I did some random looking at past GAF threads for something and I was noticing just how much stupider many of the users who had crossed over read as on ERA. The post count "shaming" thing is just like the peak example of how much they've given up trying to even think.
I wonder how many grade levels things would drop if you like inserted posts from a 2014-ish GAF thread (so even years after things started going downhill) and a modern ERA thread of similar topics into one of those online evaluators. I wouldn't be shocked if it fell below High School considering how bad the English is getting in general on ERA. And not just from the mod messages or Slayven.
https://resetera.kiwifarms.net/graphs
They really mostly top out around 5000 users on any given day. Less than 15% of the registered users actually post on a given day.
GAF's politics are sorta weird currently, they created a separate "politics" section. And overall, it's kinda balanced, seeming only more right-wing/pro-Trump because of how it used to be 18 months ago. That said, there are a few tards who post a shit-ton and are just plain bad posters. JordanN, for example, is a Canadian who posts constantly about "race-realist" bullshit like IQ and brain sizes, and almost any other nutty paleoconservative thing he can latch onto. And then there's idiots who won't stop responding to him or arguing with him over this. These kind of idiots derail every thread to have the same arguments over and over. So I think it makes things look even more right-wing/pro-Trump/etc. than it even is. Kinda like how it used to look more the opposite just because of all the same posters have the same shitty arguments for pages on end with lots of dogpiling.
It's the same kind of mob waiting to dogpile someone, but now it's JordanN and his cult being the mob that posts hundreds of times a day against people who post like ten times until they lure someone in.
I don't think GAF's mods realized, and they can just look at how its continued on ERA, that the problem was never WHY people were getting dogpiled, just that it was being encouraged rather than actual discussion. 20 troons mobbing every thread is only slightly worse than a bunch of Trump supporters/race realists/Hannity listeners now doing the same thing. All while crying to the mods that someone dare speak differently.
All of that said, to the GAF mods credit, they do seem to be ignoring it as long as it's in the "politics" section and it's not like insulting people or flaming with no argument. Which I always see as something that will work itself out compared to bans. Especially if people come back from ERA and do more push-back with liberal views it'll fix the problem on its own. Also they don't seem to freak out about drive-bys where somebody comes in to go "these liberals are faggots" or "Trump is a faggot" whereas it used to be like the end of the world.
To wrap up the carepost, I think ERA eating itself over the primaries will send people back to GAF if they still want to be on forums and in the "community" they've been in for years, and if GAF continues to let the politics section be a sort of "free fire" zone, it'll make things saner all around. (
) Especially since they aren't moderating the other sections demanding only one opinion on whatever the twitter freakout of the week is. Just curbing the blatant racism/whatever and petty insults/fights like they used to do back in 2007 or so while allowing people to actually make shitposts or trolls or jokes. It was after the new mods wanted to shape the forums into some kind of progressive intellectual salon that they had all the problems, devs/journalists fled GAF, it lost all its importance, turned into nothing but garbage, etc.
Even back then I thought of GAF as over-moderated but it was easy enough to avoid ever getting banned just by not being a complete tard. I went like a decade without ever getting banned on there and I never posted any differently, it was just the mods that changed.
