I'm not going to pretend that early 2000s or 2010 Internet was better, but I recently switched to the fediverse because of the harassment I was receiving online.

I had gotten into a small argument because someone essentially stole the background set dressing for a weird thing they tried to do in their creation, when I pointed it out they responded by going through my post history and telling me that I should have committed suicide.

when I responded it was childish to go through my post history because of an argument, someone completely unrelated sent an image of a child's skull split open and they were very obviously dead, just in an attempt to get a rise out of me.

like, I dunno, I feel like when I was younger people would either just call each other names and then leave it at that or complain about it night and day, but it wouldn't ever progress to the point that people would just outright post gore in my messages.

am I alone in feeling that over the past 8 years people have gotten a lot meaner online?