I think you may be looking at history through rose-tinted glasses. Sure, social media today is not the same, so the comparison isn’t quite sensible, but IRC was an unpleasant place full of petty egos and nasty people.
One should take a look at HN. /s
I find the discussions on the early Internet (until around 2010) more civilised than today.
Today, the internet is fully weaponized by and for big companies and 3 letter agencies.
