And apparently it is adult-themed and explores millennial angst and disenchantment, because reasons. Yes, really.

Helpful tip: if, hypothetically, you come across a prolific poster who seems to only thrive on bitter negativity, you can go to their profile and click the "block" option next to the "follow" one near the top of the page and they'll never turn up in your browsing again. Good for peace of mind.

The problem is one of those evolutionary arms races, for a reason in your observation: if the points are useful in seeing the popularity of a given post or comment, then why not simply create a bunch of fake accounts to boost said post/comment (which is exactly what the OP was complaining about in the first place).

Individual karma ratings allow a weighting for upvotes so that, in theory, contributors who have a track record of constructive interaction can be the ones who have more influence on what rises to algorithmic prominence. But, of course, everything can be gamed, hence upvoting bot/sock puppet-rings like the one OP observed, or people buying accounts on reddit that had pre-established karma to let them astroturf away with impunity.

No idea what the long-term solution is, beyond the vague "build a community of known faces/names" which runs the opposite risk of turning cliquish or closed-off to new content. Or maybe abolishing all algorithms and just sorting everything by new (which brings us back to the ancient commenting issue of a whole chain of people saying "first!" rather than adding any meaningful observations).

I remember that one, Gato's Song was such a strong theme for a literally one-scene character, their riffing on him and his original dialog was brilliant.

Yes, on par I lean towards it being a good thing as publicly available information rather than shadowy mud-slinging. I had one post downvoted by someone who apparently has done nothing else before or since, which takes a bit of the sting out of it. There will probably be debates about it at some point, and probably the occasional tit-for-tat attacks around the place, but overall I think it does link a bit more identity to the person who does the up- or down-voting which creates more of a community feel instead of hiding behind total anonymity.

Eternal September? At this time of day, at this time of year, localised entirely within the fediverse?!

There's no solution in the same way that there's no "solution" to winning rock-paper-scissors. The cycle is endless because the desire to be in control is a key part of human nature, whether that be an authoritarian "I want everyone to do what I say" or a more oligarchic "I accept that there's others at my level, so we can cooperate so that everyone else does what we say", and any attempt to change those systems requires an equivalent amount of force that can all too easily lead one into side-tangents of trying to keep said force focused.

As a side note, Machiavelli identified the cycle in politics in his "Discourse on Livy" - a powerful and strong-willed individual takes power (e.g. Caesar or Napoleon), his descendants wield power with less and less efficiency until in time the aristocracy seize the reins, and they get more and more corrupt and out of touch until finally the people rise up and enforce some level of democratic sway. Unfortunately, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance, which is exhausting, and so over time things run down until some powerful and strong-willed individual takes power and it all starts again. It's not purely linear - an aristocracy can be subsumed into a strong individual leadership (e.g. the popes in the 19th century grabbing power back from the cardinals) and a king can be overthrown by a democratic uprising (e.g. Louis XVI of France - though technically it did go through a brief aristocratic moment, as he re-convened the parliament to try and get around the nobility who wouldn't fund his wars, indicating his powers had weakened). But in general we oscillate between these three modes of social organisation because of the difficulty in centralising power and in then keeping it from being corrupted (i.e. using it for selfish purposes) once it is centralised.

People will come, it's just a matter of time and having the patience to cultivate organic communities rather than trying to simply will them into existence all at once a la GooglePlus (or whatever their attempt at a social network was called)

The 3rd party apps are closing at the end of this month, which means there'll be somewhere around a week or so of people realising just how bad the official app is, plus decreased quality content as the actually-motivated people who post things continue their gradual migration away from reddit and driving redditors to seek other places to gather.

I wonder how much of this stems from that announcement a few weeks back that Wagner was going to be subordinated to the MoD? I haven't heard anything about it since it was announced (since my main source of information was that front page of the internet which just descended into its own civil war...) From vague recollection, Prigozhin said he was refusing to sign any contracts formalising such arrangements but Putin was backing the defence minister Shoigu on this one, to presumably try and rein in Wagner a bit and keep the game of musical chairs going as Putin's underlings all vied for influence without anyone being the clear heir apparent.

Looks like it may have backfired spectacularly if so, because Prigozhin had to have known it would have meant his end if he'd accepted Shoigu's control, and, as Sun-Tzu warns, a cornered animal (or army) with no way out will fight to the death.

Paul Ekman demonstrated back in the 1960s that, when showing photos of expressions to previously-uncontacted tribes in Papua New Guinea, these people who had no access to other media recognised and could name the feelings described. Also, blind children who have not been told what "a smile" is, will display the facial expression automatically. This research finding was one of the nails in the coffin of the Behaviourist school of psychology (with rats pulling levers) that said everything was learned by rewards/punishments.

Ekman identified 6 "basic" emotions: happy, sad, disgusted, angry, scared, and surprised (which, except for the last one, were the characters in Pixar's "Inside Out"). Later researchers have proposed a seventh emotion of "pride", which has the posture of puffed-out chest and smug half-smile, which again is displayed by blind athletes on winning competitions.