I have been trying to get my partner into Pathfinder 2nd edition, and they do seem taken with it, however he's been having some issues lately with PF2E. Notably, online. The more he gets into PF2E, the more hate he sees for 5E. He's been playing 5E for years now and has invested a lot of time and love into the game, and to see it bad-mouthed online by a ton of people either because they think PF2E is better, or they don't like the system, or because of the company that manages it, has been disheartening to him as of late.
He told me today that he might just stop playing altogether after he's finished with his games because of the hate he's been seeing online, and I would hate for him to drop something he loves and has invested so much time into because of some online hate comments coming from another community in an act of internet tribalism.
I tried telling him that people disliked D&D4E when it came out for various reasons, yet people still play it today, and that when I started playing 5E, 4E had the reputation of being the game that everyone hates, but he's still focused on how people will bad-mouth 5E when they really have no need to. One example I can remember him seeing (and before I bring it up, I understand Reddit's culture, but the large amount of forum posts are going to be on Reddit, especially for a large and insular hobby like TTRPGs) was on a Reddit thread of someone asking what an analogous spell or ability would be to some spell in 5E and one person commented something to the effect of "well, you could try using this spell/ability, but you won't get the same effect as you would in 5E because 5E is just for auto-win stuff that doesn't have the player trying hard" (moderately paraphrasing, but I think my point is conveyed well here).
Personally, I like PF2E over 5E, but I'll still play both, mostly because most people will play 5E and not want to try and learn a new system, especially if it's one that has a reputation of having exponentially more rules than the one they already know and are comfortable with. Does anyone have any tips for how I can help my partner here?
As a D&D hater, I don't think this is a problem of the game, or even of the forums. Your partner doesn't seem like the kind of person that can handle someone disliking something they like, and considering everything that has been happening in the past few years - or really, ever - with Wizards of the Coast and D&D, there's no place where you won't find people - rightfully - criticizing it.
If he truly loves it, just find people with similar taste and play with it them, taking opinions from random online folks so seriously to the point of considering dropping his hobby is a terribly harmful outlook, and not just centered on tabletop gaming.
I mean I criticize D&D all the time, but there's a difference between criticizing the game and saying that the game is stupid or for babies or something (I've seen posts saying that 5E is for babies although those were from players of older editions of D&D).
Wizards of the Coast "running the game into the ground" is another reason he said he doesn't see a reason in playing the game anymore, and I'll give that one to him (although I will say that a table can simply opt to not play OneD&D and simply to just play regular 5E, I'd imagine people did that with 3.5E when 4E came along).
I just don't see how this is a real issue and not something that can be solved with blocking users, hiding posts and moving on. That's really bottom of the barrel as far as internet hate goes.
If this were somehow about being unsatisfied with the game or the company, I'd say "play something else", there's always other games but...its not even that? I don't know, it just really seems like an extremely easy issue to solve - even if I wouldn't call it an issue to begin with.
The main issue, and I've said this in another comment on this thread, is that he will have a question about PF2E and his first instinct is to go to Reddit or do a google search, which turns up with results from Reddit. He then maybe sees an answer to the question he was looking for, but he also sees unneeded hate directed towards the game he loves.
He's said that the problem surrounding PF2E is the culture of the game, and I can honestly agree with him. People can be loud when they're negative tbh, and moreso online. And it can't really be solved with blocking users, hiding posts, and moving on like you say it can, because he's shared with me several posts bad-mouthing 5E in favor of PF2E and they are all from different users. Yes, Archives of Nethys has the rules for free legally, but even I had questions going into running the game for the first time. What I did was read AoN as much as I could before running the game, but I am not my partner.
Doctor, it hurts when I do this.
"Don't."
I think typically a doctor would try to give alternatives to doing something that hurts the patient.