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.
I think it may be both. Engagement algorithms are definitely part of the problem. Agree it was far more fun when it was random / organic interactions.
However, I also think it’s kind of like a party that starts out like a book club, it gets more interesting, and then louder and more obnoxious folks hear about this, and they keep showing up.
By the end it’s a completely different vibe, and the original folks are long gone. Have experienced it numerous times over the long years, before the sorting and engagement algorithms joined the fray.
I know this comes off as kind of hipsterish. But, most obnoxious people don’t realize they are obnoxious. And confronting them seldom does anything but escalate the situation. So leaving is the mature choice. Therefore… mature folks leave, and the forum’s relative aggregate immaturity goes up.
One way to fight it is with very strict moderation, and I have seen that work. But it’s labor-intensive and requires moderators who are highly dedicated and fair, and don’t “power trip”. I’m not a huge fan of that approach overall. But in the right context (like academic discussions) it can be pretty good.
Same. IRL and online communities I have experienced this. Obnoxious people come in, take over, and then make everything about them… only people who want to be around that are other obnoxious people so things become a circlejerk.
not really hipsterish… but very common IME with any community that hipster types of people start joining. They start policing others because of their raging insecurity and need to be seen as cool.