[api]

I think professional trolls, bad faith argument, toxic influencers, lynch mobs, rage bait, and all the other moving parts that make up the Internet’s profoundly toxic political and social activism sphere also did their part. That stuff really exploded in the mid 20-teens.

Of course you could consider some of that a special case of content mills and spam. It certainly can’t be separated from the ad based business model and the attention maximizing algorithms that drive it, since most of that stuff rides on the fact that being crazy or toxic maximizes engagement.

[marginalia_nu]

I wonder if all the toxicity is just a reflection of people's state of mind. Just seems to be a lot more anger and sadness online in the late 2010s early 2020s than there ever was before.

There just seems to be a lot of lonely and depressed people out there, and unfortunately they often time they seem to congregate to wallow in each other's depressive thought loops. It's hard enough to escape from the gravity well of depression when you're alone in reinforcing the darkness. Can't even imagine what getting stuck into one of those quagmires might be like.

[yetanotherloss]

They were always there, but the impetus for frictionless experiences to drive revenue also removed all the barriers and effort to congregating and often exploiting those people.

It was there on Usenet, it's been there since people were scratching messages on bathroom stalls and subway walls.

But yes, now we have effectively created cult generators and not only does no one want to turn them off, really smart people (even many with good intentions) keep making them more efficient.

[suoduandao3]

When the internet was young, i thought the comments sections were going to leave us confronted with our own shadow selves. I pictured a utopia where we saw that raw honesty and all became a bit more accepting of our own inner critics, shadows, golden shadows and the like.

In retrospect, I was naive. Just because we see something our shadow wrote next to our handle doesn't mean we recognize that as ourselves. If anything, we're shadow projecting much harder than ever.

[PH95VuimJjqBqy]

You're not the only one :)

[robertlagrant]

Two causes spring to mind:

Covid lockdowns - people actually were lonely for a long period.

The decline of traditional news media - more extreme headlines are essential for more money to appear.

[marginalia_nu]

This has been going on far longer than Covid though, but it sure didn't do anyone's mental health any favors.

[sparrowInHand]

To be honest, i do not think the internet invented that. There are parts of the world, were lynch mobs still are considered justice. Were face is more important than facts. To generate a healthy eco-system, for a unhealthy human species.. thats quite the challenge.