This board has changed since I first joined. Used to be you could ask a question or state an opinion and people would mostly be polite, even if they thought you were apparently a moron.
Trolls can be dealt with.
These days people have honed their snark to a razor’s edge; even the mods can’t touch the experienced ones in GQ, GD, CS and most assuredly in the Pit.
I’m not saying this place should be all happy happy cat pics in MPSIMS, but the temperament has changed. People get away with all kinds of crap that in my opinion violate the spirit of the place, if not the letter of the law, such that it is.
If you’re a visitor to this place and are afraid of what’s going happen to you here if you piss off one of our resident crab-asses, maybe it’s the condescending crab-asses who need STFU.
I believe it to be the influence of P2P. Smaller group got to know each other better, and without the influx of fresh new faces to spread out the opinions and interactions, bedsores formed and festered.
I refused to pony up for P2P and glad chose to do so. I watched with bemused interest the nature of the posts. It got to be so that you could predict who was going to post a counter-argument next, how they were going to do it, and what buttons of the original poster they were going to subtly push.
…that and election season brings out the worst in everyone. Hey - maybe why that is why Ed’s cranky…
If the board survives these next few weeks and new people start to join up, I imagine it will get change. Maybe never “like it was” (which wasn’t always that great anyways), because people have long memories of past ills, but better. Or maybe it should be said - Different.