Networks were full of this stuff before the bot armies were a glimmer in whoever's eye.

I don't doubt bots are a factor in the sheer volume of it, but human nature on network debates was bad when it was only fairly smart, educated people, and it only got worse as the AOL-to-Facebook pipeline demographic became politicised.

Glinner isn't a bot, just to pick one example of somebody who - irrespective of the merit or not of his argument - simply behaves like an asshole, constantly.