Survivor bias aside, I’m not sure the UI doesn’t make this drive-by trolling worse. The reddit UI (hi Lemmy) is threaded but disjoint, and the excellent response to one tree of responses isn’t useful to or seen in another tree – and those trees will develop in parallel in almost every discussion.

I worry that quips and cheap takes stand out because they’re fast and block actual discussion more, so have that mock ‘finalising’ effect. Ending a discussion thread is not concluding it .

… and we all have that cousin whom no one invites anywhere because he’ll argue the shit out of something like a jackal worrying a carcass, until people just give up and let him wander smugly off to his little corner in contrarian triumph.