Yup, that’s part of the “conservative mythology of wokeness”, seeing it as some kind of loony socialistic sorcery that can summon up “mobs” after the fashion of the Magician’s Apprentice but then can’t “control” them.
Nobody is actually playing such games. People are voluntarily complaining about and protesting things that seem to them reprehensible. And because of the amplifying nature of modern social media, such complaints and protests can snowball. That can happen to anybody, liberals as well as conservatives, when something negative comes out about them (see also: Gov. Cuomo). Nobody imagines that they can or should “control” it.