Indeed. Most discussions I've had other than on reddit and similar platforms have tended to be very pleasant and rational. It is possible to discuss something with someone who holds completely different opinions on the topic in such a way that everyone walks out of the discussion understanding it a bit better than before.

How this flips around into the mirror-world that is social media, is beyond my understanding. Either people who discuss on large platforms and those that do it offline or in more personal online communities are two distinct groups of people with little overlap, or some magic switch just flips in peoples heads when they put their hands on a keyboard.

The media are ultimately just following the market: outrage sells, so they deliver. Sure, we can blame them for abusing their power in cases like these, but more importantly, we should ask the question how they ended up in a position where everyone just blindly trusts what they read in a newspaper.