[chrisco255]

Clearly a difference in magnitude can be a difference in kind altogether. The ability for disparately frustrated individuals to all echo chamber their way into a fever pitch that affects the news cycle and the political cycle is quite new.

Twenty years ago, an insensitive (and probably intoxicated) comment at a bar would be forgotten about the next day. Today, someone says the wrong thing on the internet and a pitchfork mob is ready to cancel their humanity forever.

Has this sort of witch hunting occurred in human history? Yes, but we typically taught these lessons as cautionary tales of the hysterical past, not blueprints for the 21st century.