Neogaf's hivemind mentality wasn't even the worst of it, political threads were a whole other mess but i've legitimately seen some of the most disgusting comments in general on that site. Constantly shitting on and harassing developers for any little thing despite claiming to stand against that, generalizing anyone to living hell should they go against what the site wants them to think, dogpiling on users in every single thread just to get them banned.
And the most disturbing part of it all was many users convinced themselves that they can't ever do anything wrong to the point where some would legitimately say you can "only dislike Neogaf if you are right-wing or hate their politics/ideals". That attitude, ironically enough, was what pushed many normal people who do support the same things they do into not liking the site just because they can't seem to see how dangerous that mentality is, when you propose a baseless ultimatum like that not only is that a lack of self-awareness that nobody wants to go near but it's also manipulative and delusional as hell to try to dismiss all valid criticism by demonizing anyone who dare critique it for many valid reasons. It literally caused more harm to the causes they claimed to support rather than helping them. Nobody should ever go near people who aren't able to self-reflect on their own actions, and while I realize this was not all members of the site who did this and thought this way when you see none of the major perpetrators of this attitude ever getting banned it gives the impression that the site was clearly okay with it.
I remember a comment where someone admitted they were a nurse who administered shots or something and that if someone said something they didn't like they would purposely mess up the shot just to be able to stab them a few times and in the entire thread only 1-2 people called out that admission to job abuse. And since everyone was conditioned to thinking the same thing they just enabled each other instead of calling it out when it needed to be called out. It was the just the epitome of the extreme bullshit you would hear about that harms everything and makes everyone look bad, it was not a shock when most people stayed clear of politics at the time as a result of stuff like this. There's a difference between disagreeing on beliefs versus disagreeing on the way someone chooses to assert those beliefs but I think too many of them were just incapable of making that distinction or looking at themselves, whether purposely or ignorantly.
Edit: I'm editing this comment to rewrite and better accurately portray what I intended to say at the time, as the original was poorly written and missed out on some key things.
Last edited by FloatingWaffles - on 16 August 2021
