It's perfectly reasonable to have a distaste for this, but I am curious as to if you take issue with this because the person in question is deceased, or if you just take issue with mocking someone under all circumstances.
> the doxxing
I can't say I've seen any of that. Admittedly I only ever see posts from that subreddit when they show up on r/all, so maybe it gets cleaned up on popular posts, but everything I've seen on the subreddit is just directly screenshotted from social media.
> and the general atmosphere of “the vermin are extinguishing themselves and the world is better for it.”
This one is really just a matter of your opinion on trolley problems. For what it's worth I'm pretty sure just about everyone on that subreddit would prefer the individuals in question have a sudden inspiration of critical thought and save their own lives.
> I'm pretty sure just about everyone on that subreddit would prefer the individuals in question have a sudden inspiration of critical thought and save their own lives.
That's backed up by the praise for people who post there saying they've changed their opinion.
I'm not going to lie and claim the feeling of schadenfreude isn't a factor, but it's more than that. The other reason that subreddit is happy about anti-vaxxers dying is because it means one less person spreading anti-vax sentiments (actually more since their family may stop too).
However, the subreddit isn't calling for anti-vaxxers to be killed. The deaths of anti-vaxxers who die for reasons other than COVID are not celebrated.
We care about vaccination rates because we care about human lives - so what have we gained if we lose our humanity in the process of trying to save it.
The lives of the people who aren't trying to get their peers killed, hopefully.
If someone is so hell-bent on dying that they'll ignore every single qualified doctor telling them that they're wrong, we can't really do much about that. But at least it usually stops them from getting other people killed with the same stupidity.
I am not American, but watching the way the vaccine has been politicised, I can understand a certain level of schaudenfreude as a reaction to after the years of Trump governing to 'owning the libs'.
