<story><title>Too many people have peed in the pool (2016)</title><url>http://www.stephenfry.com/2016/02/peedinthepool/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Eerie</author><text>1. There is a 4chan meme that goes approximately like this:&lt;p&gt;Newbie: &amp;quot;Remember the time when 4chan was good?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Veteran: &amp;quot;4chan was never good.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;4chan&amp;quot; can be easily replaced with &amp;quot;Twitter&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;The Internet&amp;quot; here.&lt;p&gt;2. There&amp;#x27;s a universal tendency for people to reminisce fondly about the good old days and contrast them with the ostensibly bad present. It has nothing to do with the truth. It is simply a syndrome of getting old. People were doing it 3000 years ago.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bartread</author><text>&amp;gt; 2. There&amp;#x27;s a universal tendency for people to reminisce fondly about the good old days and contrast them with the ostensibly bad present. It has nothing to do with the truth. It is simply a syndrome of getting old. People were doing it 3000 years ago.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m afraid that whilst there&amp;#x27;s some truth in what you&amp;#x27;ve said, I think you&amp;#x27;re far wide of the mark here.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s not about getting old. It&amp;#x27;s about the fact that, and I wouldn&amp;#x27;t pretend to understand the mechanics here, for whatever reason when too many people get involved in something it changes. It might get better, or it might get worse, or it might get better and then get worse, or whatever.&lt;p&gt;In this case I think the point that twitter, or whatever, somehow gets &amp;quot;spoiled&amp;quot; is perhaps valid. I would argue I&amp;#x27;ve seen a similar thing with facebook. It used to be people posting updates about themselves and was a good way to keep up with people; now it&amp;#x27;s largely people sharing pre-created content - 10th rate jokes and memes, political petitions, news - real or otherwise - from a parasitic ecosystem of sites predicated upon social sharing.&lt;p&gt;That spoiling can manifest itself in a variety of ways, and can take either a short or a long time to happen. The point is that a large influx of newcomers into an existing community, business, special interest group, or whatever, can &lt;i&gt;radically&lt;/i&gt; alter the dynamics of that group in a way that is unpredictable, and sometimes not good.&lt;p&gt;And I apologise for the slightly rambling nature of this comment - haven&amp;#x27;t had time to edit it into shape.</text></comment>
<story><title>Too many people have peed in the pool (2016)</title><url>http://www.stephenfry.com/2016/02/peedinthepool/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Eerie</author><text>1. There is a 4chan meme that goes approximately like this:&lt;p&gt;Newbie: &amp;quot;Remember the time when 4chan was good?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Veteran: &amp;quot;4chan was never good.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;4chan&amp;quot; can be easily replaced with &amp;quot;Twitter&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;The Internet&amp;quot; here.&lt;p&gt;2. There&amp;#x27;s a universal tendency for people to reminisce fondly about the good old days and contrast them with the ostensibly bad present. It has nothing to do with the truth. It is simply a syndrome of getting old. People were doing it 3000 years ago.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>wfunction</author><text>&amp;gt; 2. There&amp;#x27;s a universal tendency for people to reminisce fondly about the good old days and contrast them with the ostensibly bad present. It has nothing to do with the truth. It is simply a syndrome of getting old.&lt;p&gt;Nothing to do with the truth? Maybe in your cases, but in others it very much does. In the good ol&amp;#x27; days Democrats and Republicans weren&amp;#x27;t as hostile and unwilling to work together as they are now. In the good ol&amp;#x27; days it used to snow &lt;i&gt;way&lt;/i&gt; more in some places than it does now. In the good ol&amp;#x27; days many places were less polluted than they are now. In the good ol&amp;#x27; days people had to learn to actually ask each other out instead of swiping right on their phones. In the good ol&amp;#x27; days businesses had longer-lasting relationships with their employees and didn&amp;#x27;t view them as disposable goods. Yeah, totally nothing to do with the truth, just people imagining things.</text></comment>