On Thu, 27 Jul 2006 00:13:18 +0000, Ruel Smith wrote:
> flatfish+++ spewed this vial garbage:
>
>> It's the same pattern over and over and over again. No advocacy at all.
>
> Whatever happened to the good old days of advocacy newsgroups? I
> remember a few years ago, lurking in comp.sys.mac.advocacy and actually
> having pleasant, well thought out, civil debates on Windows vs. Mac.
> Now, it's personal attacks, single line (sometimes word) responses like
> "You're an idiot", outlandish accusations, complete disregard for the
> facts, spam (this means you, Roy), and feverish extremism. I miss the
> good old days...
It seems to be happening all across Usenet. I was offline for a few years
and when I came back the changes were glaring. Most of my once-favorite
newsgroups have been trashed into uselessness by trolls.
alt.binaries.wallpapers had turned into a porn group and you could forget
about holding a friendly discussion on the consumer and backpacking
groups. I don't really know what's happened to alt.shareware.authors, but
it used to be a pretty busy group and posts are very slow now. They also
seem to have acquired an obsessed troll who behaves somewhat like K-man.
My own theory is that Usenet tends to attract and hold a certain type of
dysfunctional personality, and their constantly-accumulating numbers have
now reached a level that overwhelms and drives away the more level-headed
posters. As people are driven away, the ratio is tilting ever more rapidly
in the trolls' favor.
Where it ends, nobody knows.
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