #6. Norrin bypassed Galactus' barrier around the Earth by traveling to the far future when it was no longer in place, by the means you describe. There he discovered that the Earth, and much of the universe, had been devastated and conquered by an incredibly powerful mutant calling himself the Overlord. Unable to defeat the Overlord, the Surfer traveled back in time to the accident which created him, and prevented it from ever happening. Then he returned to the present. (Now, if he'd only thought to return to the present outside the barrier...)

We have quite a few examples in DD's history. If you only annoyed him, he'll just kill you. If you actually made him angry, you'll get much, much worse.

And the free market beloved by Republicans goes out the window when it's something that impacts them.

Dishonestly, actually. It seems to me that when I come across actual examples of "cancel culture," they're usually coming from the Right.

He may be outgunned, but he has the high ground.

YouTube in the real world has a ton of these just from fictional superhero movies and television shows.

if it's Sam Jackson's Nick Fury, most of his labels would have to be redacted as NSFW anyway.

Politicians have proven they're unwilling or unable to police remarks from their own peers, and that some will use the Internet to spread deliberate misinformation and propaganda. If they can't play nicely with their toys they shouldn't have them.

See my reply to Jhamin's post above. And yes, gossip about superheroes is a very common subject on Champions Earth, particularly on the Internet. The most popular website of that sort is called SuperRomance.com. In a related vein, there's also a glossy periodical men's magazine titled Uncaped, the subject matter of which is exactly what it sounds like.

Several of these have also persisted into the 5E/6E CU, although they've transitioned partly or wholly to online publishing. Besides the above-mentioned Teen Dream, other Champions characters have become well known in the pop music world. Sapphire of the Champions hero team is basically Jennifer Lopez with super-powers. Lynx, a mutated cat-girl from the colony of Dr. Phillippe Moreau's original experiments at Beast Mountain, has become a singing sensation in Japan. Rock superstar Dion Bach is secretly an avatar of the god Dionysus, whose near-orgiastic live concerts provide the worship he craves.

Keep in mind that the big social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, monitor their users for posting criminal content. Without the protection of elected office , any known criminal posting what you describe, or in many cases posting at all, would be shut down immediately and have their account banned. Criminals are much more likely to be using the dark web/deep web for communicating with parties interested in such content. OTOH tech masters like Dr. Destroyer and Mechanon can probably break into any and every media outlet they wish when they want to make a big announcement. Some time back I wrote up and posted a concept for a new villain team assembled from existing official Champions villains with commonalities, a group of extreme eco-terrorists calling themselves Gaia's Wrath. That included a support group of their normal followers, "Gaia's Web," mobilized via the deep web, who gathered intelligence for the Wrath, acted as fronts for their operations, and sometimes as distractions for the heroes from the Wrath's true objectives.

I'll just mention that Champions Universe devotes three full pages to "Superhumans and the Media," pp. 54-56. Broadcast and print, movies and television, comic books (of course), art and music, sports, and naturally the Internet.

Chris Hemsworth has been pumping to play Hulk Hogan in an upcoming movie. That's why he looks more massive than ever.

It gets better.

It wasn't a dick move. Remember that the Avengers have just met Captain Marvel. They don't know what she can do or how she'll be under fire. Yet she's essentially boasting that the outcome of another battle with Thanos will be different now that they have her. Thor was justified in testing whether she had the grit to back that up.

Carol didn't flinch, didn't take her eyes off Thor's as he stared her down, even started to smirk a bit toward the end of their eye-lock. It wasn't the calling of Stormbreaker alone that made the difference, that was only one element of their interaction. Thor was reading her, one seasoned warrior to another. Confidence, self-discipline, are as important as courage.

Mix this with a mutation for a "hive mind" collective intelligence, you have a problem. For us.

In the CU the likeliest persons to deliberately create such things would be Teleios, just to see what would happen; and Hornet, because they'd be relatives. The alien Qularr, you mean? They do breed swarms of small insects, and larger individual "firebugs," that they can control as weapons. It's possible some of those could have been left behind after Qularr attacks, and might have gone wild. They would make a particularly dangerous invasive species. (Qularr are detailed in Champions Beyond.)