I would go one step further and say that I blame the medium.

TV and visual information mediums are very effective at promoting emotions, but make it very difficult to convey rational arguments and thoughts. Notice how easily you can be distracted by the appearance of the messenger and not pay attention to the message itself.

There is a very good book on this called "Amusing ourselves to death", by Neil Postman. He wrote this in 1985 and he was far ahead of his time.

You could take that a step further and blame media consumers then - the media promotes the stories that bring in ad revenue more than others.

Yes. Seems far more plausible that the media is a reflection of human nature than that the media has reshaped the way people think.

Media is not merely a reflection, but a perpetuator of extremes. If everyone stopped using media, there would still be extremist, but they would be so far distant we wouldn't think of them or their ideas.

Here's a great interactive explanation of how this works: https://ncase.itch.io/wbwwb

Absolutely, only meant to point out that the media brings out the worst that is already in us rather than corrupting otherwise civil beings.

To speak even more generally, humans make tools that amplify our impact. Some of those tools make us better at being terrible, some make us better at being clever, some do both.

And Twitter is part of the media and has helped shape nearly all other forms of media. That brings us back to the subject of this post.