[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.