[laputan_machine]

Can't we just have a place where we discuss things without bringing in the latest political talking point? Maybe I'm mis-remembering, maybe it's rose-tinted glasses, but I honestly can't remember it being like this on forums back in the day.

I don't remember _any_ political discuss on the various warez forums I was on (nxsecure anyone?). Flame wars were a thing, no doubt, but it wasn't this already formed opinion where you've picked a side and now anyone on the other side is a bad guy. It is completely bizarre.

[olivermuty]

I think that is also largely colored by the fact that one «side» in modern US politics is objectively literally a collection of «bad guys». It makes it a bit hard to have serious political discourse when one of the sides is seeemingly trying to burn the house down rather than lose.

Also there was a ton of political stuff in the bush era as well. My theory is that you just dont remember it because there was still a solid foundation of political decorum and respect on both sides at that time.

Disclaimer: I am not american.

[BeetleB]

> It makes it a bit hard to have serious political discourse when one of the sides is seeemingly trying to burn the house down rather than lose.

Your parent is asking for a place where there is little to no political discussion, not a place to have meaningful political discussion.

With the good old phpBB forums, they'd often dedicate one subforum for political/flamebait content, and it was allowed only in there. As a user, you simply didn't read that subforum if you didn't care for it.

Specifically, on those forums, you had to actively seek those venues to have these discussions. Today it seems you have to work to avoid these discussions.

[fleddr]

Also known as intersectionalism. Used to be a meaningless academic word. Now even discussing the baking of cookies turns into a political struggle.

[josteink]

> the fact that one «side» in modern US politics is objectively literally a collection of «bad guys»

None of those emphasised words means what you think they mean.

The fact that some people have been radicalized to believe stuff like this is more likely the root of the problems we’re having today.

In that regard your comment is what I would objectively consider a bad comment on HN (and against the site guidelines too), but it was still useful in the broader sense of the discussion.

[vehemenz]

In what way has the parent poster been "radicalized" compare to, say, the average Trump supporter? If everything is radical, then nothing is radical.

[eclipxe]

olivermuty is right.

[pndy]

> but I honestly can't remember it being like this on forums back in the day.

It wasn't like this but then the Internet wasn't still that much widespread as today. Social media boom really opened it to the masses but also bring political polarization which really bloomed in last ~10 years.

Twenty years ago I wouldn't imagine that in the nearest future we'll have communities on the Internet ruled and divided by political views. That we'll need to self-censor what and in what form we want to say to others under the risk of the instant ban. I didn't expect either that we'll need to agree to "codes of conduct" - netiquette and forums rules were enough for most of the time.

Back then I hoped we'll have virtual assistants connected to vast databases, that we'll met in the virtual worlds with photo-realistic avatars, that technology would blend indistinguishably with our environment, and that would connect us into one global village. And instead we got bubbled social networks with yelling influencers and ads, tracking on every corner of the web. Bleh.

[time_to_smile]

Another problem is that nearly everyone's "political" views have been reduced to just talking points and strange dogmatic behavior.

As a counter example consider someone who could no longer exist online even if he, sadly, had not passed: Erik Naggum

Erik certainly expressed political views in many of his comments, but at the same time it's very hard to box his thinking into any mainstream political narrative. I think today he would be both unwelcome on Twitter and HN or any more conservative sites. Erik represents a lot of what I remember and miss about earlier forums: strongly held personal beliefs that don't fit into any one particular bucket.

Individuals having diverse views within their own system of beliefs is what allowed us to have meaningful political discussions in the past because 3 people could talk about 3 different topics and the group could reasonably be split 2 vs 1 on all topics with completely different splits each time.

[vehemenz]

"Back then" the Internet was disproportionately populated by educated people—college students, academics, engineers, and the professional class. Disenfranchised people were not using the Internet on their phones during their breaks.

[dpkirchner]

I think you can thank heavy-handed moderation for the lack of political discussions on forums back in the day.

[josteink]

I can assure you we had no moderators dealing with the kind of political nonsense we have today back in the days when I was a regular at the Something awful, Fark, Jpopmusic or XDA forums.

People were just out to have a good time, have a laugh or get together over something they loved.

People seemingly don’t seem to be as good at that these days.

[TylerE]

Maybe because they finally realized that ignoring the unignorable is a losing strategy?

It's like the people who bitch about their HOA all the time but never go to a meeting or even know who the board members are.

[josteink]

> Maybe because they finally realized that ignoring the unignorable is a losing strategy?

Maybe I’m just dumb, but I don’t fully understand this comment.

What is unignorable? Politics? I can ignore it just fine when I consider it not an appropriate subject. And a losing strategy? For what?

Why does every arena have to be about picking a fight, rather than finding common ground? Why try to increase the divide in our society?

I just don’t get this mentality.

[JoshTriplett]

> What is unignorable? Politics? I can ignore it just fine when I consider it not an appropriate subject.

It's easier to ignore something that largely ignores you. It becomes impossible to ignore something when half the people in it consider your existence an affront to their sensibilities, and those people are inexplicably being listened to.

> Why does every arena have to be about picking a fight, rather than finding common ground?

There exists no common ground when people think other people shouldn't exist. If all those people stop having any influence on the world, perhaps the rest can successfully seek common ground and have reasonable policy discussions.

[TylerE]

Not picking a fight isn't the same as pretending something doesn't exist.

[superfrank]

I don't think that's all of it. Politics has continually gotten more polarizing over the 20 or so years. I don't think this is the worst it's ever been in the US, but it definitely seems like the Trump era is the worst it's been since mass adoption of the internet. Because of things like 24 hour news networks and social media, we're also reminded of our differences much more frequently than we used to be.

I think politics is just a bigger part of peoples' lives now and we're seeing that play out in real life as well as in internet communities.

[rnd0]

>Can't we just have a place where we discuss things without bringing in the latest political talking point?

Not since Arab Spring or rather shortly thereafter. I'm not sure if there was a ramp-up of "active measures" style agitation, "cointelpro" style group antagonism or what the exact mechanism was. But any way you slice it, it has become increasingly impossible for competing groups within the same sphere to communicate much less for their to be a dialog between the left and right.

No one can dialog with anybody else because the people upstairs want it that way!

[micromacrofoot]

Back in the day was an unusually peaceful time for much of the world... people would instead get in heated battles about stupid bullshit like game consoles and operating systems.

Things were different before, and it seems things are becoming different again.

[smackeyacky]

Back in the day people remembered there were social norms (e.g. the old social rule that in polite society you never raised either religion or politics as topics of discussion).

If you wanted a political discussion, you took it where it was welcome. "young people today" and "get off my lawn" and all that but manners and decorum went out the windows with the original eternal september and we may never see them again.

[micromacrofoot]

back in the day those "social norms" mostly existed for straight white people and they masked absurd amounts of abuse

[fleddr]

You're not misremembering anything. Even as recent as < 2016 people were far less political. There was always politics, but never as a fully defining characteristic of an individual.

[r721]

I think some instances are politically neutral, but Lemmy is a much smaller network than Mastodon, and those instances have like a few posts/month.

[Barrin92]

online forums for piracy given the demographics they tend to attract rarely ever had much political debate. if you've ever attended a CCC thouch or any other anarchist/hacker space they were always political, mostly left leaning.

pretending this is news reminds me of Paul Ryan being shocked that Rage Against the Machine didn't like him. I also will point out that your very own profile page here features a link to a political manifesto