Sadly it’s people’s need for validation that drives them to interact here and platforms just reflect that. Up/downmodding, persistent identity, profiles, logins, none of that was ever necessary for us to have conversations in the beginning.

People look at places like this as platforms that encourage discussion, but the incentive is always to post and comment in the way most people will agree with. That doesn’t encourage discussion, it streamlines and simplifies it, removes nuance. And disagreement? Your comment is forced to the bottom of the page and ultimately collapsed / hidden. On reddit it can even be removed by automod to stop you from leaking all that precious karma.

And don’t get me started on the profit motive. In the 90s we were just happy a business came on here and interacted with us. There just wasn’t any way to make money here when it was nerds talking to other nerds. Now the motivation for being present on the internet is to go viral so you can get money and attention.

I don’t care what it takes to get all these newcomers off here but it can’t happen soon enough.