[benihana]

>We all know that any great medium starts out as a bastion of understanding, sharing and common good until a bunch of trolls show up to ruin it all (ahem, reddit, ycombinator, digg, etc).

No, we don't. I don't agree with your statement and I don't think you should be speaking for other people. None of those places were bastions of any of those things. They were places where like-minded people gathered to talk about common interests. Don't make the mistake of thinking because they represented your interests that these places were bastions of all that is good.

That is such a dim and cynical and solipsistic view to take. I don't agree that the people who came to those networks are trolls just because they showed up after me. This is a natural consequence of networks getting popular, not a bunch of trolls coming to ruin the things I love because I love them. It's like saying that the people who came to America after the initial European colonists were trolls because they had different interests from original colonists.

This is such a common tactic on internet 'debates.' To call someone who disagrees with you a troll, thereby absolving you from the mental work of understanding their viewpoint (I don't need to engage this troll, they're just fucking with me) and dealing with the possibility that someone has different opinions than you.