Ten years in an online community: from buddy to total burnout

Ten years of digital friendship: from buddy to burnout

At the start it was easy. You joined an online community, someone gave you a like, laughed at your silly jokes, quoted you in threads, and that buddy spirit emerged: the special friend you get along with who, even when you call them every name under the sun, gives it back in kind and everything stays friendly. That is the starting point described at the opening of a discussion about what happens when that relationship stretches over a decade. The result, according to the post that opens the exchange, is the exact opposite: burnout, widespread distrust and the feeling that there is no way out.

Ten years on, the picture is different. The opening post says it bluntly: after a decade in the same place, nothing matters anymore, everyone gets on your nerves, and the conclusion is that they are all scum, including the special friend. The closing line sums up the malaise: you want to leave, but you accept you cannot, because you are there forever. This is not a one-off complaint. It is a diagnosis of the wear and tear of long-lived digital communities.

The new account that exposes the fakes

One of the most concrete contributions comes from someone who explains that they delete their account every so often and create a new one. The striking thing, they say, is seeing how people they used to interact with positively start quoting them over any triviality just to point out how wrong they are. The conclusion they draw is bitter: a wonderful community, they say with a smirk.

That pattern, the relationship that turns hostile when the packaging changes, is the core of the matter. No prior grievance is needed. It is enough that the other person does not recognise you for the interaction to become corrective. The phenomenon does not depend on what is said, but on the position you occupy.

The imaginary friend and the real friend

Amid the disillusionment, a defence of the bond appears. Someone sums up the idea in a short formula: a friend is an insurance policy. The immediate reply qualifies it: no sappy stuff, of course. And the comeback closes it: just the right amount. That exchange condenses the tension between the real affection generated in these spaces and the embarrassment of admitting it.

The discussion also leaves room for memory. Someone asks what became of a self-styled family that once carried some weight in the community, and the answer is an absurd scene: they drowned in a reservoir while celebrating one member's birthday. The anecdote, half joke half elegy, serves as a reminder that these communities also produce their own mythology, with their falls and their disappearances.

Toxicity as the norm and insults as greetings

The exchange pulls no punches when pointing out other people's falseness. Certain types of participants are accused of being toxic and fake, and it is clarified that the person saying so only keeps a parallel account, originally created for something else. The paradox is obvious: criticising multiple identities while admitting to having one.

Insults, meanwhile, function as a membership password. The opening post explains that calling the special friend every name in the book breaks nothing, because the answer comes back as an affectionate gesture. It is the code of a friendship proven precisely by the licence to be disrespectful. When that code breaks, what remains is hostility with no packaging.

The ending that never comes

The conversation drifts towards general contempt. Someone declares that nobody is worth it, starting with the person writing it. It is the logical culmination of the journey: from initial enthusiasm to universal judgement. And in between, a biblical quote about writing words on rock so they last, brought up as consolation or as irony.

The most disorienting fact is the simplest of all. The community is still there. Ten years later, with accounts deleted and recreated, with friends turned into hostile strangers and with the certainty that there is no way out, the space does not close. It stays. And that, more than any insult, is what defines the relationship.