I feel similarly, although I left reddit initially (this was before the API changes) because of its own brand of cynicism, which I found was almost inescapable, even in small subs or posts which shouldn't have ridiculous arguments.

The problem is that, while initially this instance didn't have much of it, it's reaching a similar point.

I think that the people who will migrate with Beehaw are more likely to be the ones who want to get away from that shit, though. (I've also noticed that a lot, but definitely not all, of the more toxic comments seem to be from users on other instances.)

Best we can do here is block communities (it's been a lot more pleasant for me since I blocked the news communities here), but it doesn't solve everything.

I'm finding some old school forums on a couple of my private trackers to be a lot better at times, honestly. (Lol, one of them even completely removed their "Serious Discussion" subforum after Jan 6 and banned political discussion entirely because it resulted in too much toxic bullshit.)

Wait, what? Beehaw more cynical than Reddit? That... doesn't match my observations. Are you reading the Subscriptions, Local, or All feed?

I'm not on beehaw, but I ran into similar problem when I joined lemmy.

My solution was to filter communities and users where I felt I was getting apammed with content at a frequency I didn't enjoy.

You might get some milage out if that approach.