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I sometimes question my own sanity, and start asking if my recollection of the Before Times was all a fever dream, but to the best of my ability to answer your question: yes. It was completely normal to have a friend group with all sorts of people. We've had a dude that was an open (actual) fascist in mine, and the group was majority left-wing. Sometimes things would get heated, and people would fight, but at the end of the day people just wanted to have a good time. The blander views wouldn't even raise an eyebrow. Insert "this is what they took from you" meme.
Now, while I also think the news of Wokeness' death have been greatly exaggerated, I do feel like I can breathe a little. Still not comfortable attaching my Tinker Tuesday github to my resume, but way better than "undercover agent" mode of the COVID era.
I think being older than thirty helps, because you can indeed remember for yourself the Before Times and how things were, both bad and good. The young'uns online don't have those memories so are inclined to "this is the first time ever this happened" and "we are the only ones ever doing anything about it" and of course forgetting the previous waves of "Maoism is so dreamy!" or whatever, for both sides, and the mountains of skulls that resulted.
But that also makes it harder to argue with them, because they don't seem to have the habit of "well what are the primary sources here?" They see it on TikTok or social media or their own little bubble and spread it around as Gospel (e.g. Trump really is a paedophile who rapes thirteen year old girls, this isn't exaggeration or rhetorical sarcasm, they are convinced this is all true).
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