Or they clicked on a trending topic on the wrong day.

Or they read an article about one twitter group bashing another twitter group and clicked on one of the tweets.

There's no path from toxic Twitter to constructive Twitter, but there are thousands of paths the other way.

Which can only mean that toxic twitter is where Twitter wants its users, so it seems like you're using twitter wrong in their view.

That would imply that Twitter has total control about such paths; I find it hard to believe.

In general social media is a big negative for people. Just because some of them find it useful doesn't change that.

My point isn't that meaningful conversation is impossible on twitter. Its that the majority isn't and most abuse the gift of an instant global platform. Its tragedy of the commons on an unprecedented scale.

Of course there are worthwhile interactions to be made. But the people making them would have been doing so on the less accessible older internet anyways.

The old internet was filled with hate, racism, sexism, people fighting, hating and swearing. Things are actually better.

The news seems just as negative as social media.

These things existed, but you usually had to go seek them out specifically. You weren't reading a friend's, say, blog, when suddenly a link to some exciting online argument about some nonsense appeared. That does happen on ~all social media. Unfortunately, many news(paper) websites are baiting with "hot" controversial topics now as well.

I see you were not part of the "old internet".