The shitposting has always been a thing, that's not the real problem. The problems are:
1. Modern shitposting just isn't funny anymore. It used to be about being sneaky, creative, funny, provoking, believable, tricky and whatnot. Today only the 'provocation' part is there. People only shitpost to stir up shit, and they just copypaste obnoxious opinions without even putting in any effort. Shitposting has been reduced to a couple of pathetic people who are everything but funny, when it used to be a real artform. It's just tiring, and really a shame for shitposting culture. It used to give us gems like this: https://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=1422860&show=50#msg41962598
Nowadays it's all just trying to make as many people as angry as possible without putting in any effort.
2. The main issues, baiting and trolling, are not clear-cut. You need to interpret posts and make a judgment call. It's not like character limit, where it's objective if someone fits it or not. That does make it harder for mods to act, since most of the time they have to 'assume' the intention of the poster, if they aren't halfwits and somehow know to disguise their baiting. It doesn't even have to be a very convincing disguise, just enough to make people not be 100% sure.
3. The politicitation of AD ever since the whole Trump thing. All the alt-right conspiracy theorists and hatemongers come crawling out of their holes since that election legitimized their stances and they bring that garbage into AD, and relentlessly too. It feels like they scour the internet for SJW stuff 24/7 just so they can pick out the worst ones and then spread them around, pretending they're trying to take over the world, when noone would even see their videos if these people didn't spread them around everywhere.
It just feels like there is barely any room to talk about anime anymore, every opinion is based on some political agenda, every post is made to support that agenda, half the threads fall into that category.
I used to just talk about anime and anime meta stuff but for 2 years or so I find myself mostly just replying to people spreading false information and being politically motivated, who usually don't have any interest in the truth, but only their agendas. It's exhausting, but I just can't ignore bullshit when I see it. People make up facts about Netflix all the time just to shit on them for being western, because everything western is SJW. They literally just make up facts and spread them in a matter-of-fact tone. Truth has been reduced to something optional, most people don't care about it anymore, they just care about 'facts' that support their preexisting views. Others vigorously support and defend holocaust deniers. Others openly propagated their nazi-ism on MAL. There is so much open extremism, so many threads created by alt-right users that serve no other purpose than to stir up shit and obscure the truth and make people angry. It's fucking exhausting.
That's not why I came to MAL and AD, but I can't help myself. If you let these people spread their misinformation and hatred unchallenged, they basically win and eventually noone will remember the truth and just believe in whatever fits their worldviews. |