It feels to me like Reddit is only good for hobby or niche interests you might have. The main subreddits and politics are what make Reddit the shittiest. But if you stay away from these it’s ok.
I'm somewhat active on niche programming topics, and people are usually helpful and respectful.
I like that on Reddit I can stay in my bubble and not worry about the world's every single problem when I just want to relax.
On Twitter, that's impossible. No matter how strictly you curate your feed, at least 1 in every 10 tweets will be something that ruins your mood (politics, drama, bullying).
Reddit became a shit show with Trump vs Clinton, but now people attack their own for every little sign of life.
We really need a better social network. Twitter, Reddit, HN, Facebook, ... They add little, but break a lot.
> I think I witness the pandemic's toll on people's capacity for empathy
There's so many widely varying ways that effects of the pandemic can hit someone pretty bad (financially, mentally, of course physically, etc), and I think that part of the problem is that it's hard to see how real those problems are if you happened to not have suffered those particular hardships.
Personally I found this with isolation through lockdown. People who live with family, a partner or even just housemates seem to not quite understand what happens when the isolation creeps up on you (it creeps). Between the waves, when I could see people again, I could easily tell ones that did know, you could see it in their eyes if they talked about the lockdown period.
My new social network is called the woods.