Its like Hillary walking into a working class kitchen for the first time.
They’ve been shielded from even critical support of China and other AES for so long they literally, not figuratively, literally cannot process that people exist that have beliefs that aren’t Reddit Approved. They immediately assume it’s bots or wumao. Human beings can’t possibly hold these beliefs, so they must be Oriental hordes or actual robots.
TBF the nature of the site (no downvotes) means that it’s not even that much of an echo chamber. I disagree w/ most people here on China and a bunch of other stuff and I haven’t ever really felt like it’s a hostile environment. Yeah people meme and dunk but they’re not usually outright rude or mean. I don’t care about mr piggy poo balls but I get sad when people are mean to me for real.