[bsenftner]

> Do you know _why_ this uptick has happened? Does anyone?

I believe the culprit is expecting the diversity of the world's voices to be able to converse through a single comment widget. Any online article or post has a single comment widget that mixes the voices of everyone together. This causes chaos, as we are all well aware. I believe we need to provide a mechanism for the public to self segregate when they post comments; if they can say "I am posting this to these people" or "this post is of this attitude" and the comments section beneath a post/article were a selection of conversations with different attitudes - things would be different, less heated, and (sub)-culturally richer.