I have no doubt that the Pit often gets used not just because of racism or sexism or other morally bad behavioyr, but as an attempt to simply mock other posters or make some subjects off-limits.
As a personal example, there’s this:
I tried my best to add all the caveats to that - it was speculative, yes Trump lies, Maybe this isn’t true, but let’s have a discussion about the ramifications if it is. I thought it would be an actual interesting topic for debate.
Instead, it triggered so much vitriol that the thread had to be closed, then it went to the pit where it has so far generated 855 posts, mostly attacks on me, my character, etc. As a side note, even though that original thread got closed for the number of personal attacks, not a single person got an official mod warning.
The same thing happened when I asked questions about Hunter Biden’s laptop. Even though I qualified it carefully, (“It may be disinformation in whole or in part”), I still got pitted for it.
I do believe there are some users here who have made it their mission to drive off as many conservatives as they can, or at least make their time here difficult and unpleasant unless they stay in a very narrow lane of tolerated topics. Kind of like we are seeing everywhere else these days.