Okay I'm probably trudging on some well worn ground but I've been travelling for work the last few months...what happened to Bish? Wow.
This is all very reminiscent of what happened to off-topic for a couple months post-election. Of course, that madness turned out to be directly induced through sabotage by a now-former admin secretly banning *hundreds* of members totally outside of any justifiable grounds (not that any attempt at justification was made to begin with, being undisclosed and undocumented bans) in some 85-90% of each of those bans that were subsequently investigated after we became aware of the incident.
NeoGAF is a discussion forum; the whole point is to disseminate information and debate it, on civil terms, in an atmosphere that encourages healthy skepticism, fact-checking and credible sourcing, challenging preexisting worldviews and talking points and biases by providing a platform for a diverse audience to contribute, etc. And yes, the site does lean progressive, because it is inclusive and evidence-based and intolerant of hate speech. But while there are core values associated with this place, there's no point in discussion without providing a framework that allows for multiple perspectives to engage with each other.
I mention all this because, particularly for those couple months I mentioned when anyone trying to operate in good faith within the aforementioned parameters I've set up for this place ended up sniped en masse, Off-Topic suddenly became unrecognizable to me some 15 or 16 years after we set this side of the forum up. The place kinda turned into what this Evergreen outcome sounds like: with everyone who tried to contribute to civil discourse systematically thrown down the well, the remaining members either stayed silent or radicalized up, and we were left with a squad of polarized "progressives" unwilling to have a conversation with anyone about issues, repeating the same talking points in every thread to each other in a self-righteous echo chamber, newly confident that any non-conformity would be driven out or otherwise made to disappear. This was not just ostracizing people attempting to challenge reductive, exclusionary "with us or against us" polarized rhetoric, either (and that should absolutely be challenged), but also anyone even trying to have a conversation within that radicalized bubble. People were driven out, character assassinated, labeled traitor for "not sounding angry enough," or for not being entirely on board with ostracizing someone else for the same reasons.
There's nothing righteous, informed, or progressive about that. It's just a sanctimonious, vitriolic, self-destructive circle jerk that drives out the kind of people most valuable to discussion: not the "retweet my Side and quote it in yells or else you're The Enemy" people, but the people engaging on each individual issue with critical thought and an open mind, willingness and capacity to perform independent investigation into the materials initially presented, come to an independent conclusion and present it, and to allow the same from folks who have made similar effort but with different credible sources or different justifiable conclusions than your own.
