Technology

Political topics are also the topics that are most strongly gamed by political actors using Persona Management software to make it seem like their opinion is in the majority. The idea that people who participate in things such as "forum sliding" aren't toxic in their interactions is absurd, so we're left with assuming a large number of these toxic accounts aren't actually real people.

I'm not saying people deep into politics can't be toxic. Plenty of them are, sure. However, it's in the interest of people with political power (especially politicians with politically unpopular ideas) to make regular people not want to participate in politics. One way you do that is to make all political people seem unhinged, angry, and just terrible. People wonder why hardly anyone votes in elections, this kind of stuff is why, and it's not on accident that these folks seem like the majority.

I'm fully convinced the majority of them are bots trying to make politics in general seem more toxic than it actually is to dissuade more people from even wanting to be involved. The intent is to drive political apathy.

Sources:

US government developing Persona Management software in 2011: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-social-networks

Eglin Air Force Base is most "Reddit Addicted City" in 2014: https://web.archive.org/web/20160604042751/http://www.redditblog.com/2013/05/get-ready-for-global-reddit-meetup-day.html

One of many research papers on Persona Management and Influencing Social Networks from Eglin AFB: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1402.5644.pdf

Helpful Reading Materials:

The Gentleperson's Guide To Forum Spies: https://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm