I notice skeptics are far less likely to attack people's character or intelligence, and are generally more likely to provide personal anecdotes and compelling, diversely sourced research than the herds of pincushion people.

There is a really simple explanation for this. Normies dont care about debate itself, they care about being right. So while conspiracy nutjobs are trying to prove that they are in fact not nuts, normies just being righteous.

I've noticed this trend while i was observing holywars on reddit. When arguing with an "alt right" crowd normies usually would use emotional manipulation instead of arguments, because for them its more important to look righteous and moral. So even if they where technically right about some topics, they usually couldnt prove that cause they didnt know why exactly they where right. They just knew that their point of view is right and had some vague understanding of why this point of view is right, but they never bothered to learn all the details.