Call it elitism, snobbery, parochialism or whatever you like, but I maintain that as a space on the internet becomes more and more mainstream, it gets worse. Et

Call it elitism, snobbery, parochialism or whatever you like, but I maintain that as a space on the internet becomes more and more mainstream, it gets worse. Eternal September writ large. I remember the old internet, when it was for nerds, and there were barriers of entry. It was a much better place - it was rough around the edges, sure, but it was not some corporate walled garden monetised monoculture, so the good was absolutely worth the bad. There are some small vestiges of this - HN being one, and the fediverse being another. Reddit circa 10 years ago was like this, and, well - look at it now. The Facebookification of the Fediverse will be the beginning of the end of that old internet holdout. It will bring the normies and the advertisers, who will file down the sharp edges and narrow the range of acceptable viewpoints until it's just another part of the commercial borg. It was nice while it lasted I guess.