Honestly, I tend to think it was considerably more “ugly and boring” back when we had actual debate threads on “issues” like
Or wanting to debate the so-called “Global Warming Fraud”.
Or arguing with zero moderation pushback that
Or opinion threads expecting serious discussion of questions like
Part of what has “hardened the baseline”, so to speak, is the fact that the pernicious bigotry and willful ignorance underlying a lot of those attitudes has now become more generally apparent. At least in this one small enclave of the internet, over the decades, to some extent, some ignorance actually got fought.
I’m not going to bemoan that for reducing “diversity of opinion” around here. Yes, it’s true that being more welcoming to a lot more varieties of stupidity and bigotry encouraged more diversity of opinion in that regard. Like I said, I don’t think that was a net win for the board.
Hmm, then that implies that there must be thousands of masochists reading the SDMB without getting any pleasure from it.
Someone should tell them that if they’re really not enjoying it they’re allowed to leave, honest!