I agree. I think part of the problem is how recommendation algorithms have conditioned people to act online. Recommendation algorithms optimize for overall platform engagement to increase revenue, which tends to reward anti-social behavior like flamewars, conflict, ragebait, etc. It's rewarded simply because it creates more engagement than more positive content. Users in turn are conditioned to these algorithms because their anti-social behavior gets rewarded in the form of favorable algorithmic treatment. Now, I feel like the average social media user is just predisposed to act in those negative ways, which is why it's prevalent even on HN where the recommendation algorithms are not tuned in quite the same way.

Those forces weren't present on early social media, and have only gotten worse over time.

I don't think it's you.

Over its course the Internet and Web took over just about all communications, including culturally anchoring things like TV, radio, and newspapers. The takeover accelerated with the rise of broadband, Facebook and smartphones, and is nearly complete. The whole world's here.

This means people who want to advertise, influence, or control large numbers of people also followed.

On my Instagram, sometimes I'll see local news, and the fake accounts are very obvious, they all post practically the same thing and all of their profiles follow similar patterns. Maybe this will go away when everything becomes ID-gated.

The optimism of 2005 was pre-smartphone, pre-social-media, and well before everyone's grandparents were constantly regurgitating political posts on Facebook.

> Do people even want better communities

Most people do not want to put in the work to make them, but they'll certainly join and passively let people run themselves into the ground entertaining them for free. It doesn't make sense to do all the work for lazy people unless you're just wanting to broadcast to the largest audience possible.

One way to think of it is a sort of multiplayer iterated prisoner's dilemma. If players generally cooperate, cooperating is the best strategy. If players generally defect, defecting is the best strategy. Over time you can get a death spiral (loss of social capital) where people defect more, which leads to more defections. You can also get selection effects where people who enjoy conflict stay, and people who dislike conflict leave.

The medium is the message. Certain specific features, such as the retweet-with-comment feature, incentivize starting fights. Older platforms didn't feature likes/retweets as prominently. Newer platforms are constantly giving you numerical scores, which leads to competitive socialization and status-seeking. Some people are into that sort of thing. And to be fair, clout is objectively valuable in certain ways.

People take example from their political and cultural (artists, sportspersons) leaders.

> Reddit is just full of the worst behavior. People think nothing of just being incredibly, incredibly rude to strangers and ther insights are often banal.

Reddit grew up as a community of edgelords. Trying to be funny by exaggeratedly insulting others is just how it was. Think a community of Ben Shapiros. Coming to the site as an outsider could be brutal until you got used to ignoring it (or engaging, if you're into it).

Eventually normal-adjacent people took over the site, which caused a boon of interesting topics and diverse opinions for a long while. The rude-to-be-funny thing never quite stopped, but when it went too far it was moderated or downvoted away.

I'd agree that things have been going downhill for many years now. The peak of genuine and quality engagement is long behind us. LLM-assisted comments are certainly not helping (I'm not talking about bots, I mean people who direct LLMs to write their comments).

I do think this has always been the case, Jerry Pournelle funnily enough made a very similar observation back in 1986 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flaming_(Internet_term)#Histor....)

People who post on the internet are outliers, something like 98% of message board users lurk, can't remember who said it but someone summed it up as "everyone you talk to online is crazy". The reality is life is boring a lot of the time and I've always seen online interaction not as a substitute for social life but with no expectation. Sometimes you get good conversations, often you don't.

There is more negativity in terms of volume which has a quality of its own because it seeps more into real life than in it used to, but honestly some conversations in the olden days were worse.

You’re not alone. Plenty of us feel the same way.

> Is life this boring that people find it entertaining?

I don’t think it has to do with boredom or entertainment. Social networks like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok do push you into addictive behaviour on purpose, but I do think even HN (inadvertently) has addictive properties.

> I can't figure out if the novelty is gone (connecting people is overrated if it leads to...this), it's my age, or if the vibe really has shifted.

Pretty sure it’s the vibe. Plus, whatever we’re doing here is not really connecting with other people, it’s more akin to shouting at each other across a void. I do still frequent one old-style forum, and there I do see some connection between the regulars.

> things haven't really evolved towards anything positive in the forum/soc media space.

Once money became a factor, it was only a matter of time. Just the other day I was also thinking how I can’t even stand podcasts anymore, and all the ads are a major factor. Seems like every podcast is part of a network and it’s all about money. No one is just having fun anymore.

> There's gotta be something better.

There is. It’s friends offline.

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