It’s true that well-intentioned people do ask uncomfortable questions, but especially online they’re dwarfed by trolls and people arguing in bad faith. Then is

It’s true that well-intentioned people do ask uncomfortable questions, but especially online they’re dwarfed by trolls and people arguing in bad faith. Then isn't it incumbent on people to carefully consider what's being said and not knee-jerk react? As far as I can tell, all of the knee-jerk reactions in either direction simply add to the noise and outrage. All told it makes for a difficult topic to discuss in good faith, absent agendas on or offline, but online it’s pure poison. It makes a lot more sense to think of the whole situation as an exercise in the generation of outrage and toxicity in the service of attention and virality. Given that outrage is the easiest way to achieve virality, it doesn't take some sort of underlying conspiracy to explain this. We've created a sociopolitical milieu combined with networks which create these perverse incentives. The same combination amplifies the most toxic and nonsensical voices, and acts to disguise intelligent voices as nonsense. The solution is for intelligent and reasonable voices to fight back against the nonsense. This means 1) calling out the excesses of one's own side and 2) uniting with voices of reason across the aisle. The opponent who values truth and with whom one can reasonably disagree with is much preferable to the sociopath no one can reason with because they are really motivated by power stemming from outrage.