[bluefirebrand]

> People were mean to each other on the early Internet, but ... some kind of "but" belongs here. Maybe "but it was surprising, it wasn't what they expected"? "But it wasn't what they thought it was about"?

For me, the "but" is that I would rather have someone be mean to me than have a corporation collecting all of my data and using it to try and advertise at me

[t-3]

Yeah. Conflict is part of social life, it's unavoidable. Spying on people to make money, putting unknown and often malicious executable code on almost every page for 20 years, sending saboteurs and astroturf squads to disrupt natural communities and channel the herd into monetizable social media slave pens where only approved speech is allowed and corporate propaganda is displayed between every message... not so much.