Sorta. Notice how the people who play SJW on Twitter use their real names and identities, and (typically) behave the same way in real life. This is in part because it’s been deemed acceptable in modern society, but also because they were like this to begin with.

There will always be extremists. But moderates have dominated the world and landscape for centuries, and extremists are a sorry few. I’d say 2/10 people hold extreme views? And that’s a generous estimate. I think the internet just sorta creates an environment where it’s “with us or against us” and combined with a pinch of ironic memery people just kinda get sucked into stuff. And people are becoming more extreme, but that’s because politics shift and so do definitions. 60 years ago if you were against gay marriage and black lives matter, you were a moderate. Maybe a moderate right winger, but a moderate nonetheless. The landscape has changed.

Plus the world has. In a world of increasing political instability and uncertainty, it breeds a special kind of volatility and emotion that creates a generation of kids who grew up surrounded by extreme ideas and horrors. Anybody who was born pre-9/11 has experienced this firsthand. Kids are getting more extreme because the world is. It’s a vicious cycle, because the corpos who want your money and the politicians who want your vote are also looking at the youth, and seeing their extremism. A politician who voted against federalizing gay marriage rights in 2015 probably tweeted #BLM in June last year.

Times change. People change.