This will be my last post. I thought I would take the opportunity to reflect.

When I first discovered XO, I was in love. For those who weren't here, it is hard to capture just how great this place was in its golden age. Like today, the board was very active and essentially unmoderated. Unlike today, the quality of the user-base was off-the-charts. It was basically a giant cross-section of the mid-2000s 20-something meritocracy.

We had whole contingents of people who were undergrads, law students, or Ph.D students at Harvard, Stanford, Yale, MIT, Caltech, Princeton, etc. Any thread about happenings at those schools would invariably draw scores of posts from people who were clearly "on the ground." We had people making millions in Silicon Valley (including, obviously, the guy who coded this place). We had associates at essentially every elite law firm (want a candid, gossipy take on what's going on behind the scenes lately at, say, DPW? Just post a thread!). We had people in investment banking with a first-row seat to the financial crisis. We had successful people in creative fields. These people were also from wildly diverse backgrounds. We had people from elite boarding schools, NYC Prep-for-Prep kids, people from elite public schools, and people from shitty public schools in "are country." Just off the top of my head, I can think of prominent posters who were white women, white men, black women, black men, asian women, asian men, Indian women, Indian men, hispanic women, hispanic men. People from a variety of countries. Jewish, gentile, gay, straight, whatever. We've had some famous or soon-to-be-famous posters as well.

This incredible cross-section of smart, accomplished, people was involved in a raucous 24/7 free-for-all conversation about everything under the sun: the inner workings of elite institutions; how to get ahead; sex, dating and the 20-something social scene; philosophy; politics; gender relations; race relations; should I take this job?; should I move to this city?; should I marry this person?; should I have a kid?; should I get a divorce?; should I kill myself?; what people were REALLY thinking beneath all the pretense and bullshit. People were intentionally irreverant, outrageous, offensive, provocative. It was like a constant all-night college bull session, except bigger, even less inhibited, and joined by a wildly more diverse cross-section of people than populate the usual dorm room. The combination of (1) the quality and diversity of the people here, and (2) their candidness and inhibition, made discussion endlessly fascinating. It was truly intoxicating, at least for me.

But things have changed, and it is time to accept that.

First, the board has changed. In the simplest sense, it is a cautionary tale about what inevitably happens to every unmoderated discussion forum. A lack of moderation and commitment to radical free speech inevitably attract people who's ideas (or personality defects) are not tolerated elsewhere. Over time, a critical mass of these people builds up and scares away a significant portion of the normal good people. Then you are left with a board that is dominated by paranoid schizophrenics, out-and-out racists, etc. That is essentially what happened here.

There is no doubt that this board has always reveled in being politically incorrect. Even in the golden age, that was part of the scene. But the tenor has changed. For example, there has always been tons of irreverent racial humor, etc. But, in the old days, it was generally always witty and not mean-spirited. I've seen someone else say it was the kind of stuff an "edgy" stand-up comedian might say and get a mix of laughs and horrified gasps. That sounds right. Now, the board is constantly cluttered with unironic, unfunny, mean- spirited, racist bullshit.

Likewise, the board has always been hospitable to non-PC political arguments. We used to have long threads debating hot button issues (gay marriage, affirmative action, abortion, stop-and-frisk, whatever) where you could throw out and explore third-rail arguments that were not well-tolerated in the elite liberal schools and institutions where most of us dwelled IRL. Maybe women are underrepresented in STEM because, in the aggregate, fewer women than men enjoy those fields and that's OK? Maybe the Bloomberg- era stop-and-frisk program actually was helping to reduce crime, and racial disparities were explained by the NYPD properly focusing on the most crime-plagued areas? More recently -- maybe there is reasonable doubt and George Zimmerman should be found not guilty? I honestly don't know the answer to any of these questions for sure. But they were worth debating and were debated spiritedly here. And they were debated with sophistication and good humor and with people on both sides. But no longer. Now we have posters unironically ranting about the "jewish conspiracy" and linking to legit white supremacist garbage, etc. We have for some time. The remaining posters who are liberal or more centrist seem to, for the most part, no longer have the energy to even engage.

There was always over-the-top racist shit in the background. Mostly people spamming threads with all-caps racial slurs in the titles, etc...... basically using the board like the bathroom wall in a dirty college bar. But it was in the background and you could ignore it. It just came with the territory of being on an unmoderated board. People of our generation who came up using internet message boards in the pre-social media era were used to tuning that stuff out. But now, the shit that was in the background has come to dominate the foreground.

Things started to change after the Yale Law lawsuit, which understandably scared away a lot of good people. But there was still a critical mass of good posting in the years following that. Things didn't really start their tail-spin to our current predicament until a few years ago. Hard to say exactly why. It is probably some combination of (1) the contingent that was here for the golden age slowly becoming less and less active and whittling away; and (2) more outsiders attracted by the lack of moderation coming here for the express purpose of spewing alt-right shit not tolerated on other forums.

No doubt there are still a lot of good people left here from the good old days. And you see other familiar faces pop-up irregularly, particularly when there is a thread about some old poster having a major life-event. Those are nice threads. And there are still good threads about legal practice (even if we've moved from a focus on biglaw to a focus on CSLG-style personal injury practice), career-strategy, parenting, etc. Those are also nice threads.

But it is becoming increasingly clear that I cannot stick around and post in the "nice" threads when they are like flotsam in a sea of unhinged garbage. The recent upheavals stemming from the murder of George Floyd have put an exclamation point on that realization.

Which brings me to my second point: as the board has changed, the world has also changed. When XO was founded, mainstream social media didn't exist yet. The people who posted on XO were largely older millennials who came of age using the internet in the Wild West era of the late 90s and very early 00s. In those days, using an internet "message board" was a pretty niche activity with unique norms. The "real world" and the internet were totally separate. The vast majority of all human communication was happening in person, over the phone, through traditional forms of media, etc. Internet communities were a different, compartmentalized, realm. Anonymity and free speech reigned supreme. As a result, people used internet communities to, among other things, "try on" different personalities, explore taboo subjects, play devil's advocate, and throw out controversial ideas (whether you actually believed them or not) just to see how people would react. You knew the people you were interacting with were doing the same thing. You were used to seeing shocking shit and brushing it off. You could just log out, forget all the bullshit you were debating online, and live IRL. That was very much the spirit that ruled XO in its early days and, for a lot of people (including myself to an extent), it seems to continue to be the prevailing spirit here.

But the evolution of the internet and society over the last 15-20 years has changed things significantly. For one, the internet and the "real world" are no longer separate. The internet IS the real world. It is where most human communication occurs. As a result, I think our generation (the older millennials who formed the bulk of the user base here during the golden age) is sandwiched between two generations with fundamentally different understandings of internet communication. The generation behind us never lived in a world where the internet and IRL were separate. They had Facebook accounts under their real names at age 12. All of their adolescent socialization happened online. Our elders (and many of our contemporaries) didn't really use the internet until after IRL and the Internet converged. They too started "posting" on the internet when they got a Facebook account under their real name in 2007-2010.

These people will NEVER truly understand the free-for-all spirit that prevailed in the wild west days. They will not understand how you could continue to use a message board to post about your job, sports, your family, etc. and just tune-out the fact that every third thread is some kind of deranged paranoid-schizo or racist spam. They will not understand why you would post something to the internet that you don't actually believe, just to be provocative and gauge the reaction. They will not understand how or why you would share an account with someone you don't even know. They will not understand the ironic spirit in which you "lol"'d or blank bumped in response to some deranged shit that would rightfully horrify you if you heard someone say it outloud.

If you are still posting here, you should take a step back and ask whether YOU find this stuff understandable or whether you are inexplicably continuing to post in a spirit that made sense in the clubby confines of XO 10-15 years ago but is, for good reason, now anachronistic. Maybe you are a frog in a pot that has slowly boiled over the last decade. If so, you should jump out now.

Consider the current environment. The country is undergoing a great awakening to racist injustices throughout society. Maybe you should take this opportunity to consider whether continuing to post here is morally defensible at all, even if you aren't posting the deranged shit? I don't think it is defensible, which is why I am leaving.

If you aren't moved morally, maybe you should consider practical concerns. I think the current racial-justice movement is going to lead to a lot of good -- important police reforms, hopefully efforts to remedy longstanding economic injustices, etc. But the movement also includes some excesses. There are a lot of Twitter Robspierres hunting for "racists" to ruin. There is a not insignificant chance that this site will eventually come under attack. And, as discussed above, people are not going to "get" your explanations and defenses for posting here.

Really, Rach should just shut this place down for good. We had a great run. Let's cherish the memories of the hey-day. There was a time and place when this board made sense and was awesome. But that time is gone. The board has changed and the world has changed. It is time to move on. Maintaining the board no longer makes sense. Indeed, sadly, the continued existence of the board and its archives is probably a threat to all the good people who have posted here over the last 15 years in the irreverent and provocative spirit that once made sense but no longer does.

If you are a good person and keep posting, I personally think you are crazy. But best of luck. If you are one of the deranged folks who have ruined this place over the last several years, fuck you.

Take care.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4561949&forum_id=2#40428326)

“I’m gay.”

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4561949&forum_id=2#40428422)