[twostoned]

I don't think you're being too harsh. There's a weird sort of subtle trolling that goes on on online discussions to the point that I don't much engage in online communities. I don't think it's trolling in the sense that people don't consciously do it; they're just negative: "STOP LIKING WHAT I DON'T LIKE!!"

Internet discussion has become very toxic (well, perhaps it always has been). The other day I was on IRC and asked a question about Eclipse which was doing some quirky things that I didn't know how to disable and one of the people in the chat (not a huge open freenode chat but the chat of a smaller, private community) responded "Java is horrible" or something along those lines. I hadn't even mentioned that I was writing Java! What's funny is that I can't imagine anyone responding in this way were it an in-person conversation. You get much more "I don't care much for Java" or even "What are you using Eclipse for?"

I guess because if you're a nasty person AFK people will avoid you and you do face the risk of some social ostracization. However, with the internet, it's harder to prune these people from your social circle.

[some_account]

I kind of agree that people can be hostile or brutally honest online but just look at LinkedIn as what happens online when you can't say the truth for fear of someone disliking it.

Its an endless stream of corporate bullshit. At least my feed is just ridiculous. Nobody says the truth about anything.