That's a cop-out, though - every forum has its recognized style of discussion driven by whatever the consensus position is. Sometimes someone breaks out of the consensus and the consensus changes. This isn't limited to the Internet; anywhere people congregate and communicate there's a register and syntax of communication that people's messages and messaging group around. Parliament has always been more fast'n'loose than the House of Lords; as the Republicans started scoring more and more points for being rude on C-SPAN, the House of Representatives has gotten ruder and ruder.

Usenet was necessarily without memes so people had to communicate via in-jokes and .sigs. PHPBBs used different iconography to communicate different shorthand. I spent a lot of time on a screenwriting board whose style of communication was moderated, so you learned how to make your point without upsetting the moderator (who would call you on the phone if you stepped over the line). going from there to Reddit was a culture shock; Reddit refined my online knife-fighting skillz like nowhere else so when I got here, "put down the knife" took too long to internalize. On the other hand, I'm on professional beta-testing forums where speaking ill of Dear Leader will most assuredly cut off your access to the Nectar of the Gods and professional forums where you never criticize a colleague lest some crunchy leviathan from ancient yore decides to surface and cut you down to size using manuals that haven't been in print since the Wilson administration.

Reddit has become a much nicer place because it filled up with kids who rarely encounter criticism of any kind, unless it's ad-hominem shit-slinging on XBL. As a consequence it's become a place where you can't criticize someone's ideas because you'll blemish their fee-fees but you can call them all sorts of random names because everyone is used to be calling names. And that, I think, is where the conflict lies: the older generation is used to being able to question each others' ideas without anyone taking it personally while taking it very personally when personally attacked while the younger generation's ideas are never questioned lest it cause existential injury but calling someone an idiotic shitcamel with five exclamation points is just people talking.

I will agree with you that I have more enthusiasm for defending my points than most. However, I take pains to do so within the register of the space. If anything, I'd say that people come here expecting the register to suit their wants, rather than recognizing that they need to adjust to suit the space. And for people who insist on their right to

their way through any debate, Hubski is frustrating.