People are hostile as fuck because that’s the dominant culture right now. Some of it is modulated by bots posing as people to model approved opinions, some of it is humans doing that in a conscious effort to give us this defeatist culture, and some of it is the actual organic, natural culture of the USA lately.

Honestly, after reading the Three Body Problem series (haven’t seen the show; unsure if it creates the same effect) it’s been a lot easier to sort of conceptualize and face overwhelmingly asymmetrically unbalanced and weird warfare tactics. And it just seems like we’re actually legitimately under cultural attack.

But whether it’s all a big conspiracy or if it got that way organically, it’s a dominant culture to be negative right now.

Here’s the key thing: you can see past it if you recognize that it’s there. One small thing is: use a lemmy client that shows you up and downvotes separately, not just the sum score. That way when you get buried by the haters you’ll still see the times you’re connecting with people.