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The village idiot analogy is misguided and unnecessarily accusatory.

However, I do feel internet communities were better when they were smaller due to being special interest driven and self-policing. People wore different hats according to the community they were engaging with.

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You're right, landsbytosse doesn't not translate well. To be fair the literal translation is village fool, which isn't much better. It's meaning would be more along the lines of village eccentric, which could be the village idiot, but not always.

There was a very steep curve to access the Internet back then (both economically and technically), and that was a very big filter (although it let through many smart assholes anyway).

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