Or is it just doomed to the vapidity of sterile commercialization?
It feels like everything is serious these days… and ‘humor’ is only of the commercial variety. Joke communities and circlejerk communities are considered ‘hate groups’ now. Mods will ban you for sarcastic comments on ‘serious’ topics, and even on non serious ones, and everything is politicized either by trolls, bots, or whackjobs.
It’s boring when you can’t joke anymore. I miss my internet communities of 5-10 years ago when you could joke around, and even people of different beliefs and persuasions could laugh at themselves.
Now everything is so deadly serious. It’s a complete bummer. And any sort of ‘edge’ or sarcasm or sardonic remarks are ban-worthy.
I guess it’s just poe’s law run amok? I feel like mods could tell the difference 10 years ago and the non-jokey psychos were just ignored.
Something Awful charged :10bux: for membership and was a pillar of good moderation. It works.
They were amazing pioneers of shitposting and circlejerking but some people considered them something of a hate group for their callouts of specific subcultures. I’m suggesting that aspect of things that OP is describing isn’t exactly new.
But yeah, agreed, the swift, stark ban policy was very effective in creating a “civil” society there - idiots showed up to fuck around, bam hope they’ve got 10 more bucks if they want to try again under a different account.