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> The community zeitgeist across the board just seems so much more argumentative, contrarian, and angry than it was years ago. I have no control group referenc
by consumer451 3y ago
> The community zeitgeist across the board just seems so much more argumentative, contrarian, and angry than it was years ago.
I have no control group reference for this, only my decades of early adopter existence, but this does also happen to align with the USA’s change of discourse IRL as well.
I wonder how much of this apparent effect is from attitudes changing in the population at large, versus how much is simply from a larger percentage of the population just getting online.
If the latter, am I assuming that the early adopters also happened to be more chill? Is that likely?
> It reminds me of trying to find value in YouTube comments around 2008 and realizing there's some kind of community-wide attitude problem completely destroying any chance of it.
This was my experience as well, even 5 to 7 years ago. It seemed to me like YouTube comments were 99% a-hole trolls back then.
These days, that’s not my experience. Either (or both) I got better at finding cool channel communities, or the platform’s comment section somehow actually improved. My guess is both.
- mustacheemperor 3y ago>These days, that’s not my experience. I wonder how much of this is because many, many users had their YouTube account identity automatically converted to their Google account identity, which would be much more likely to include their real name and a profile picture.
- skinnymuch 3y agoFor me its I don’t go to toxic YouTube channels as much these days. I don’t erratically go through diff black holes of content. I watch the same sort of stuff. I usually will stop watching a channel if I notice the vibe in the comments are off (like justifications for bigotry but veiled as moral)