Sorry for the delay in getting back to this. I was traveling.
I’m not really fullly versed in all the Pitting threads. My impression of Pitting threads come mostly from viewing the board through the “Latest Posts” listing, seeing Pitting threads intermixed, and clicking on them occasionally. For the most part, I feel like Pitting threads are people getting worked up and expressing built up frustration over relatively normal stuff. It’s not fighting for social justice causes. It’s pitting someone the pitter doesn’t like. The Bricker pittings are a good example of that. There are 20+ pit threads for him for a variety of things. Some threads are relatively sane side discussions of tangents from other threads, but others are really just unleashing pent up frustration using relatively minor stuff as pretense.
One example is Jesus Bricker, you just can’t stop, can you?, where Bricker is pitted for giving a wrong answer in GQ. I’m pretty sure lots of other posters have committed that same transgression, yet they don’t get a rant-filled Pit thread complaining about it. Some of the complaints in the other Pitting threads seem to be about him not responding quickly enough in other threads. Again, lots of people do this and don’t get pitted for it. But for these relatively minor transgressions, people get to talk like this about him::
The impression I get is that Bricker is pitted more because he’s conservative rather than because he’s committing terrible transgressions. The transgression he’s committing is not agreeing with liberal positions. The actual issue in the OP is stuff that is common on the SDMB and is part of the texture that makes the place interesting.
I don’t necessarily think that threads in the Pit about stuff Bricker does is necessarily problematic. It can be good to have separate threads for tangent discussions that tend to derail the main threads. But the allowance to unleash a torrent of hate and insult filled rants while discussing relatively benign stuff is off-putting to me. I have no doubt that the people saying that stuff enjoy it and don’t see a problem with it, but it seems wrong to me be to be that directly disrespectful to someone who just has a different perspective.