This arrangement arose for three reasons. First, because as the least reputable members of Usenet took control of the forums, they became places where those individuals or arguments who could not honestly gain attention in the real world - the lunatic fringe - could now gain an audience that numbered in the millions. Nobodies became celebrities and those who identified with them found joy in this, and pride in being able to boast to their equally unwashed friends about how they had helped this net personality or that. Those whose causes had been greeted with howls of laughter in the real world and had nothing better to do with their time than engage in these turf battles, anyway, found that these wars of harassment could give new life to their dubious causes.

Secondly, an increasingly hostile atmosphere. In a society where the customary reaction to just anger was a belligerent refusal to listen, a lot of free floating rage and frustration was left lying around. Worse still, people were conditioned to believe that it was wrong to feel anger about the way they were treated. They were raised or pressured to become cowards, the reaction to a refusal to become so (at times) being quite ruthless. So, consciousness of the source of one's anger was often suppressed, turning it into free floating spite that could easily attach itself to almost anything. There soon was to be a pool of people so sickened by their own accumulated rage, that they came to enjoy conflict for its own sake. A sickness that society, in telling them that an aversion to unnecessary suffering was a form of weakness and its pursuit a form of strength (or even nobility), did much to promote.

Herein was the internal conflict. Society preached the value of fearlessness in the face of adversity or conflict, and yet punished those whose actions expressed that value. That such a conflict could exist is only natural. The very ability to work out a society's contradictions requires a clear eyed view of them, which a refusal to accept "negativity" as a part of mature discourse prohibits, and which a hostily dogmatic atmosphere keeps people from examining with an open mind. But unacknowledged contractions remain real. Even as people were driven into submission that value of fearlessness, so useful to those who make opinion when one (lower in the social order) is asked to engage in a foolhardy risk either on the battlefield or in the workplace, remained in people's minds. This made the experience one of violation that one was not allowed to talk about. Because heroes don't protest hardships and big boys (and girls) don't cry.

But that's a lie! 'Heroes' protest hardships all of the time, when they are unnecessary ones. The creation of such hardships is what tyranny is, and fighting it is what makes somebody a hero. Or would, if such things as heroes still existed. To say otherwise is to proclaim that cattle are heroic, because they won't flinch as they're being slaughtered. To let another impose on one without resistance doesn't make one a "big boy", much less a man. To be an adult is to be able to set limits on what others can do to or ask of one. To lack this is to be a child, if those who make the rules care about one, and a slave, otherwise.

Such was the reality being created. A society in which an ordinary adult could gain a demonised, semi-mythic stature, because those around him had allowed themselves to be driven so low that he could not help but stand tall by comparison. For he would be a man among sheep.

Most would deny that they were like that, but their actions often said otherwise. But even yet, it was rare for one of them to be driven so mad as to enjoy being beaten. Were one to be so eager to seek out fights in the real world where it is possibly for one's enemy's fist to find its way to a joyful reunion with one's face (with many happy returns), one would soon be in great pain. But on Usenet, the only threat is that the other party will get rude back and to those who enjoy a fight, that's a reward, not a deterrent. Usenet became a coward's paradise.

But I promised you one more reason ...

It is this. The social isolation of the 1980s and 1990s created a large pool of young people who did not know how to socialise in person, and were afraid to do so. For them, the net became a safe place, but only when approached on what were becoming its own terms. As we've noted, the bad drove out the good before it. But this was a continuous process and one day's aggressive crackpot, became the beleaguered champion of relative good sense the next, as somebody even crazier than him became the new challenger in this kakistocracy being created. In the space of a few years, the Net was left with a community of people who had nothing to say, and the only form of entertainment remaining was to find people to attack. In order to remain and be active in such a warlike atmosphere, one needed allies. One gained allies by joining them, as they attacked and harassed their rivals. And thus, the more warlike Usenet became, the more it was pushed to become even more so.

"So, why didn't people just leave ?", is the natural question. In time, many did. "But why didn't it happen immediately ?" Because people had no place to be. Social gatherings had disappeared, mostly. Worse still, in playing such a prominent role as a meeting place compared to those remaining, Usenet began to play a larger and larger role in shaping the attitudes of those visiting it. In many places, people were getting to be as obnoxious offline as they were online, and the real world wasn't getting to be much of an improvement over the Net.

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def. kakistocracy : rule by the worst