I totally know how you feel, it is ultimately an emotive thing, and I'd be lying if I said I'd never written up pithy / angry replies to someone being Wrong On The Internet.

It's human nature to react to things like that, and to my mind it really shows the problems with social media. I have a lot of trouble sticking to it myself, but I find the 'hour rule' to be pretty much essential to dealing with social media; which is to say that if you're about to write an angry reply, you should wait an hour before doing so to give you time to cool off and distance yourself.

I just can't buy that. While some SJWs can get a bit too easily offended, I'd rather take their side when I know they're actively working to make the world a better place. (Theoretically) Even if they're misguided or too easy to blow up in anger, at least it's from a better place.

It is mostly born of a desire to make the world a better place, but it still becomes misguided very frequently. And disagreeing with the more radical elements of the online 'SJW' community doesn't have to mean jumping into bed with the morons pushing GamerGate or r/theredpill. Of course, not all social justice on the internet is that bad, but as always, the most extreme positions tend to have the most vocal supporters.

If you did, or if you do too, you'd know I nor anyone else who's offended is somehow supposed to assume the role of an educator and try to convert people. Sometimes anger's the only response, and I'm not looking to be validated for it.

You're totally right, it's not yours (or anyone else's) 'duty' to educate people. However, from a utilitarian point of view, most of the people who are going to read what you post (and likely even the people you reply to) aren't going to be hardcore stuck in an anti-progressive, anti-social justice mindset. And when those people see a reply that is angry or toxic, that's only going to make them less receptive to those ideas in the future.

And if they are part of the vocal hardcore minority that fervently believes in the SJW conspiracy, then there's probably nothing you can do that will change their minds anyway. And ultimately, at least in my experience, 'putting them in their place' feels cathartic initially, but it rarely makes you happier in the long run.

The reddit community always makes these claims, as if the only thing they've ever witness is the parody account submissions from TumblrInAction. I'm not going to completely agree with these generalizations unless I actually see them happen.

Extreme response from the left does happen, and it's more common than I would like.

Sometimes it's just completely far out - I ran across a tumblr the other day wherein a self proclaimed radical feminist declared that transwomen are oppressors because they're 'culturally appropriating' femininity from 'real women'. I noped out of there pretty fast (and sadly Trans-Exclusive Radical Feminists or TERFs are a big enough group for such an acronym to exist...).

To be relevant to this sub, there were the various twitter users who were harassing David Gaider and Patrick Weekes the other week based on extraordinarily faulty analysis of DA:I's relationship between Dorian and Iron Bull. That's not the first time that's happened, and those kind of people caused David Gaider to shut down his blog.

Hell, even people whom I generally respect have gone too far from time to time - I've seen a myriad of twitter conversations that end in childish insults.

Overall, are they as 'bad' as the people they oppose? Hell no; as yet I've not heard of much in the way of doxxing / death threats coming from social justice advocates, but even so, 'not threatening to murder people' is not really a high bar to set in terms of generating a non-toxic environment.