What spurred this? ResetERA was founded before EviLore's implosion by PoliGAF and Cerium with help of Nibel and folk, is something similar happening?
This is very true and I can confirm it, but you left out some importants parts of the story, which make it even more pathetic.
I know this thread is for laugh only, but still, I'll post it here :
"They" (Cerium, Shinobi...) were building a gaf alternative because according to them Gaf's moderation was really biased toward Sony (which was true, let's be honest) and they thought Nintendo wasn't treated fairly. Those same people thought the Wii U's failure and 3DS cold welcome from the market were partially due to Neogaf's attitude toward the two console (which were false, of course). They couldn't shut up about it.
As far as I know, the Gaf's alternative was also brought-up during the "Alison Rapp" case, when she was outed as a prostitute and got fired for it. According to Cerium, he maintained (in private) that Gaf's staff didn't stand up enough for her. That's the moment Cerium aggregated many of the most unhinged feminist of Gaf to his small revolution.
Now, the juicy part is not only Cerium and some gaf posters took part in the projet. There was also many journalists that were mad at gaf and were thinking about it. If you always wondered why the Shower event was covered that extensively (while no one gave a fuck about Malka's past behavior), it's only because the timing was perfect to bring gaf down this time and some journalist knew an alternative was in the work. Outside of seeing the receipts of those discussions, when you see articles like that :
https://kotaku.com/thousands-of-neogaf-users-flock-to-new-website-1819871316 that screams like an advert popping and know who the author of the article is, the writing was on the wall.
I know someone who knows Besada and Cerium very well. I also happen to know Alison Rapp personally.