I’ve been here a long time and from my perspective it’s expected that lizards have thick skins. While ad hom is always weak argument, passion behind your position is expected. Occasional insults will fly, and are usually ignored since nobody has time to exhaustively read every comment from the view of a “sensitive” person. Comments usually start getting deleted when they go way over the top, become persistent (in other words there’s a thread to thread vendetta/feud going on which has nothing to do with what’s truly being debated.)

“Jerk” is pretty light as insults go around here, and it could be up or down dinged depending on how valid the insult is, or it could get dinged up or down based on a clique group or following for or against one commenter or another.

If you can’t stand a bit of head butting and acrimony then you don’t belong here, on the other hand if you sling it too much then you have weak weak weak debate skilz, and you probably don’t belong here either. Discussions are almost always better and more open and instructive when the acrimony is kept to a minimum.