GAF in its worst days (pre becoming a hardcore right wing hive of villany) was exactly what RE is now, as the last year or two of GAF was all the people on RE plus a bunch of extra people that didn't migrate over.
era is worse
gaf was always a site you could rationalize using as a place with lots of rapid fire video game discussion, all news posted within seconds, fingers on the pulse, including a number of legit insiders
it was never a target for troll infiltrators until era invited the idea by starting the new site and trying so hard to stop people from getting in, and set a hardline tone for the whole forum
and whether there are actual trolls or it's just their paranoia, that's what has made them so much worse
you can also see this in the moderation which doesn't allow for any fun or weird posts at all, closes those threads with "we don't do this here," or the focus on productive discussion/discussion running its course
gaf was content with just letting people get dogpiled pretty often