I can't believe social media anymore

Two weeks ago, Ukraine struck a Russian data centre. Immediately afterwards, many of the subreddits I frequent went silent. Well, not silent. But there was a very different tone on posted content. Small talk is broken About a year ago, I gave up on /r/ukpolitics, as it had begun a deep free-fall into extreme right-wing, predominantly racist rhetoric. The moral panic and frothing around ‘small boats’ being the root of and cause of all the UK’s problems got too much for me. There are only so many comments I can read that can be summarized as ‘drown them’, or ‘shoot them’, before I have to draw a line and ask “why am I opting in to reading this bilge?” I am of the opinion that something around Brexit broke some peoples’ ability to have conversations. You can start on a completely different topic, and the conversation will rapidly shift to complaints about immigration. Me: I was thinking about paining my house a nice purple. Person 1: Oh, well there’s no point because the country is going…