I think the beauty of the mid-internet era was the aggressive personalization of it: the connections I made galvanized careers and friendships, celebrities seemed closer and more human, ideas seemed worthy of debate in your small corner of the world. As these became KPIs for companies, they drifted into the realm of the inhuman - the algorithm ultimately decides who meets who, what gets brought up, who gets listened to.
I will say that I find discord to be a breath of fresh air, but I haven’t really found a true community there, more like disparate groups of people who share common interests but rarely first names. The internet today is either terrifyingly closely related to your first and last name or a hall of mirrors hidden behind myriad layers of post-irony. The veil has been shattered: either you sign up for “real” talk with people you will never know or settle for a blanched façade of communication with real-world acquaintances who refuse to really show themselves for fear of what that might mean.
> you sign up for “real” talk with people you will never know
This only works very rarely, and I don’t think that it can work today anywhere. When my favourite subreddit had 5000 subscribers in 2014-2015, it worked. There were meaningful conversations, because every active people knew everybody else, and nobody was asshole with each other. Nowadays, I can’t find such communities, and of course the same subreddit now with 400000 subscribers is a terrible place. Even smaller ones behave like these larger ones now. People who want to achieve something, or simple assholes find these places too quickly, if it’s open in any way. I’ve also met people who behaved in real life like during a stupid political argument on an anonymous forum. That slowly becomes the norm for too many. Btw, game theory indicates that this should happen when most of your communication is with strangers.
Also politics, and state of the society in my original country definitely made people in Hungary more asshole. The society, how people behaved there 20 years ago, basically collapsed there to a depressive and anxious state (“conservatives”/alt-right/“classical liberalists” hurray!). This can be applied to most of the countries, but if you are lucky, just not that extreme way. That also doesn’t help to find any kind of community where there are no toxic people.
The online-ification of conversation is so gross. Whenever I hear someone bring up a weird niche online thing (mostly incel/femcel/rightoid/tankie shit) I get so embarrassed for both of us: mostly on me for knowing what a “pickme” or the weird dogwhistles I find out about from a Very Online lifestyle. I agree that the ability to have any good convo forum online is always screwed up by people being mean or basic so fast that it’s barely worth engaging meaningfully with people. Sad state of affairs!
I will say that I find discord to be a breath of fresh air, but I haven’t really found a true community there, more like disparate groups of people who share common interests but rarely first names. The internet today is either terrifyingly closely related to your first and last name or a hall of mirrors hidden behind myriad layers of post-irony. The veil has been shattered: either you sign up for “real” talk with people you will never know or settle for a blanched façade of communication with real-world acquaintances who refuse to really show themselves for fear of what that might mean.