I joined reddit maybe a couple of years before violentacrez was outed by gawker media. I fully remember what it was like back then, and I wouldn’t say it got worse over time. I’d say that as time went on some things got better and others got worse so that on balance not much changed. I don’t really understand the people who have the rose tinted goggles about reddit. I didn’t leave because reddit users got actively worse so much as I left because the policies that the company were making and the things they were changing made the platform untenable.
I agree with what you’re saying. This is the curse of the anonymity of the internet at large and it happens everywhere. People just like to pretend that it doesn’t.