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> The concept of civility and politeness once existed When? Where? How? What old debates on youtube? I've seen people throw out this line since the W Bush

> The concept of civility and politeness once existed When? Where? How? What old debates on youtube? I've seen people throw out this line since the W Bush administration and as far as I can tell it just means most of them have never actually delved into the media they think they're exposed to. US political officials used to fight each other, physically all the time -- senators bludgeoning each other into comas with canes, the VP of the US shooting and killing the head of the opposing political party in a dual. Andrew Jackson got shot something like 4 times. Dig up some of the terrible things Lincoln used to say about his political rivals -- The Great Emancapator used to spit fire at people. Before we had Rupert Murdoch we had Hearst, who literally caused a war, and is one of the inspirations for the term Yellow Journalism. There may have been 5 minutes where youtube wasn't complete garbage but I recall Newgrounds being big then and seeing more than a few blatantly pro-nazi vids then.

keiferski 6y ago
Of course you can find specific obscure examples for or against the argument I'm making. I really don't find this sort of comment helpful or useful and it's rather tiresome when it inevitably appears. I'm speaking of general cultural trends, not isolated incidents. American culture is far less formal, polite, and respectful than it used to be even 30 years ago. This is reflected in language (vulgarity is far more acceptable today), clothing (far more casual), vocabulary level (far lower), and in countless other ways. Even the insults today are more base and direct than they used to be. If this is not obviously true to you, I'm not sure we can agree on anything. For a specific example on YouTube, watch some old episodes of Firing Line. Here's one where William F. Buckley (conservative) talks to Eldridge Cleaver of the Black Panthers (quite left-wing). For one, this sort of interaction would almost never happen in the modern media world, and if it did, it would be nowhere near as calm as the Firing Line episode is. Certainly Buckley is not a paragon of civility (see his arguments with Gore Vidal) but again, the overall culture was far more collected. Compare it to today, where every conversation is combative and the only non-hostile forum is something like Joe Rogan, who functions as more of a sounding board than an actual intellectual host. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NPwk_Dbin8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NPwk_Dbin8

keiferski 6y ago

Of course you can find specific obscure examples for or against the argument I'm making. I really don't find this sort of comment helpful or useful and it's rather tiresome when it inevitably appears. I'm speaking of general cultural trends, not isolated incidents. American culture is far less formal, polite, and respectful than it used to be even 30 years ago. This is reflected in language (vulgarity is far more acceptable today), clothing (far more casual), vocabulary level (far lower), and in countless other ways. Even the insults today are more base and direct than they used to be. If this is not obviously true to you, I'm not sure we can agree on anything. For a specific example on YouTube, watch some old episodes of Firing Line. Here's one where William F. Buckley (conservative) talks to Eldridge Cleaver of the Black Panthers (quite left-wing). For one, this sort of interaction would almost never happen in the modern media world, and if it did, it would be nowhere near as calm as the Firing Line episode is. Certainly Buckley is not a paragon of civility (see his arguments with Gore Vidal) but again, the overall culture was far more collected. Compare it to today, where every conversation is combative and the only non-hostile forum is something like Joe Rogan, who functions as more of a sounding board than an actual intellectual host. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NPwk_Dbin8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NPwk_Dbin8