The atmosphere is such that everybody (me included sometimes) is so tired and paranoid over everything that we all start reading double meanings and ulterior motives into things other people post. Like it's very difficult to take things at face value, because the discourse has been so thoroughly irony poisoned that it's hard not to read things in such a way that you're trying to look past the words toward an [i]actual[/i] intended meaning or consequence. People who type in what I would call the "FYAD voice"* are assumed to be posting in bad faith 100% of the time even if they're clearly not, trans posters get their avatars quoted back at them as though simply posting it is evidence of some kind of malicious intent or subject to the machinations of some other poster who doth protest too much after getting run out of FYAD years ago.

I wish I could say that this sort of thing was limited to even SA but it seems to be, in my mind anyway, a carryover from the way people talk to each other on other platforms like Twitter where the drive-by hot take is the social currency and you often have to read three layers of irony into someone quote-tweeting someone with a simple "lmao" as if what they said is self-evidently wrong or in bad faith. Maybe I'm a dumb hippie or whatever but I try to think the best of people and that people with honestly bad intentions will reveal themselves when treated with the baseline respect that everyone deserves, and that people with good intentions can turn into people with bad intentions when they're assumed to have them. Especially when everyone everywhere is already stretched so thin by stuff outside of these forums.


*lowercase letters, intentional spelling errors, apparent sincerity, the way a much smarter person might color their language in the peccadilloes of a much dumber one - I can't define it exactly, but if you've been here long enough you know what it is