Agreed. If people are getting bumped too harshly with seats, maybe the seats are the problem - FTA:

Elliott puts the blame for such incidents mostly on airlines. By effectively selling a seat space twice — to the passenger directly in front of the seat as well as the person immediately behind it — carriers have left it to passengers to duel over precious cabin space.

I don't understand why people jump so quickly to having an attitude about things like this. I can't quite delineate the category I'm talking about into which this topic falls, but it's essentially requests of the form "would you consider not..." that put people into this state of non-commensurate snide defiance. I too want to recline my seat, and sometimes do, but I understand what I'm doing. I do it slowly. Sometimes I ask them if it's OK (e.g. they're using their tray). I don't get the tendency to treat every detail of the world as a binary me vs you.