One thing I have come to include in my mental model when interacting with people online is the existence of people who deliberately keep up the "stupid" facade,

One thing I have come to include in my mental model when interacting with people online is the existence of people who deliberately keep up the "stupid" facade, either with the intention of trolling (think 4chan) or with nefarious agendas, such a government-sanctioned trolling farms that we keep hearing about. This at least helps me rationalize away the worst parts of Twitter, Reddit, or Whatsapp shares. Confirmation bias also explains a lot. I remember seeing many anecdotes about Trump before the 2016 election that felt quite possibly true but turned out to be false on further investigation. As if the true things were not exciting enough. Moreover, I suspect that much of our perceptions, esp. on topics that we don't directly seek out, are based on just glancing at the continuous stream of clickbaity article titles that cross our feeds everyday without even clicking them. In isolation, they'd be harmless, but if the same articles appears across HN, FB, and Twitter, they make a mental impact. And these half-digested impressions then color our opinions when those topics come up in debate or discussions.