Are metalheads and goths just not a thing anymore? Why are all these young people reacting like religious grandmas from the 70s? I wore band shirts with upside down pentagrams and crosses all the time in high school. Edgy satanic imagery is about as subversive as skateboarding or pissing Calvin
i am getting to the point where i don’t believe comment sections anymore.
like some kind of half-dead internet theory. we all recognize bots and farms and generative content are deployed to create impressions/trends and drive monetizable content, and there have to be thousands of organizations doing that work on behalf of various clients with their own agendas. and then there are the actual humans responding to some generative content posted to hijack the conversation. or bots flagging content that doesn’t align with their project. and then the people just posting using the latest jargon without attachment to any value being discussed so they can demonstrate their membership in the latest iteration of the in-group.
there’s enough of all that going on to make me suspicious of any trends in comment sections being organically human-community driven rather than being manipulated and managed.
this is probably one of a tiny number of very niche communities i read and post comments on, because it’s a niche interest with limited potential for monetization so i perceive it as more authentic and resistant to semi-dead internet.
The last great mainstream comment section I saw was on a NYC local news video about the CEO being shot right after it happened, nearly entirely praising the shooter or saying “well, you can’t feel that bad”. Google et al won’t let that happen again.
yeah good point. and i remember legacy media ran a blitz of commentary-presented-as-news doing finger wagging and brain storming punitive steps that could be taken.
similar to when charlie jerk got clipped and people were posting “lol” instead of shock/outrage/tears over a fallen prince.