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Comment by OfSanguineFire | Hacker News Reader

The politics I remember from the early internet was idealism about alternative approaches, like libertarianism or communism of whatever stripe. Such internet-nerd politics were usually divorced from what was actually going on in mainstream politics, and therefore there wasn’t the exhausting, unescapable partisan squabble as found on social media today.

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The heaviest posted (non-binary) newsgroups with the in the late 90s were political, if I remember some analysis I did back then correctly. Something.politics, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, etc

Yes, by the late 1990s there was partisan American political battle, but only if you went looking for it, on the dedicated newsgroups you mention. If you did not expressly subscribe to them, you generally did not see those politics on sci.whatever, comp.lang.whatever, or alt.music.yourfavoriteband. And you had no way of knowing if your interlocutors held strident views about politics or posted elsewhere on Usenet about politics.

I think you could argue that mainstream politics has borrowed more from internet politics than vice versa. I don't see Trump or Bernie getting nearly as much traction without the internet.

I'm very idealistic about alternative approaches, but in a "let's experiment on a small scale" sense as opposed to a "burn it all down" sense. I do wonder if widespread discussion of radical alternatives contributed to a "burn it all down" attitude. Yes, most real modern political systems are a mess of historical contingencies, but maybe democracy functions better if we ignore that and encourage everyone to buy into the system anyways. I miss the "Don't ask what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country" attitude.

Those circles still exist.

Yes and no. Yes in the sense that such fora are out there. But a person becoming fascinated by computers and getting on the internet, will no longer encounter those fora as the default experience, unlike in the days of Usenet or BBSs. Moreover, post-2005, the software running phpBB-type fora usually borrowed features from social media.

(And “No” in the sense that, as one still reading various fora offering pre-social-media interfaces, there is no escaping that the participants are dwindling and graying. Moreover, the very thing driving people to hang around on unfashionable fora is an eccentricity that is often full-blown mental illness. Once forum activity has become dominated by a few outright cranks, you can’t expect quality discussion.)

If I open a forum and see it is Discourse, I immediately close it. What was wrong with distinct boards and clear categories?

And you can leave your endless scrolling on facesbook where it belongs.

Where?

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