Any predictable behaviour less violent than, "I will kill you if you go near me," is exploitable. If your enemies know about it, they can use it against you.
Snake pits like the Byzantine court were considered high status, and consequently the peasants all want to act like treacherous snakes. Typical cargo-cult behaviour, mimicking the incidental signs and signifiers of high status in an attempt to voodoo the substance of high status into existence.
(Naturally the fact that status is zero-sum escapes them. If they can voodoo it into being, how much harder can a lord voodoo it into being, thus rendering their efforts moot? It's mainly monkey mimicry.)
Hence the decay of Stoicism into stoicism, the act of hiding all your emotions, lest they be used against you. All true communication must be suppressed, lest it be weaponized.
Tolerating the presence of your enemies not only ruins your own mood, it ruins you for your friends. Assuming you can even make friends while practicing small s stoicism.
Of course, lies are bad mmkay. If you have an emotion and you're not expressing that emotion, you are practicing deceit.
Instead of following the rule implied by the above fact, we instead have a culture where piercing someone's stoic mask is considered a victory. It's a base assumption that everyone is enemies and any emotion (aside from [I'll kill you]) is an emotional vulnerability.
Why are you surprised that this leads to a loner culture?
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