I joined a popular video games forum back in about 2000 which, at the time, had some industry folks. Everybody was generally very polite and reasonable but as t

I joined a popular video games forum back in about 2000 which, at the time, had some industry folks. Everybody was generally very polite and reasonable but as time went on and more people joined the forum it became more and more tense and the industry people got berated for their games or their commentary and slowly left. The quality of discourse degraded to the point where there was an outright rebellion against a certain set of trolls who weren't being "dealt with" which led to a mass banning and an exodus that included me. Most of the refugees wound up at another forum which repeated almost the exact same pathologies over the course of the next few years. I eventually left that community as well. The conclusion I came to was that I was not gaining anything valuable from my interactions on these forums. I also suspect that pure online interaction that is not backed by in person interaction is ripe for serious problems. Knowing someone in person and interacting with them on some routine basis is a huge bulwark against mistreatment. It's much harder to mistreat someone you have to face in person again soon. My online interactions are now very limited. I may share an opinion or an answer and I'll read and appreciate the same from others, but I refuse to get into an argument with people that I don't know. I don't think it's edifying to me and I suspect it may not be edifying for most people.