what ought to go without saying but doesn't

I don't do well with heated online discussions myself, and so I want to say up front that I don't want this post to be taken as pressure on anyone else to participate. I am only ever for people engaging online how they choose and however works for them at any given moment.

That said, I do want to say in the context of what feels like an unending stream of awful (link to rydra_wong's summary of the situation), that this makes me all the more painfully aware (if I wasn't already) why many fans of