The most influential man on the internet

I particularly liked this quote: > Imagine if, like, David Brooks had paid ten bucks and wandered onto FYAD: that was Twitter.

Something about the escapism, perhaps?

Before the internet, there was little hierarchy between nerds. Your peers either classified you as a nerd, or not, and nerds welcomed another. They were getting beat up in the school grounds, forced to share it with the jocks, and constantly be reminded of their social standing. The internet changed this. Early internet bullies were keyboard jockies.

The internet gave us nerd heroes like Maddox and Lowtax. These people got credit inside the outcast nerd community. Larger-than-life internet personalities. Critiquing and trolling and scoring points about a subject no other nerds would even find interesting.

You grew in ranks by contributing quality content, such as game guides and humor columns (compare early Cracked). You grew by being an insufferable asshole, by trolling, by hoaxing. Disputes were settled through duel flame-wars. As you were mostly pseudononymous back then and your authority was attached to a username, losing a flame-war could really hurt your standing, or require you to start over.

This also meant that disputes could be lost by the current authorities, if they were successfully trolled or flamed. Lowtax did "lose" many such disputes. He was not allowed to call victory if the community and lurkers saw it differently. You were judged on a weird form of merit only beat-up asshole nerds understood.

I remember Lowtax interviewing a 00's pornstar which every nerd back then knew. The Lowtax-thing to do was definitely to comment about her strange foot (merged toes into a hoof), up until the interview being cut short. I think nobody wanted anything else out of that interview.

Around 2008 the climate shifted. Joe Rogan had opened his own message board, which did not require 10$ to join, but his/his mods approval. A new hero was born: "the jock hero". The jock hero was critical of science, just like he had been critical of his high-school physics teacher: he did not understand very well and this bothered him (being in a digital age relying less on physical authority).

Disputes were about who had the most muscles, showing photos to proof it. You got into a flame-war with a mod or Joe, you would be banned, the people left too afraid to call anyone out for having a thin skin. A weird sort of authority grew, were jocks could show they were king of multiple playgrounds.

Now the internet itself is a closely watched playground. People walk around with permanent real-name identities. Teachers and governments look for ass-holish behavior. Media complains about large-follower playground kids who refuse to get a diploma and join the "real" world. And the nerds are back at their place. A place too low on the totem pole to elect heroes.

When you start with a politically motivated lie, people like me don't read any further. So it's an excellent way to filter out people like me.