Putting that entirely on the reader is unfair. The author of a comment or post has some level of responsibility to manage their side of the communication as well.

There's a reason that, as a species, one of the first things we invented after digital communications was emoticons and eventually shorthand terms to convey emotions (lol, lmao, wtf).

Body language, audible tone, syllable emphasis, or the rest of the damn near endless list of minor things we use to communicate, we needed to make sure we could avoid being accidentally combative by default.

I'm not so sure about that sometimes. It's definitely true, but many people are bad at inferring tone in text because they have no ability to read between the lines. And I've noticed trendy little catchphrases or code words have caught on in Reddit and Twitter. People love to throw around the words "gross," "yikes," and "disgusting" when talking about something they find slightly morally questionable. They'll punctuate a sentence with "full stop" when they want to decisively shut down an argument. Things like the cry-laugh emoji and the clapping hands after every word (I'm on my laptop right now, sorry I didn't just type the emojis). These things are meant to illicit an exact emotional response, and you almost never run into people speaking so boldly in real life. People have become such caricatures online that it's insufferable to even try to have a real conversation.

Reddit is definitely full of shitheads who seem to get all their emotional discharge out of the way online. Personally, I haven't really noticed it here anywhere near the level of Reddit. Even the act of downvoting a comment seems nearly unheard of from what I've observed.

So often when I get into a conversation about veganism it ends with the other person saying I've been an asshole when I've just been direct and honest.. :(