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.
> 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.
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.
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.