Everyone should keep in mind: Besides the darkened tone of the world seeping into nearly everything, this place is probably crawling with shit-stirrers of a slightly subtler flavor than your typical obnoxious troll.

This effect might be from lemmy users in general hating everything about the world right now, or it might be the work of bots and/or illicitly paid humans fronting as the “general left.” The type that reflects your viewpoints pretty well but injects their comments with a little something extra, inflaming you or depressing more than what seems reasonable, maybe pushing you a little closer to the edge, whatever that edge may be.

We (or at least I) have no idea how much astroturfing is happening in the comments. It’s probably best to take anything that seems peculiarly provocative with a grain of salad.