Y'know, C.S. Lewis once wrote a story where two demons chat about how to tempt humans into being careless, cruel, and generally dickish. At one point, one of the demons says:

[Out of all the forms of humor] Flippancy is the best of all. In the first place it is very economical. Only a clever human can make a real joke about virtue, or indeed about anything else; [but] any of them can be trained to talk as if virtue were funny. Among flippant people the joke has always been assumed to have been made. No one actually makes it; but every serious subject is discussed in a manner which implies that they have already found a ridiculous side to it. If prolonged, the habit of flippancy builds up around a man the finest armor plating against [good] that I know, and is quite free from the dangers inherent in other sources of laughter. It is a thousand miles away from joy: it deadens, instead of sharpening, the intellect; and it excites no affection between those who practice it.

In fewer words: you can easily train people to respond to things with thoughtless, witless, and unoriginal mockery entirely on blind reflex, to ensure they rarely respond with empathy.

My opinion is that that's all quite correct. I don't know if it's an unpopular opinion, but it feels like its popularity is declining lately.