I inactivated my account because I just don't have the fucking fortitude to be harped at for trying to help people anymore. Nobody does.

Gamergate broke social media. It took an environment dependent on contribution and weaponized it into a shooting gallery for takers. ThatFanficGuy? Has fucking blown up at me for fucking nothing like six times.

I'm fucking done with it. I'm fucking done with every unstable little shit on the internet taking any attempt at empathy, commiseration or advice as an opportunity to spool off and be oppressed. And so is fucking everyone else.

It's so fucking exhausting. It didn't used to be. Used to be you got out what you put in. Now you put something in and a million heinous little shits crawl out of the woodwork to parse your semantics for thoughtcrime then spool it all over every available fucking forum so that other lifeless edgetrolls can get that puny pathetic little dopamine hit from making other people feel bad.

There's no new blood here because there's no new blood. GenZ has learned that social media is their boob tube, not their public forum. It's where they're served endless tiktok videos to snark at, where saying anything publicly that isn't ridicule becomes fodder for ridicule. the only people with the sociopathic fortitude to contribute in that environment are either starfucking attention whores or edgelord incels looking for a reason to manifestomurder. Anybody with any fucking sense stays the fuck away.

It's one thing to push the boulder uphill every morning? At least when you get to the top you get to watch a sunset, right? But it's nothing but anklebiters now. It's by design - anger and hatred push more engagement, and engagement gets you higher CPM. So every social media platform out there teaches every single user that their expected behavior is outrage at the content presented to them, and every social media platform out there teaches providers that they are paid for outrage. It's no accident that every Youtube screengrab is a white male who looks like his nuts are in a pair of vice grips, that's just fucking mirror neurons for money.

There's this assumption by social media users now that they exist in splendid isolation. That there's no purpose to dialog other than edification. Nobody on social media will say this because everyone who knows it has siloed themselves behind a paywall - take to Twitter, block freely. Take to Substack, filter for fealty. Show your affinity through coordinated dunking, hashtag fuckthatguy.

You can only walk on eggshells for so long before you get out the broom and fucking sweep. And I tell you what - if you weren't there for the birth of fucking AIM, or have been regularly conversing with people who were, there is abso-fucking-lutely nothing drawing you into the room. The mere idea of online forums is fucking alien to the overwhelming majority of anyone still concerned about letter grades. The 'boomers found it too late (and poisoned the shit out of Facebook), the millenials found it too early (and influenced their way to oblivion) and GenX has always retreated into solitary cynicism because fuck you I'm a latchkey kid and Facts of Life reruns beat your bullshit hollow anyway.

We used to talk about "third places." that shit's been dying since 1995 and the bright shining marketplace of ideas has, through ruthless application of algorithmic capitalism, recreated the cultural milieu of the '80s, only worse. Kurt Cobain's been dead thirty fuckin' years yet Smells Like Teen Spirit could be about Instagram.

This has been the only place I've bothered to visit for the past, fuck, twelve years? And if it actively makes my life worse, rather than better, I'm a fucking fool for doing it. I don't know why anyone else is here but if you're taking more than you're giving you can't be surprised by the consequences. There's a push/pull in conversation, a give and take. Modern internet culture has become "I used to wear your face on my t-shirt until I realized you crack your egg on the pointy end you heretical shitstain die in a fire hey guys like and subscribe to my twenty minute dunk video supercut channel."

And I don't see any way any of that shit gets any better.

Used to be you could make friends online. Now? Now you just throw burning bags of shit out of a moving car window and wonder why you're so lonely. The sensible move is to stop hanging out by the roadside.