His point
Your head
Not at all.
Old Off Topic treated new members like shit and drove them away with its grade school-like hazing. It was only silly and fun if you fell in line with the humor of the in-crowd; it was miserable for you otherwise.
And a lot of that behavior spread to the rest of the forum. New members would show up and get called out for asking questions or just trying to fit in. That attitude was perpetuated by many of the members who spend most of their time in this section and who label themselves as oppressed today.
The General Guidelines were written specifically to deal with that behavior.
Most of those leaving today—voluntarily or otherwise—contributed to that environment.
Any memory of Off Topic in the last 8 or so years as a warm, fun, silly place is rose-tinted and not reflective of reality, and anyone leaving today because “this place sucks now” is merely getting a dose of what they fed to other members for so many years.