On Mon, 10 Aug 2015 12:08:39 -0700, 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.

You really do think you're superior to everyone else here. Don't you.