Excellent post by @adrianhon which explains some (but not all) of the reasons I left MetaFilter. He was the rare bright spot for me.
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The second comment in the thread is another reason I left. People fishing for "favorites." And then people use favorites as a way to measure if a comment is worth reading. Especially in long threads. I was guilty of this. There's too much to process so one scrolls looking at favorites and then only reading the ones with high counts. Ugh.
@scully (And yes, I don't know who's still around but there were definitely some "local celebrity" accounts that could suck all the air out of a thread)
@ItsTheManOnTheMoon you nearly got the last word in that thread ;)
@scully Paraphrase of the comment I just made in that thread: yeah, drive-by snark was always a thing, and sometime in the mid-2010s there was a cultural shift to "contest to see who can make the hottest take and/or worst-possible faith interpretation of the subject matter or intent of the post" and spouse and I bailed.
I've never trusted MetaFilter as a community since the weird user+mod pile-on that chased Sara C. away.