Candy Corn. Some people insist they taste like wax, and I’m like, “What?!” I will chew those things all day long.

This. “Overstressed” doesn’t begin to cover it. It’s an unimaginably stressful job even when things are going right.

Yeah, I feel you. On both points.

That’s a fair point too; if you go in anticipating a conversational slap, you’re in a defensive posture from the start.

This reinforces my feeling that setting out to specifically create that no-slapping environment from the start is critical, but it also adds in another twist and problem: There’s increasing evidence that political “language” between various groups is diverging. In other words, ~20 years ago people used the same words to mean the same things, even when they disagreed. Now people on different sides of an issue use identical words to mean totally different things - including some that can be perceived as a verbal slap.

Going to build on this to highlight something:

• Given the hyper-stigmatized, hyper-partisan approach to… well, a lot of things these days, not just US politics, engaging with those you politically disagree with is likely to not just produce calm disagreements but sharp, even vicious statements that your entire worldview/lifestyle/culture/ethnicity/whatever is literally the stuff of pure evil, and you are an absolutely terrible person for adhering to it. No nuance, no consideration, no empathy.

• On a different tack, consider that strong rejection/disagreement is shown to activate the same centers in your brain which are associated with sharp physical pain. To your brain, being slapped in the face conversationally and slapped in the face physically produce extremely similar results.

With these two points in mind, consider: Why would people choose to expose themselves to environments which promote something their brain interprets as actual, physical harm?

Unfortunately, the current palette of social media options don’t really offer spaces for nuanced, thoughtful discussion which doesn’t begin with people screaming their hostility to what they disagree with. It’s a big of a chicken-and-egg question whether that’s a cause or an effect, but the net result is creation of an environment which our pain-avoiding brains guide our choices away from people we disagree with.