[Raion]

I'm a pretty active internet user, and have been around on it since about 1996-7 (when I was 3-4 and learning how to chat on BBS). 

I really miss the 2000s internet culture, where mom and pops sites were a big portion of traffic and people were forced to confront their own prejudices and get actual logical and reasonable challenges to what they said online; and also the whole - selective anonymity thing. Now, there's software that can at least point people to see if your writing style is at all similar to another, unrelated account and it's "evidence" like this that can lead to you being burned. 

Nowadays, the truth is that 90% of internet traffic is big corporations who can control the narrative, and old school discussions are all but a fragment of the past doomed to be weathered. 

Let me share some stories of how stupid this is becoming nowadays:

About 3 years ago there was a relaunch of a popular torrent site I was part of (I'll call it "UG") under new management. I joined up in part because that site had EXCELLENT users who knew about a wide variety of topics in a professional and intelligent way. In the relaunch period, I joined their forum discussions and there was an immediate difference. People no longer respected opinions they disagreed with, even if the opinion was well-founded and reasonable. They would mass-upvote/downvote content they didn't like (this is a reason I don't have any reactions enabled on this forum) and circlejerk about topics that only a concurring opinion was allowed in. In short, coupled with the lack of new content, the site was totally different and lacked any reason to be social. The new staff, when I reported a user for harassment, responded with calling me crazy (This guy was following me around in unrelated topics and calling me a "bigot" because I disagreed with him on a topic) and threatened me with a ban. Rather than deal with that nutcase of cancer, I changed my account password to something I didn't know, changed my profile and signature to say "UG is dead, long live UG" and unplugged from the site. Absolute cancer. 

No matter where you go, if you mention you're from the US on an international forum there's always someone who will piss in your face and lecture you about the "social problems" in your country and lecture you about unrelated topics like your president, healthcare, guns etc. like they know better than you or your populace about how to run a totally unrelated country. If you speak a foreign language online and mention you're from the US, the people will immediately talk down to you in simple words even if you're at a level where you're perfectly able to communicate at a fluent level over text. (i.e. they talk like cavemen or only say simple words)

And of course, my experiences in social media including discord and just how immature people can be over internet arguments. You even leverage basic criticism against someone or something a person likes or is doing and it's like you hurt their pride by insulting their grandmother. 

Overall, I'd say the internet is becoming heavily factionized, and the result is you get a lot of people who tell you you're the greatest thing since sliced bread, and you get to smelling your own farts all the time to the point that your ego becomes inflated enough you may be a perfectly nice and well-adjusted adult in person, but the moment you step online you change into like one of 5-10 different personalities of people you meet online. It's sickening to me that this monster has been created, and I almost want to see Google, Youtube, and all of the social media platforms dissolve and we can go back to the internet's early ages. But that's of course not gonna happen. 

The frustration is real. I'm not the only one seeing this, right? I may even be guilty of some of the stuff I am complaining about, I dunno.