On Monday, August 10, 2015 at 2:08:42 PM UTC-5, gtr wrote:
> I've noted over many years how, one by one, each usenet enclave of
> enthusiasts on this or that topic eventually collapses.
>
> How does it happen? One to three assholes consistently ride the pony
> with bile and anger and angst and an endless series of faux vendettas,
> all of it fashioned to look like something they care about, when in
> fact it is primarily a proxy way to engage the world for folks that
> apparently have no social contact otherwise. They can fight, they can
> vent, they can stalk, but otherwise they've got almost nothing to offer.
>
> Every post on topic eventually becomes bickering and insults. Each
> such conclusion begins to happen more rapidly; at first there are still
> 8 posts on topic, before the flood gate opens, then it's only two.
> Hapless people, who ostensibly care about the newsgroup, but only know
> how to respond in kind, participate in suffocating the group. I use to
> say "when somebody slaps, I slap back". I ditched that approach about
> 8 years ago seeing that all groups then become slap-groups and no
> substantive discussion has a chance to breath.
>
> I saw that happen to a fabulous group on afro-cuban music;
> rec.music.afro-cuban. It became a bulletin board for the same
> anti-semetic rants, mostly cut-and-paste from websites. After a couple
> of years his lone voice eventually stopped. Everybody else vanished to
> some laundered and rigid "bulletin board" with a different
> time-consuming UI than all the other different and time-consuming UI's
> out there. The job is about complete at rec.arts.movies.past-films,
> and seemingly rec.food.cooking is hanging on by its fingernails as 1
> (or is it 3) people have no other life than a daily name change and
> cut-and-paste roadblocks. And then of course all their incensed prey,
> nobly, dutifully slapping back; blocking all blood to vital organs.
> There's another 8 or 10 of these I've seen die in the past 15 years.
>
> As long as y'all insist on endlessly giving hand-jobs to the 1 (or is
> it 8) trolls whose only objective here is to kill discourse, the result
> will be the same.
>
> Usenet is just a snapshot: This is happening on a much bigger level as
> politics becomes an opportunity for dismemberment alone. I use to have
> substantive debates with Republicans over policy. Now "substance" is
> primarily the ludicrous Fox daily lies, Limbaughs empty agitprop,
> whether the president is a Kenyan or a Mooslim. And I hold up my end
> with outrage. Instead of policy on climate change and illegal
> immigration, we're bickering about what Donald Trump or Sarah Palin
> said. Instead of politics--or even political propaganda--we're
> bickering about celebrities and racist one-liners. And I've been a
> participant in changing the subject from something to nothing! The
> Republicans would rather have us bickering about bullshit than arguing
> about policy; when they control the discourse there will be no
> discourse.
>
> What's revolting is not that there are jackasses whose only goal in
> life is disruption and destruction, what's nauseates most is the degree
> to which well-meaning and interested people are so easily manipulated
> into facilitating it. Every. Single. Time.

Thank you for a nicely written post. It actually makes sense. Some days they are few and far between.