Online or offline. News keeps reporting about loneliness and disconnection, but in my experience it’s just that it’s harder to interact with people in a civil way because they are so hostile, angry, and arrogantly convinced their viewpoints and experiences are the only legitimate ones.
Not to mention the lack of civility towards servers and other service workers. I can’t recall if I was just indifferent 10 years ago, but on a almost daily basis it blows my mind how openly rude many people are to servers and such, which seemed like a much more rare thing when I was younger.
personally, I’ve been bitten too many times being open to random people and getting vitriol back. Well that may be because at the height of my online activities were in reddit, just at the right moment when it started gaining mass traction and getting all sorts of assholes.
being here in lemmy/piefed (can we settle on calling it threadiverse yet?) is of course a nice breath of fresh air.