I made a post on r/civ (Civilization games subreddit) showing a really funky shaped randomly generated river I saw and most comments were fine but one guy was convinced that I went through the comparatively monumental effort of opening the map editor and changing the river for karma, as opposed to just starting the game and taking a screenshot.
And just to top it off another guy saw the fact that my scout unit was in the far north of the map and went on an obscenely condescending diatribe about how “ackshually” I should be placing my units in the far south of the map because that way I can explore better and whatever the hell. Dude did not stop for one second to consider that maybe the scout that was in the far north was exploring the cool river and that I didn’t waste any production points on him because I got him for free from a tribal village…
God every time I go on that website (because let’s be honest not a whole lot of good communities here for what I’m interested in) I get excited to share something super innocent and then some total loser has to come and ruin it all.
This, I think, may explain a lot of that mentality too. People tend to hyper-focus on things that stand out, and negative things stand out. Spending enough time steeping in that feeling definitely seems to be connected to rising levels of meaningless cynicism and jackassery.
I do think there’s also something to be said for people who spend their whole lives glued to social media generally having pretty boring experiences when they’re not being spoon-fed dopamine. If you don’t go out and have your own adventures, the adventures you see in fiction are the only ones you’ll be familiar with. It’s hardly surprising that they’re so incredulous of the stories of people who are getting out there and living life.