I used to not be a very political person, and in some ways, I still don't. First and foremost, I like talking about game development, musical theater, or any of my other interests. The one caveat, though, is that I need to be able to speak about my politics, even if I rarely do it. Even if I can speak about 95% of the things I care about, if I have to bite my tongue (or worse, pretend to feel the opposite way) regarding that last 5%, I'll feel stifled and miserable. Even if it never comes up, knowing that I would be unceremoniously dumped or cast aside because I shared my views on race mixing, or transgenderism, or Islam, etc. is a very demoralizing sword of Damocles to have over my head. Is it irrational and petty to allow my need for an ideological match to dictate my relationships? Somewhat, yeah, and the vast majority of the blame lies squarely on myself for being such an extreme little chud (with the rest of the blame being reserved for every party behind increased political polarization.) But my main thought is that I'm so questionable and divisive in my views, that an "agree to disagree" approach would be out of the question for most people (again, not faulting them, but that's the way it is,) so I'd think the only people who could tolerate that side of me would be people who agree with me already.