I think this is happening a lot. Say somebody wants clean drinking water in their home town. Or they want to stop Climate change which is going to destroy important parts of the biosphere. Then they opposea chemical plant which pollutes the water. Or oppose technology and policies which cause more carbon emissions, instead of bringing them to zero, as is really needed. Now, the industry creates culture war with highly polarized, extreme position. And when you continue to oppose that, you are suddenly the causing part of the culture war, and responsible that there is conflict. “If you were reasonable, you would agree to something in the middle”. Works also with far-right policies. “Ah, you oppose killing immigrants! So, you could agree to deport everyone whose parents were not born here!”. It is the whole point of the real extremism to shift the mainstream view. If having an ai girlfriend and talking about the end of humanity is lunatic, it must be the reasonable and measured position to do a lot of office work with ai, right? And the idea that in reality, it might not help at all is extremism. Of course, there are a lot of problems which require to find a kind of compromise. But not every problem is like that, and in order to find real compromises you need to look at the legitimate interests of the people involved. Drinking clean water is a legitimate interest. Destroying the planet for more profit not.