I don't know what's going on, but I've never experience so much negativity in the past few weeks than I have through all of the three years I've been on here. What's happening?

Are there more trolls, or is everyone happening to be in the middle of a crisis at the same time? It's very stressful to come on and see that all of the threads I use are blown up with fights with newbies as the OP's. I don't understand why we are the ones who have to deal with this nonsense and try to resolve our problems ourselves. Isn't that why we have mods? I'm not here to tell so-and-so that he or she is stepping out of line and have it escalate. I'm here because this is a safe, supportive place. I haven't been seeing that the past few weeks. I don't know what to do. I don't want to leave, but this is getting way out of hand.

What's going on?