feels like people actually want to chat a bit here as opposed to either ignoring or simply arguing like on Reddit.
That's been my issue with Reddit for a while now. People are extremely polarized on everything. You can't have a conversation about a casual disagreement without being downvoted to oblivion and people interpreting it as a personal attack. The smaller, focused subs are better, but still fall firmly into the groupthink dynamic of the rest of the site.