Social media supercharges the sort of thing that used to be the purview of the religious, which is the whole 'look how devout I am' phenomenon. Why do some Spanish Catholics walk through the streets every year whipping themselves, but would never do it in private? Because there's no social cache to self-harming in private. Why do some Muslims go from an instruction to dress modestly or not eat pork to basically covering their entire body and face, and refusing to show a cartoon to their kids because it's got a pig in it? Because there's social status in showing how seriously you take the religion. I choose to interpret this verse in the most unreasonable and strict way possible because it makes me look like more of a Catholic or Muslim than everyone else. Ironically, it's ego-driven.
And you see the same on social media. Someone starts off expressing a concern about a particular issue, be it trans rights, racism, anti-wokeness, covid vaccines, etc, and they get encouraged by the likes, followers, retweets, to find more and more to be concerned about, then offended by. Within a short time, they're not organically reading things and finding them concerning or offensive, they're looking for things to be offended by, because they get the hit of approval from a huge crowd of people who all follow them because they agree with them.
I remember listening to a podcast where they were talking about relationships and they were literally apologizing every other minute for being hetero-normative. And it's not because anyone in the conversation was offended, it's just to show their own level of enlightenment, but also because if they don't, someone else in the conversation will see the opening to 'correct' them for their crass generalization. It's got so many parallels with Muslims who can't mention the Prophet Muhammad without saying 'Peace be upon him' or Christians inventing 'gosh darn it' to avoid saying God.
