Ah, thanks for clarifying. Yes, I agree. I think that social media is responsible for a lot of this outrage culture, although the culture has spread outside it. People were much less adversarial and easily offended in the 90s and 00s. There was a lot more empathy and agreement, overall.

It seems like there are many small but easy to understand factors in social media that led to the outrage culture. In one of Sam Harris' or Lex Fridman's podcast episodes with Jack Dorsey, an idea was brought up that we might have less fracturing in our society if the social media didn't have a "like" button, but instead a "thanks" button. People like a lot of tribality and toxic things, but few are grateful for them. I think that things like these show the negative impact social media had in this area of the social fabric.

You can really see how people are much more likely to take sides and galvanize against each other in every day life, even if it's against their interests. It's certainly not limited to social media, even if it could have been the biggest driver for it.