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Notes -
People use the word in a political context to mean both things. I've heard phrases like "David Duke is toxic to the republican party", which is more or less your framing (and the traditional one), but I think Tacherus is using it in the more colloquial and current way. It's what I thought of first, and I believe what most millenials and younger mean most of the time. With this connotation, a "toxic" friend is not bad because they are a bad person, in fact they might have a few really good qualities that you love, but the worry is that overall they rub off on you or interact with your life in a way that is harmful and spreads and you think you're better off without them. In other words, it's possibly a two-way street, but most of the time it's more the notion of entanglement and prompting negative reinforcement loops/patterns.
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