You’re welcome! I had a personal experience with this, too.

When I was a kid, my parents used to make me go to church and youth group stuff. We went to one of those “hip” events at Carowinds (like a Six Flags, Disney type amusement park). Before it started our youth leader said - to his credit - “No matter what you feel, DO NOT go down to the front when they call people up.”

Sure enough towards the end, I start feeling “the spirit”, and I’m the most skeptical, atheist/agnostic in the whole group. But I stayed in my seat. And when we got back to the hotel I was thinking “what the hell happened there?”

I’m back! I couldn’t find the specific thing I read, but I found something probably better, an actual study published in Pubmed:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8871314/

Statistical analyses showed that the psychological disposition during the religious worship experience speeds up the physiological responses, which was indicated by increases in HR [hear rate] and RR [respiratory rate]. Hence, the activation hypothesis was accepted, and the pacification hypothesis was rejected.

I’ll try to look for it. It was a loooong time ago though.

I read an article years ago that explained why so many people get “religious” feelings at big revival-type events at Six Flags, Carowinds, etc, even if they’re not particularly devout.

There’s a thing called respiratory alkalosis (essentially hyperventilation) which makes you light-headed and confused. At it’s really easy to trigger by making people stand up quickly, sing really hard, sit back down, stand up and cheer, etc.

I don’t know, I think even in real life people get silly when discussing topics they have strong feelings about, and politics seems to be one of them fairly often.

I saw an economic’s professor start an argument in a coffee shop about Bernie Sanders. And he legitimately said something about Sanders’s socialism leading to firing squads.

Getting into an argument like that isn’t even worth it or possible to win.

And the window of correct opinion keeps getting narrower. Any time there’s a chance to gatekeep morality, someone out there wants to prove they’re the most <whatever>.

On any of the popular subs, no one’s going to read your comment in good faith. They’ll see what they wanted you to say and just reply to that.