More than a bit, it's massive strawman that wastes everyone's time, no pun intended. To the extent that people have tried to develop a Theory Of Comment Section

More than a bit, it's massive strawman that wastes everyone's time, no pun intended. To the extent that people have tried to develop a Theory Of Comment Sections and why they are so frequently, unfortunately bad, most of it centers around the frequency of uncharitable bad faith engagement with things that could be interpreted more reasonably. Nobody addresses themselves to the most reasonable interpretation of the thing they respond to, and that's the primary mechanism that pushes the quality of comment sections down. And I think we've got another datapoint in support of that here.