When reading opinions that challenge ours, when having to "go out on a limb", or picture something that we haven't been concerned with yet, we have to gift the writer our trust. We have to trust them that they're not wasting our time, that at the end of the effort of trying to understand in a deep fashion what they're saying there is going to be some pay-off. We have to trust them that they're not trying to maneuver us into something using underhanded methods.

This trust only comes from knowing people for a while, from reputation. Especially if someone's famous for being contrarian, and "their reputation precedes them", people are going to outright assume the author has hostile intent. In fact, they end up feeling that the author has intent hostile towards them specifically.

However, even without being overtly preconditioned to think the person is a trouble maker, social mistrust is our default behavior. Often you'll see something that's out of your sphere so much that you'll read it, say "haha, lol". That's not necessarily meant to deride the author, but this kind of behavior, which many of us at some level engage in (whether we tweet the reply or just think this), shows that often we just dismiss other people we don't really know. This leniency often is the first step towards derision, aggression, or even conflict.

This is easy to picture if we compare social media to pre-internet social situations.

For example, a Discord meant for a specific hobby (eg I run a Tektronix and HPAK Discord) is like a club for better or worse. People in there have common interests or goals and work together and exchange based on knowledge. This alone gives them enough social context that when they enter this virtual lodge, they know they should bestow others with a modicum of respect and not dismiss them outright. I've seen this very community turn people from not wanting to talk to each other, to talking to each other - not best friends, but good enough for a little small talk every now and then.

The Discord of a celebrity youtuber is like the waiting line to a concert, where people usually discuss the act they're going to be spectating, and adjacent acts. Again, common context, a common story, that helps us understand each other.

A personal Facebook account is like your local home town to large extent. Your family, your childhood friends, maybe people from work or university. Again, common context.

Instagram is like going to a night club or a fair and seeing the people who try the hardest. It's a well known social dynamic. It's not great. It attracts a lot of sycophants and low lifes, but it is what it is.

With Twitter, it's like you're confronted with everyone you pass on the street. Imagine that you're going down the street, and you get to hear exactly, in detail, what everyone is talking about - from the very start of the conversation, without those other people knowing you can hear it. Then if you want, you can hear everything they said in the past, since the beginning of their lives. If you were able to do this IRL, this would not just be stalking, it would be an extremely worrisome endeavor, and there is no question that it would create conflict. That's why our social norms evolved to where we like to speak to others with some degree of privacy. That's why we have laws against recording of conversations you aren't part of. That's why if you're talking to a friend on the street, and someone random shows up and starts talking to you, you feel weirded out. You're not "not accepting", you're just in a position that is awkward, maybe dangerous, and definitely upsetting. There is no commonality. There is no trust.

This is not intentional or even conscious - it's entirely subconscious and important to our survival. It's the same reason why your dog barks at the mailman or why a bird might attack anyone coming close to its nest. It's a distrust of intruders, and in general intrusions (of any new phenomena we aren't yet familiar with) into our personal space, our "bubble".

There are those rare people who are extremely accepting of rando's on the street. Some would call them too friendly for their own good. People like this can be easily taken advantage of by con artists and the likes. They're the people donation salesmen grab a hold of downtown, talking about dying children in africa or whatever. But it does show that such a mindset is possible. People like this see every such interaction as an opportunity to learn or experience something new. They'll approach people thinking first, "how can I help them" and "how can I be respectful of this person".

On the other hand there are people who are welcoming of such interactions, but they welcome them in a many-times-reinforced adversarial manner. Those are the people who want to argue with you. They're the people who see you as sport.

Put in this context it's easy to see that the social model that Twitter represents is deleterious. It can be salvaged by people who have good intentions which is why some of the most prolific accounts on Twitter are the open minded, usually left-leaning, cerebral accounts. And then there is the dark side, of people who just want to shout at you - whether they're extreme "rationalists", or right or left wing propagandists, they're going to be very prolific as well.

This explains why there is such a war going on on Twitter. It was, unintentionally, made in this design that enables such people to thrive on the platform, as well as to create the tension between the different approaches.