DallasSteve wrote:
I may be wrong but it seemed like the personal attacks in posts here increased a lot during the Covid-19 panic of 2020 with people getting very emotional over their opinion on that subject. I won't comment further to not stir up that hornet's nest.
I agree 100%. And it wasn't just arguing over the pandemic either. The lockdown frustrated a lot of people and the tone of their posts got mean and bitter. I'm not sure we've completely recovered from that yet either.
I think we all miss the good old days when we could just post about camping and camaraderie and ask questions about WD hitches and dumping our tanks.
I think a lot of the old timers have also forgotten what it was like to be new and have a million questions. Folks aren't as eager to be helpful like the previous generation of experienced campers were. Instead they tell the newcomers to use the Search and they shame folks for asking something that's been asked a million times before. If the topic is so worn out and we all have so much muscle memory around it, then why isn't it more simple to just type out a helpful answer for the millionth time instead of shaming the ones who asked the question?
To avoid being called a hypocrite though, there's a very experienced senior member who will surely jump in with his counter argument since I've deleted every one of his troll responses to this thread. A few years ago he posted one of the dumbest questions I've ever seen here and he's experienced enough to know better. The crowd jumped on him like raw meat and I ended up closing his thread (not deleting it) to make the noise go away. He's never forgiven me and takes every opportunity to take pot shots at me. He's Sideshow Bob and I'm his Bart Simpson.
My only point with that is that sometimes "dumb questions" transcend the newbie stuff and enter the realm of the trolls. This shouldn't discourage us from offering a hand to the newcomers though, because they deserve the same experience that the rest of us got when we started out.