What is it about people getting so offended these days?

Being thin-skinned is a way to signal high status. In the old days, peasants were meek people who trash talked each other constantly; they had thick skins. It was the aristocrats who were extremely thin skinned and challenged you to a death-match (a duel) if you went so far as to diss their choice of shoes, or whatever. They were full of righteous anger at any slight to their honor. Interestingly, there’s an old quip of Chinese imperial bureaucrats, you may kill a bureaucrat, but you cannot humiliate him. They meant it. 士可殺不可辱.