To answer your first question:

Hate. It has been normalized. It should not have been. It’s an abject failure of our societies (and of our educative systems) and it’s a tragedy.

To comment on your reflection about friendship:

What you're describing as ‘mindlessly adding friends to a list of contacts’ is merely people mistaken the word friend for acquaintance.

I know a lot of people, some I may even enjoy spending time with as often as possible. But I've one (best) friend. A single one.

We've been friend since we were barely teens (now both nearing our 60s), we don't live in the same country anymore (meaning we can not meet for years) but we're still best friends. There is not a single other person on this planet, or at least in that somewhat narrower part of the population I do have contact with, I would call my friend.

I consider true friendship as rare if not rarer than true love.

BTW, this friend and I we’re very different on so many levels (our friendship began by us fighting one another at school). Even politically, we’re close to being the complete opposite of one another and we never managed to agree on anything in that specific field, save maybe on our sadness witnessing stupidity, and hate, spreading like fire and imposing itself in every single political group. Being different is part of the reasons we’ve remained friends, at least I think so.

We also don’t mind people not understanding our friendship. It’s a them issue, not ours ;)