It's too bad that nuanced discussion doesn't do too well on social media.
I picked a random post on the home page, this one for example:
https://old.reddit.com/r/clevercomebacks/comments/1i1b4tn/i_...
The comments are all
"The oligarchs would never go for it."
or "It’s a cult." and on and on.
I think this is particularly true in rage bait posts on Reddit, which is most of the home page these days.
I should acknowledge that our industry has always had some form of this - but it was contained predominantly to mailing lists/forums/blogs and eventually Twitter. It felt like all of these mediums (yes, even Twitter) required some form of proof that you’re an authority or experienced on what you’re writing about. I don’t feel like that’s what’s happening with YouTube/Twitch here; these creators may very well be skilled/experienced/authorities (and I am explicitly not saying they are or aren’t) but I don’t see anywhere near the level of healthy skepticism that I feel like we’ve always had in our industry.
Maybe it’s a generational divide as the window of developers shifts. Maybe it’s just the sheer size of the distribution channels now. I’m open to being wrong.
tl;dr: Something about these mediums turbo charges the information in a way that I’m not sure is healthy.
Was that a result of economic consolidation ?
Or am I mistaken and the yellow press never went away ? (And why does it seem like it did for a while ?)
The logic underpinning this is that if a person is a jerk they will be downvoted- therefore there is an incentive to not be a jerk.
However, because the person on the other side is anonymous and therefore people can’t instinctively presume good faith, upvoting system turn in to a voting system - the goal is not to develop ideas, but to submit ones people will most agree with. When the main danger is apathy, there is no reason from self-moderation. Nerds are not immune.
On most social media people aren't anonymous, they are pseudonymous - this can still have an impact on your behavior when you know that even non-moderators can look up your post history.
But I guess that a lot of posters are still going to feel pseudo-anonymous, because looking up still requires a lot of effort... at least until for a few they become famous enough (dang, pg...) that their pseudo-anonymity is gone.