Is anyone old enough to have taken part in BBS culture? You had handles, so it was somewhat anonymous, and you argued heatedly, but teens and adults alike made real life friends that last lifetimes.

There's something different about social media culture and polarization, and it's not as much the polarization as something else.

I think it's the volume. Maybe I'm an elitist but there's something niche about agreeing to disagree. And building communities in other ways even when disagreeing.

My guess is it's due to two things.

The first is persona-centric rather than topic-centric spaces. The former emphasizes individual posters and attention to them; the latter, topics.

The second is upvoting and downvoting. As I've returned to traditional forums a bit, it's been refreshing to have the content of the posts be at the forefront, rather than the popularity. Reaction emoji usually suffice to me to fill the role of upvoting and downvoting.

Anonymity helps too, although I suspect it's mostly those other two things.