Like, what the fuck ever happened to compassion?! It just seems like every fucking person online nowadays has to be passive-aggressive to someone JUST to get their stupid point across. Like, why are people so goddamn inconsiderate of others well-beings these days? It seems like they truly get a hate boner from every fucking thing they see online and think it is okay to be an asshole to them. Getting your point across to someone does NOT mean you can be an asshole about it and speak in a very rude and passive-agrressive manner to the OP. Have some goddamn compassion and at LEAST be nice when you’re talking to them. Back in the days when I was first on the internet in the early 2000s, people were FAR more understanding of shit and weren’t fucking assholes about it when trying to explain something to people. The Wild West of the internet was truly a much different and far better place than the internet we have now. Now, pretty much EVERY site like Reddit and Twitter has assholes being passive-agrressive or have a straight-up shitty attitude in general. Speak your mind even ONCE and people feel the need to be an asshole about it. There are features like the fucking block button for a goddamn reason, use them wisely and efficiently! If you truly do not like what someone has to say, fuck off somewhere else, leave the person alone, and block them if you so chose to. Being a fucking asshat about it doesn’t get you anywhere, and NOR does it get your point across. All it does is makes you hated by the people who DO ACTUALLY give a shit. There is a serious fucking lack of respect, empathy, and compassion these days. These days a fucking MONKEY is more compassionate than a human, and I truly hate to say that, but it’s true. We are truly going BACKWARDS with being ‘human’ with each other. This needless rudeness only makes me miss the old internet even more.
By passive aggressive I think you mean snarky, sarcastic, rude, while also indirect. Rather than engage in good faith, online culture in the West is mostly meme thoughts that are mocking.
I think an important aspect of this is the inconsistency between most people’s understanding and their sense that they deserve and should defend and opinion. American culture, and by extension American-centric corners of the internet, ties having a take to a person’s status. Saying, “I don’t know” is rarely rewarded and is often punished. Pretending to have knowledge leads to social advantage so long as you aren’t deeply and credibly contradicted, which is easy to avoid because virtually everyone else is also faking it and a bunch of them are in a given camp. Decide to be anti-vaxx? You will have your cloistered space to hang out and bullshit each other. Hear an anti-anti-Vaxx view? Use one of 200 dismissive thought-terminating cliches to avoid engagement.
A significant challenge to this is that being actually knowledgeable and patiently engaging in good faith is not the antidote to this. It will reach some people but won’t counteract arrogance. It will even make some people more arrogant, as you are projecting a sense that they should be taken seriously.
Ironically, it is usually more effective to just be more knowledgeable and correct and make fun of them and don’t take them seriously. This won’t create a culture free of snark but it will police ridiculous and wrong people that are used to getting away with, say, repeating Reddit cliches and turning their brains off.