Randomly slamming on the keaboard would have prevented to "sound out the words which are meant but not written". So there was deliberate effort in it. As far as I know, she (if she is actually a she, I don't know) never denied/deflected her responsibility. What would that have looked like anyway? "I sleepwrote"?
I understand your (and others) frustrations with her writing style and off topic posts (I think I came across a few of those, but am not sure right now). I'm not denying that this can be frustrating. I'm just saying, pressing "shiny" buttons is not a good coping mechanism, especially since it can't be applied to real life situations. Except maybe if "Surrogates" becomes reality.

That is very strange indeed...

The way her rep dropped it was bots. Not just a handful of annoyed people. And she wasn't by far the first to get hit by this...
If you downvote posts that annoy you - your choice. I rarely do it, only when it's personal attacks on users, blatant trolling or actual spam. Doesn't have much impact and has worked for years.

I don't know if you were around when the big spam wave hit and we developed scripts to mass-report spam posts (in some forums there were more than 20 pages of spam posts then before the actual content). A few months after that the mass-downvoting of regular users began. I think some people simply took our scripts and used them to harass users.

I am in part responsible since I wrote the original user script to mass-report spam. At the time it seemed like good idea and it worked pretty well. Now I kind of feel like the naive scientist creating a weapon "for good". On the other hand it really wasn't that complicated. Someone with ill intend and some JavaScript could have done the same easily - but maybe I/we "inspired" this mess in the first place.
IIRC she outed herself as she some time in the past. And she has been addressed as she many times and never corrected it herself, so I'm quite sure she's a she.

Every time someone is chased away, silenced, ousted, shunned or otherwise "dealt with", there are people celebrating.

No matter how many times it happens, they always fail to understand that their turn is now one place closer.

"It'll never happen to me." Ad infinitum.

This is funny.

The people I referenced constitute the overwhelming majority in bourgeois society, today. But I very much agree with what you've added.

To clarify what I mean, bourgeois society = closed system, reality = open system. So, system performance = maximum short-term consumption, and negative feedback loops ensure it is consistently maintained, irrespective of long-term consequences, which leaves only one possibility: catastrophic failure -- the signs of which can now be seen almost everywhere.

Tom is correct re "downvoted" posts; you are correct re "low rated" posts.

Hey I woudn't mind! At least that would indeed be a punchline.

Um... I agree on the latter pretty much. If I got it right - I would probably have put in other words. Like "our greed destroys the society we live in and the planet we live on but we have system that forces each individual beggar to wall street shart - to be greedy to survive".

But the problem is the conclusion from "the system is bad = true", "the society is bad = increasingly so" to "people are bad". Most individual people are NOT bad. They're just trying to survive in an increasingly complex and hostile world which in turn turns them increasingly wary and susceptible to "simple solutions".

Hu? I perfectly see this post for instance (low rated) https://www.gog.com/forum/general/what_has_happened_to_fairfox/post104

You can change it in forum settings. I think by default it was set to hide lowrated posts, I'm not absolutely sure about it though.

Much thanks! That's it. I probably turned this off some 9+ years ago and never considered it again - or the defaults have changed since then. I really can't remember this option was there.

People are, by and large, products of society, which is a variable determined by what it is that drives the society. The potential for good and evil exists in everyone, but if a society equates "good" with being servile and obedient, the liklihood for evil will increase by numerous orders of magnitude.

What mess, dude?

One of the most persistent shitposters on this forum decided to take some time off, nothing more nothing less. As for your theory about the downvote bots: I guess those very same bots also somehow magically high rate every post in this thread that states they got tired of her shitposting.

What grates me most about this whole discussion: Even to the casual observer it would seem fairly obvious that Fairfox has some issues going on IRL. Sure, you can just go ahead and pat her on the virtual back and show how much of an ally you are by saying "Oh, Fairfox, you craay-zee! You go, girl! Never mind the haters!", but it's not going to help her any. All that her continued shitposting is going to accomplish is that she's going to have to deal with the internet hate (no matter how warranted/unwarranted you may feel it is) on top of her real life stuff. Hopefully, she realised that as well and decided that her time would be more wisely spent tackling these issues.

If you want to be an ally, I'm sure there are more constructive ways than blaming everyone who got annoyed at her increasingly bizarre posts.

Funny, you say you do it with blatant trolling... That's exactly what nearly every Fairfox post was.

Thank you. That was it, I just checked. Now I can see low rated posts without having to "unhide" them first.

They had to be deciphered, and - ymmv - I didn't have many problems with that or if I didn't feel like it I'd ignore them. I didn't see any trolling. Or we have a different definition of trolling.

The mess. Those that consider themselves judge, jury, and executioner by law of the interwebs.