Social media promised connection, but it has delivered exhaustion

Re:Social media promised connection, but it has delivered ex... by awesome_dude on Saturday September 13, 2025 @04:37AM (#45230415)

When I first started using Usenet, a couple of decades ago now, I initially thought that everyone was like-minded, and polite, but then discovered that all the political noise that we now see on Social Media.

That is, there's not actually anything new in that political discourse (literally, it was all libertarians, gun lovers and free speechers threatening/bullying anyone that disagreed with them then, like it is now)

There were even "wars" - the Meow Wars were long dead history when I were a Usenetter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meow_Wars

I have often wondered why such a thing hasn't arisen again, on things like twitter.

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Re:Social media promised connection, but it has delivered ex... by diggan on Saturday September 13, 2025 @06:06AM (#45230832)

> I have often wondered why such a thing hasn't arisen again, on things like twitter.

We still have "flame wars" I think, they're just less intelligent, is more about spamming than insulting, and is often called "brigading" instead, basically one community trying to "overrun" another community one way or another.

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Re:Social media promised connection, but it has delivered ex... by awesome_dude on Saturday September 13, 2025 @04:40PM (#45235142)

> is often called "brigading" instead

Yeah, I think that you're right - Reddit is often referred to as being the Usenet of today, which is where I see the term brigading coming up the most.

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Re:Social media promised connection, but it has delivered ex... by RossBencina on Saturday September 13, 2025 @05:43AM (#45230752)

I never heard of the Meow Wars, but I do remember antiorp, a net-art mailing list disruption organisation:

https://everything2.com/title/antiorp

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netochka_Nezvanova_(author)

EDIT: clarity

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