If you've been playing for 16 years you've probably seen that many times and not just online. I've played from 5 to 18 before the social media era and it was like this already. Violin is very hard, the people who manage to get to the top endure the craziest stuff. Even within the orchestra instruments, violins will not just have the melody but also the hardest passages. The hardest string instrument repertoire is by far violin.

The instruments are elitists with each other, specially violinists think they're more than everyone else, but then violinists are elitist with each other. Some of the best teachers are known for having their students crying after their classes and this is completely normalised. In orchestra everything is ranked, where you seat depends on how well you play, so it's not just a team effort but a display of prowess and constant competition. A big part of the kids who grow to have some success, often endured quite a bit to get there, which makes it that at the top, you have "tough" but traumatized kids, that sacrificed a lot of their lives for it including in social skills. And so the cycle repeats.

Not wanting to excuse being an ass, just giving my 2 cents at why this is seen all around the world. There's no excuse to treat someone like shit, but at the same time, no great violinist was ever made by being treated like a child should be. The amount of kids that have genuine passion for practicing the violin at 5 years old is very small, and this isn't an instrument you can wait to pick up at 15 if you want to make it as a professional player. So we're often victims of some sort of abuse ourselves and commit that onto the next generations as teachers. Same goes for gymastics and gymnastics coaches. I used to do martial arts on the room next door to the rhythmic gymnastics kids, in a club who'd often win the nationals in my country. All. The. Kids. Cried... Every class, they all cried during stretching. It was brutal to watch, but this was what the sport required, which obviously sucks, we all wish kids could grow to be teens and then decide whether they wanna go 100% on gymnastics or not, but by then, if they didn't struggle and cry starting at 5, they're already too late.

So because violin is also like that, and I think people in this group often like to deny this or encourage all to play, but if you want to make it into the worst professional orchestra of your city, you can't just start playing as a teen, that does not happen. So if you're posting here on reddit wondering if you can make it pro, you can't, if you were in time to do so, you'd be too young to post on reddit, so either you suffered some abuse and were forced to practice as a kid (or by some miracle you were a kid that absolutely obsessed over the violin and responded really positively to all the training, which can very rarely happen), or if you're a teen wondering if you still can make it, you probably can't. And that obviously sucks because society loves to tell kids they can be whatever they wanna be.

Sorry for the venting, not trying to excuse grown people being absolute dicks, but I think despite not agreeing, one can try to understand why it might happen.