Just a quick comment about your memory on Reddit and witch hunts. The "OP is a faggot" business and witch-hunting were both very much alive six years ago and have been since. Maybe the focus of that anger has changed, but the spirit has been there this whole time.

If you're curious about the anger, I think it's because of what posts like yours do to this site. So much of the content here is clearly made up (just read the top posts in TIFU). So much so that there's a subreddit that was set up to call people out on their lies.

And we already have a lot of manufactured crap in entertainment today. Reality shows that are anything but real, news messages that are painstakingly crafted with spin to feed us the desired message, vapid sitcoms that peddle the same jokes year after year, etc. But here at Reddit, we have our own crowd-sourced entertainment. A glimpse into each others' lives and an opportunity to ponder some of the lives that go on that we're not a part of. Like listening to a record bought in a used record store, wondering about the previous owner, imagining how that pink stain got on the back cover, etc. A picture of your grandmother on an old movie set would be interesting to study, in what a woman of that time looked like, how she dressed, styled, even the look in her eyes. A glimpse into the past, through a woman we wouldn't otherwise see.

But nope, it's just a facade, just like faux reality shows. Another lie to tell another story that doesn't really exist. Fiction is fun, but when you doubt everything you look at on this site, it's very much not. So it's not the witch-hunting that has changed, but rather the increase in the number of people that want to tell lies to gain internet points, rather than actually have an interesting item from the real world to contribute.