[bowsamic]

I'm actually quite shocked going back and looking at old StackOverflow posts. At the time, I was supportive of such brutality, but it is clearly against modern norms regarding what is appropriate internet socialisation.

My take is that SO was born in a time where ethics among the primarily male and tech-fanatical audience of the internet was less developed. At the time, what we now would call toxicity was expected: we thought it was shameful to not ask a question properly, to waste others' time, to not have tried significantly before asking. Now, we have a different view: first, the asker may not be a technical person and may not be someone you would feel comfortable berating; second, even among hardcore tech people there is a much stronger emphasis on appropriate communication and mental health. I remembered stories of my step father giving his subordinates "bollockings" (British term for heavily and aggressively shouting at and disciplining someone who has made a mistake). Well, I work for him now, and he does not do this anymore. Everyone is quite scared of upsetting everyone else, everyone is more aware of the suffering of others, etc.

Somehow, SO has partly retained these aspects of the old internet, when almost all other spaces have shed them.

EDI: You can see the user "rejectfinite" has replied to you with a flagged comment which demonstrates how people still try to act out this kind of toxicity, but note the swiftness of his downvotes and his almost immediate flagging. We just don't tolerate that anymore. But we used to

[discors]

> You can see the user “rejectfinite” has replied to you with a flagged comment which demonstrates how people still try to act out this kind of toxicity

A point made well. I saw that post.

I myself have been generously downvoted, which is understandable given the audience here on HN.