It's absolutely a bizarre filing and the inclusion of weird stuff like Prima Facie tort is in my opinion a classic sign of a doomed pleading, a doomed pleading perhaps by someone who is listening to Sov. Cit. nonsense or some other brand of internet "The law is a series of magic words" sort of legal advice. It's also sadly incredibly common.
Appeals though ... I am sort of surprised, because an appeal is fairly technical thing to get an appeal right (not that we know they have entirely done so yet) and the filing fees are often fairly high ($6-7K in CA last time I checked which was maybe ten years ago).
Though frankly it's increasingly common to see wild ass defamation claims from the circles these guys run in. I wouldn't call this sort of claim a SLAPP exactly, more a modern evolution that the courts haven't really dealt with (and whose existence beclowns them - just like Defamation torts, the SCOTUS, and IP more generally law tend to...) Heck the courts have stumbled on actual SLAPP's as well... NY has only had any teeth since 2020 for example.
Anyway, what I'm talking about is a tactic pioneered by a certain brand of internet troll or maybe a specific guy who I will not name (not involved in RPGs though), and it's almost always about two things as far as I can tell.
1) Publicly punishing and harassing the defendant under color of law - one can use one's wild filings and claims to whip up a hate mob and since it's public record in a court case it itself can't be defamation. It can be quite effective.
2) Offering one's true believers a reason for one's failure in court, and providing a way to rally them back to the cause. The goal then is to crowdfund more then the attorney fees and maintain one's cadre of supporters, at least for as long as one can drag out the appeal or until one can gin up some new outrage - it frequently seems to work.
Let's call this tactic a SLSIC "Strategic Lawsuit Seeking Internet Clout".
