Another option is to move to the Platinum Rule: Treat others the way they would want to be treated.

This suffers from a different, but still very serious problem, namely the fact that most people are at least somewhat selfish and want to be treated in a way that gives them (from an overall societal perspective) an unjustifiably large amount of resources, priority, respect, epistemic authority, etc. Granting them this might be good for the individuals in those spots, but has a negative effect on society as a whole. 

It sure would be nice and convenient if it just so happened that "do what person X tells you to" and "do what's best for the community around you" were always in alignment. After all, in such a world, we wouldn't need to make these tough choices or ever have to reject the requests made by concrete people in front of us because of abstract principles or consequentialist reasoning (which is often quite difficult to do, especially for otherwise nice, prosocial, and empathetic people). But, as it turns out, we live in a world with scarce resources, one in which avoiding conflict by taking a third option often fails, and we must confront the issues directly instead.

For example, if somebody tells you that the way they want you to treat them is to always agree with everything they are saying and to never criticize their statements, what are you meant to do? If you give in, this not only allows potentially bad and damaging claims to go unchallenged, but also sets up terrible incentives for everyone else to copy this behavior. But if you don't give in, suddenly you aren't using the Platinum Rule anymore; perhaps you have some set of principles that tell you where to draw the line between "spots where people are allowed to impose their desires for how they should be treated on you" and "spots where such requests should be given no deference whatsoever," but now you've just moved the entire discussion up a step without major changes to the status quo; everyone will start arguing over where the line should be drawn and which side of it any given situation falls on.

There is also another issue, namely that if you empower individuals to affect great change in how others interact with them solely on the basis of their preferences, you are setting up bad incentives for how those individuals' preferences will change over time. As Vladimir_M has written in a classic response^[1] to Scott Alexander's old post [LW · GW]:

In a world where people make decisions according to this principle, one has the incentive to self-modify into a utility monster who feels enormous suffering at any actions of other people one dislikes for whatever reason. And indeed, we can see this happening to some extent: when people take unreasonable offense and create drama to gain concessions, their feelings are usually quite sincere.

You say, "pretending to be offended for personal gain is... less common in reality than it is in people's imaginations." That is indeed true, but only because people have the ability to whip themselves into a very sincere feeling of offense given the incentive to do so. Although sincere, these feelings will usually subside if they realize that nothing's to be gained.

And then the follow-up [LW(p) · GW(p)]:

If we have a dispute and I credibly signal that I'm going to flip out and create drama out of all proportion to the issue at stake, you're faced with a choice between conceding to my demands or getting into an unpleasant situation that will cost more than the matter of dispute is worth. I'm sure you can think of many examples where people successfully get the upper hand in disputes using this strategy. The only way to disincentivize such behavior is to pre-commit credibly to be defiant in face of threats of drama. In contrast, if you act like a (naive) utilitarian, you are exceptionally vulnerable to this strategy, since I don't even need drama to get what I want, if I can self-modify to care tremendously about every single thing I want. (Which I won't do if I'm a good naive utilitarian myself, but the whole point is that it's not a stable strategy.)

Now, the key point is that such behavior is usually not consciously manipulative and calculated. On the contrary -- someone flipping out and creating drama for a seemingly trivial reason is likely to be under God-honest severe distress, feeling genuine pain of offense and injustice. This is a common pattern in human social behavior: humans are extremely good at detecting faked emotions and conscious manipulation, and as a result, we have evolved so that our brains lash out with honest strong emotion that is nevertheless directed by some module that performs game-theoretic assessment of the situation. This of course prompts strategic responses from others, leading to a strategic arms race without end.

The further crucial point is that these game-theoretic calculators in our brains are usually smart enough to assess whether the flipping out strategy is likely to be successful, given what might be expected in response. Basically, it is a part of the human brain that responds to rational incentives even though it's not under the control of the conscious mind. With this in mind, you can resolve the seeming contradiction between the sincerity of the pain of offense and the fact that it responds to rational incentives.

1. ^{^}

   And not to get in the weeds of political issues too much, but I think the claims in his comment have been shown to be correct, given changes in social and political discourse in the US, at least, in the past 10 years or so.