I disagree with your comment. When I read the GP I thought "oh that's cool", without thinking. Then parent's reply brought the reality of the situation back to me (that it's more complicated).
I didn't intend to get the parent's comment downvoted to hell—two anecdotes is fine for illustrating the complexity, but these threads usually devolve from there into enormous flame wars nested tens of comments deep. I was just trying to preempt that after one round of anecdotes.
Then you're contributing to the decline. Most of the negative, off-putting or outright insane comments I read come from <6mo old accounts. It's easy to troll when you can just make a new account and continue, without factoring in the long term reputation at all.