The Internet of Beefs (2020)

I'm profiting from its existence. Beefs are good for engagement. Although I do sometimes wonder why it so often happens to me. Maybe my takes are more controversial. Maybe it's because I simplify things so the barrier to disagreement is much lower.

Although I do disagree with the 'end of history' argument. Humans have always been like this. Just look at Jon Ronson's book 'So You Have Been Publicly Shamed'. People were always terrible. The only difference is now we have the technology to gang up on anyone using the internet.

Don't you dare try to weaken my hatred with nuance.

...

> And this is just the North American, English-language theater of the IoB (the other major one I’m familiar with, the Indian theater, is much worse).

I have two observations on this. The first is that the interaction model of a platform influences this. Platforms with a creator-audience dynamic promote this sort of thing: YouTube, everything Meta owns, Twitter. Reddit and HN make this sort of thing less likely because posters can't establish a brand and there's no 'follow' mechanism.

My second observation is that there is a cultural component to this. Consider /r/politics: every comment page is just hundreds of people saying that Trump is awful. US politics is so polarised that supporters of different political parties need to be segregated into different subreddits. Compare and contrast /r/australianpolitics and /r/ukpolitics, where, despite a strong bias towards the Labo(u)r parties, the whole Overton window is welcome to participate, and they participate by engaging in earnest, interesting discussion. The 'no, they're the bad people over there' comments are downvoted as the worthless rot that they are.

I have a theory as to why this is, but I don't think HN is the right place to discuss it.