I went from the "lol if gay people can have pride parades why cant straight people? XD" type to the "I'm a pan-romantic demisexual demigirl and straight pride is literally celebrating oppression you fucking bigot" type within a year of using tumblr. (I told my conservative mother I was pansexual. Cringeeeee). By the time of the 2016 election, I had expanded to Reddit as well. This was the peak of SJW-dom for me; I was pretty much a full blown Marxist. I wanted to punch Nazis and support Antifa. I followed a lot of very hardline communists. Fatphobia, ableism, racism, colorism, misogyny, transmisogyny, misogynoir, homophobia, transphobia, islamophobia, any "internalized" variant of the previous, and patriarchy/kyriarchy, microaggressions, White Feminism(tm), and capitalism were things I had to worry about every single day. It was so much. And if you fucked up even a little bit, you were shamed and attacked until you repented. Even still, people collected "receipts" on you. They'd take screenshots (rarely smart enough to archive, unsurprisingly) of your offending words and save them for a later date, when they would need proof to slander your name for the next time you'd mess up. And there would always be a next time.
I followed lots of "discourse blogs", where the entire point was just to argue with each other about pointless shit like whether or not "asexuals" are LGBT, or discussing the intersectional nuances of some Disney film or some shit.
The only reason any of this made sense in my head was because I thought I was righteous. I was on the right side of history, fighting for the little guy being stomped out by the enormous, leering oppressor. This whole experience really drove into me the validity of the saying, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions."
When I first realized I had been an SJW, my views were fairly moderate, I'd say I was a centrist or even a classical liberal. By then I had realized that I had been pushing people away and secluding myself from possible friends because I had feared that they were a murderous bigot just waiting to get their dirty hands on me. Or if anyone said anything that was not PC, I would distance myself. I needed to stay pure; I was a good person, right? The reason I was able to leave was because my brother had suggested to me a Shoe0nHead video. I did *not* like it. But I thought she was cute so a month or so later, I rewatched it and ended up watching all of her videos. I think I started watching LeafyIsHere and H3H3 around this time as well. They opened me up to more offensive styles of humor, breaking me out of the politically correct bindings of before. Now, however, I am much more right wing. I'm trying not to swing from one extreme to the other, as I can feel the pull towards far-right authoritarianism and it's reminding me of those early tumblr days. There's a parallel between tumblr and 4chan, as I told myself not to stray from boards like /fit/, /ic/, and /wg/ because I knew of the reputations of /b/, /pol/, and /r9k/. And yet, I now browse /pol/ a few times a month.
Leaving was kinda tough. My entire worldview was challenged; every person, every idea, every belief I so strongly held was questioned and found untrustworthy. I was also forced to face the fact that I had a victim complex. I was a narcissist. It wasn't MY fault that I was fat. It wasn't MY responsibility. "Why is being fat a bad thing? This is just another expression of patriarchy!! REEEE!! Everyone hates me because I'm fat! It's their fault! I'm perfect as I am and I love myself! The world needs to change, not I!"
Maybe this is :powerlevel: a bit, but during this time I had also been dating a "genderfluid" person who had changed their name (not in the legal sense) twice. It ended up devolving into them calling me stupid incredibly often and most of our conversations were just them ranting about how shitty their family was and how much they wanted to die. I tried being a "therapist girlfriend" but it really wore me down and made me see the similarities in the people I followed online. It compounded on top of my own white guilt. I felt so fucking bad for being white, as the mob told me that all whites are inherently racist; I cried at least one time. That's how bad I had been manipulated. We broke up at pretty much the same time I abandoned the SJW ideology.
I believe that more people will leave. I know a few people who have shifted away from the insanity, at least a little bit. We still need to nuke the fuck out of Twitter, though. I don't think anyone's mind is going to be changed on there.