Oh dear. I fear that your impression accords with my observation and experience. The SI coffee shop threads have become repetitive and often ugly. Not invariably, but usually, if anything even vaguely political is under discussion, it moves toward a low-level nastiness. Disagreement ----> personal insults quite regularly. If you were to go back to the early days of feelies and the Grammar thread (and another of my favorites, the Dictionary thread), there was a great deal of humor and good will and some very good discussion going on. There was a lot of intelligent, provocative, civil debate, and it was fun.
The runup to the campaigns, and then the campaigns, didn't help the atmosphere here. SI reflects the extreme and increasing polarization of the country, of course. I suppose my neighbors reflect that, too, but we're all polite to each other.
The death of Edwarda marked a stage in the descent into primitivism, too. Some will know what I mean. If they do, they can try to explain it to me. It seems in retrospect to have represented something of a watershed event. Maybe it was just coincidental timing.
SI is now Raging Bull with a larger vocabulary. It used to be a different beast. Maybe it's better on the stock threads.
I'm not sorry I stumbled across SI at a time when it was useful to me, and fun, and felt like a community, though the sad fact is that what I've learned about human nature here has made me a much more cynical person.
Sometimes it is still fun. Really, Grainne, it is!
You can't step in the same stream twice, though. That's the truth.
'Night. |
