“mainstream cultural narrative” … I’m not sure where in the world this would be true but do please cite sources to back this claim up if you want to sound in any way credible.

Not sure if honest mistake, but this is what was going on in Twitter and Tumblr for a long while. Obviously in recent years people are trying to walk back on it because of the backlash.

I would suggest not interpreting (your) algorithmic driven social media feeds as the “mainstream cultural mainstream”. As an older white male, at no point in the last 10 years have I felt exposed or subjected to the extreme views you’ve enumerated.

Social media is upstream from beliefs and actions that happen in real life. Not even by mid-2000's, early days of 4chan, could people claim that Internet and real life are separate. The same people who write those kind of things on Twitter and Tumblr and now Bluesky, are the same ones who work at schools and universities, run NGOs, advise local municipality and government policy, and so on. So "you may not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you", but with social media roots of politics.

Also, what's up with misquoting me? I never used the phrase "mainstream cultural mainstream".

Simple typo. Internet and real life are very different once you remove algorithmic driven social media feeds.

Not sure where this was ever a mainstream narrative.

I guess if by mainstream culture you mean some sort of thin-skinned incel echo chamber. Which, yes, those "men" are pretty weak and pitiful, but I've never seen and calls to kill any of them.

Sure. And there were never any restrictions during COVID either, right?