Comment by Aurornis
5 days ago
> We were on forums (even usenet) and got along. Now it is all walled gardens, rage bait, racism, and people shouting at each other.
You’re remembering the good parts and forgetting the bad parts that you looked past at the time.
Old usenet was full of vicious flame wars. You could find civil posts if you filtered through content but the ugly parts were everywhere.
This is classic nostalgia: Looking back you only remember the parts you liked. When everything feels new and exciting we have more energy to overlook the bad things.
I was fine with the flame wars, crapfloods, etc, because at least it was human (except for incredibly primitive bots). The spammers were even humans, and might even talk to people briefly before spamming again. It felt very different. Dealing with assholes is normal and possible, dealing with faceless entities and bots is like punching a wall.
Generally though, I agree that Usenet was difficult after Eternal September unless you stayed on top of your killfile.
Mailing lists were pretty manageable, and the phpBB era was fantastic if you found some boards you liked.
I remember the bad parts, and they were less bad. Flame-war practitioners, racists, New Atheist axe-grinders, and mentally ill cranks were not exactly engaging in productive discussion, but they were still recognizable as authentic human beings with a life outside that particular obsession. Usenet and web forums allowed users to customize their self-presentation with avatars and sigs, and people often used the same nick across communities so you could see their range of interests in music or coding or whatever.
Compare that to e.g. Reddit today where successive redesigns reduced features that made each subreddit feel like a close-knit community of regulars, instead trying to get people addicted to endless-scroll engagement where everyone is a stranger. Or Twitter where, if you browse through the Nitter interface on a desktop browser, you can readily see that many strident political profiles are bots with a profile photo from “This Person Does not Exist” or African/Indian Subcontinent troll-farm employees.
> Old usenet was full of vicious flame wars.
*plonk* (It's why kill files where created.)
This so much!
I recently found an old email thread by accident. I recoiled in horror: the vitriol was unbelievable, people name calling each other in the worst possible way. The same people are much more mature these days. The new people in the same community likewise. Times have changed: for the better.