Kulturkampf

[PhoenixDark]

Remember when the Internet was young and you tried to discuss some topic that you enjoyed and thought you were pretty knowledgeable about? You know, like Star Wars, video games, fantasy novels...hell, even something as benign as tea or coffee?

Do you remember what happened to you when you tried that?

I guarantee you were yelled at by a bunch of no-life losers who clearly spent way too much time amassing volumes useless knowledge about the most intricate details of said topic (at the expense of any social skills) and completely shamed you into believing that you weren't really a fan of that particular thing/hobby/interest area on the first place.

Well, those idiots became bloggers and then they were indoctrinated by a bunch of political activists and then they made any discourse online about any topic completely unbearable.

Those people then influenced a bunch of slack arse idiots like resetera who then made online discourse even more unbearable because now everyone is armed with the same shitty "knowledge" and everyone is an "expert".

TL;DR Everyone on the Internet is a fucking idiot

I kinda feel like those are separate groups. The nerds obsessed with lore, gatekeeping, and obscure information still exist. Now there's also a large group of tumblr-centric fans who are more interested in perceived social, moral, sexual or political messaging in the source material and have little interest in lore/detail. They read/watch things in order to reinforce their beliefs or identity, and seemingly despise those older fans who demand 1:1 adaptation.

So yea the toxicity has always been there but it seems to be worse now, and a lot of it is driven by a group of people who probably move on to the next thing soon. Whereas those older fans are always gonna be there. Basically that guy on the random forum who used to angrily argue about Arwen's scenes in FOTR circa 2003 still exists, unless he died of covid lol.