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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diggan 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

> 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.

	▲	awesome_dude 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		> 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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RossBencina 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

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