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Online discourse stopped being about changing minds and started being about farming clout.
Most replies aren’t written to the person they’re replying to; they’re written to the invisible crowd that hands out upvotes. The goal isn’t persuasion, it’s applause. That’s why nuance is dead: nuance doesn’t get you 500 upvotes and a gold award. A savage one-liner that owns the libs / the chuds / the tankies does.
If you actually believe your view is correct, the morally consistent move when you meet disagreement is to engage and try to convince the other person (ideally while staying open to being convinced yourself). That requires listening, steelmanning, and sometimes admitting “yeah, you’ve got a point there.” None of that is rewarded here. What is rewarded is the quick, brutal dunk that signals “I am safely on the correct side” to the rest of the hive.
So people don’t debate in good faith anymore; they perform righteousness. It’s easier, it feels better, and the points roll in. We went from trying to do good to trying to feel good, and the karma counter is the drug that keeps the whole circus running.
There was also a flood of bad faith discussions with every fallacy in the book from belligerent actors. Like Cambridge Analytica and similar scandals including Xitter's most recent offshore Maga influencer revelation, any significant media audience is ripe for astroturfing.
Edit: at the slightest hint of a disingenuous discussion, the cutting barbs come out.
Yeah. I’m inclined to see it this way as well. I’m sure there’s a lot of reasons, but this one resonates.