Australia/NZ-specific subreddits, in particular, were always absolutely fucking awful (everything from city subs, to politics, to finance), but this is worse than even during ‘Rona…

For context, this week the Australian Tax Office (ATO) essentially declared war on small (but not big) business, and said that they will use every tool at their disposal to squeeze every unpaid tax dollar out of said businesses, no matter what consequences that has for insolvencies, the economy, and hell, everything that follows that.

I am not kidding when I say that they literally said “Well, if this destroys more businesses than the GFC, that’s too bad.”

In a normal world, such an announcement would have been treated with… At least some degree of disgust, but not on Reddit. On Reddit, people were literally saying they wished that the ATO could employ lynch mobs. In the AusFinance sub (the irony), they were saying they hope small business owners kill themselves over this, because they clearly deserve to…

It’s pretty crazy to me, to see how toxic this discourse has become.

That place is… Well, it’s probably worse than I ever expected it would become, honestly. And that’s just with me lurking, not even wading back in to discussions again…