We're all adults here, right? In the good ol' days of the internet

We're all adults here, right? In the good ol' days of the internet, there were chatrooms. Great big open spaces where anyone could come and talk about anything they wanted. No rules, no moderator, no nothing. Just people talking to people. And you know what? It worked.

Back in the good old days of chatrooms, we didn’t need a bunch of rules to keep things civil. We had a mute button and the ability to block users, and if someone was being too disruptive, there was always a way to appeal to the chatroom administrators. Yes, we had trolls back then too, but we just ignored them.

Nowadays it seems like we have to treat adults like children, constantly reminding them to play nice with each other. It’s gotten so bad that there are even “adulting” classes for adults who can’t seem to act like adults.

Maybe it’s time to take a step back and relax the rules a bit. After all, we’re all adults here, and we should be able to handle ourselves without being constantly monitored.

Sure, there were trolls. But instead of feeding them, we ignored them. They didn't get the attention they wanted and eventually went away. No need for a 24 hour babysitter to tell us to stop being mean to each other. We could handle it ourselves.

Nowadays, it seems like we've regressed. We need rules and moderators and constant supervision. We can't even handle a little bit of disagreement without someone getting their feelings hurt. We've become so sensitive that we need safe spaces and trigger warnings.

What happened to us? When did we become so fragile?

Maybe it's because we've forgotten how to be adults. We don't know how to handle conflict or disagreement anymore. We need to relearn how to be adults, how to handle conflict, and how to deal with dissenting opinions. Otherwise, we'll just continue to regress into a never-ending cycle of hurt feelings and safe spaces.