Sadly, this makes me miss when people pretended to slip and fall at the grocery store so they could throw milk jugs in the air and make a mess.

I agree - the tone of so many posts is very similar to 13-year-olds calling mom a bitch for making them go to the dentist.

Oh sorry, you said “nominal” leftists and I misinterpreted.

Calling the binary thinkers leftists or shills of some other thing is just another form of simplistic binary thinking - put a black hat on them and boom, you’re done. I think this is a lot of people’s way of dealing with the constant firehose of information we think we have to process because it’s in our endless feeds. We have an always full inbox, and some of us deal with that by processing each item as fast as possible, using minimal thought to tell ourselves we’ve got it figured out so we can swipe on it and scroll on to the next issue. This is leading to a pattern of superficial snap judgements, stereotyping, and ultimately various forms of social bigotry.

IMO online commenters are increasingly showing pathological binary thinking - the attitude that there are exactly two sides to every issue - the Right one and the Wrong one. Questioning ANY aspect of the Right one means you’re obviously a hardcore supporter of EVERY aspect of the Wrong one. You’re either morally and ethically pure or your character is a wretched hive of scum and villainy. To me it’s a really paradoxical way of thinking about diversity and acceptance - more like we’re supposed to either wholeheartedly embrace people or despise them.