Era is no more toxic than GAF, it's just toxic in a different way.
In Era, the quality of posts on any given (objective) subject are significantly better because the moderators don't
allow the community to interact with supremely fucking stupid individuals. Even usually flammable topics (console wars) are
significantly more fruitful in Era, because discourse isn't bogged down by dumb shit. They are also pretty liberal, so it's a very safe place for official devs to publicly post without incident.
Downside is that the admins are self-righteous assholes who cull any dissenting opinions in
very specific areas -- namely political and ideological areas, and this bleeds into other areas. And it's so strict that people who go along the grain can suggest
ANYTHING they want as ethical truth, and the community is forced to treat it as fact.....or be aggressively banned.
In GAF, you're more or less free to post whatever opinion or content you want within reason, and people are actually free to speak their minds. Different ideologies are free to bang heads all they want. Downside is that the stupidity comes with full freedom of speech isn't culled at all, so discussions very easily get derailed. And specifically because of the split from ERA, GAF's population has evolved to be far more right-leaning than it was beforehand. Far-left idiots are self-righteous and overbearing, while far-right idiots are deliberately offensive and edgy.
So basically....On ERA, you have threads about people hating women, women's rights, and you're free to comment but they'll ban anyone who disagrees with them. On GAF, you have threads about AMD's female CEO where it's basically nothing but dismissive drive by posts about SJWs and glass ceilings and women-in-business jokes, and you're free to comment....and that's it.
TL;DR in Era, majority of the toxicity comes from the moderators. In Gaf, the majority comes from the posters.
Edit:
LOL, case in point:
This clown-wigged woman plays a character on a show called Avenue 5 on HBO. The show isn't very good, but every time this follicular behemoth is on the screen, I can't look at anything else. It's so distracting. It's so awful. Why would anyone look like this ever? She has like 4 heads...
www.neogaf.com
this is the quality of posters we host on GAF