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.

  • Lvxferre
    3·
    6 months ago

    I think that the ranking algo is a catalyst, but the underlying phenomenon is natural, due to two counterpoints:

    • 4chan - same algo as old forums, and notoriously full of arseholes
    • Jantelagen, tall poppy syndrome, crab mindset - the idea of people being arseholes to the ones who behave differently pops up across multiple offline cultures

    I think that this is important because, if the Arsehole Social Shift (A.S.S.)* is a natural phenomenon, just avoiding a ranking algo isn’t enough; you need active measures to counter it.

    It might also have to do with community size, given that everyone has some triggers that makes them behave like arseholes, and they’re more likely to be triggered in larger communities.

    *sorry for the silly coinage. I couldn’t help it.