Literally can't tweet anything even vaguely questioning details of lockdown strategy without a pile-on. I should have known better after last weekend. Lesson learned. Say nothing. Accept everything is fine. Back to tweeting cat pictures and talking about my unceasing anxiety.

My psychologist often tells me to get off Twitter. There's a direct correlation between the amount of time I spend here and my mental health deteriorating. Not a plea for sympathy, just a fact. Took a long break and came back recently and the level of anger is so much worse.

You can blame that on people feeling the media is biased and failing them (I haven't worked as a journalist full time for four years) and that may be part of it but it's so much deeper than that. The quickness to anger and willingness to think the worst of someone is troubling.

There are so many great people on here, and I love how Twitter can challenge my internal biases and show me points of view I might not otherwise see. But subjecting myself to the vitriol and pettiness and never-ending mean-spirited nonsense feels like a unique form of self-harm.

As someone who makes no secret of my left-leaning views, I used to expect abuse from the conservative side of the fence but now it's increasingly from people who call themselves "progressive" and that concerns me more than anything. Yelling at people is not how you exact change.

And yes, I've heard the argument that progressives are just sick of the media and politics moving further to the right and expressing their righteous anger. But if the upshot of that anger is to silence people who would otherwise be championing your cause then what is the point?

I do think that some of this anger is coming from the anxiety and collective trauma people are experiencing this year, particularly in Melbourne, so I try to take a compassionate view. But it's relentless. It chips away. We really need to think about how we talk to each other.