It's not a discord problem it's an online culture problem. People now are addicted to trying to find things to be upset about and put people on blast for - make an off coloured joke in the old days and you may suddenly find your new best friend, now it's being clipped and shared on twitter and some one is calling your boss to try and get you fired.
I'd go a couple of steps further, not the tools, or even the people, or even the culture, but rather the incentive structure. There are massive social rewards, psychological rewards, and even financial rewards, for identifying and sharing a novel source of outrage.
As you said, this produces a culture where there are steady pools of people both seeking out the content, and waiting to consume it. The flip side of this is that everyone also knows the game, and manages their online presence so they don't end up on the trending tab of twitter.
Pseudo Anonymity is sort of a key feature of IRC that I think acts like a strong filter for people
People who are jerks will use anonymity to be jerks whereas when they are forced to tie an account to their identity they might pretend to be not jerks
People who are kind when anonymous are likely just good people at their core
