Extreme uncivility in online discourse - when did it start?

[Iori_Yagami]

In case you are on the net for a long time, I bet you also noticed that only in recent times, 2014+, I guess, extreme uncivility has seeped into the net. Yeah, previously there were angry a-holes, but it was kinda rare, and usually was the fault of irate poster, be it guest-book (remember those?), his own site, etc

With arrival of news sites and comments on them, the number for angry post increased, but that's understandible - new people form general public, as opposed those savvy enough to make their own sites, and 'nerdy' ones, coming from education, computer science, publishing areas of socety got swarmed to millions of 'others', who don't give to slaps about logic, attentive reading, minding their own words. That's still normal.

What, however, greatly disturbs me - is insane raw hate that sometimes seeps into random places, with message similar in tone to this '4chan' website. I mean, you can have bigoted racists in youtube comments, and you have an ABNORMALLY LARGE user count to write stuff like 'f*** off, you sh*tskin ape' casually in conversation. As far as I know (I am non-American), this type of talk it rare even offline, I have seen street brawls with violence that use more civil and reserved language. I think it is abnormal, that this type of speech appeared recently. As if, you know, someone was DELIBERATELY pushing it, almost as if some so-called 'troll brigades' were employed to swarm participants and shift the overton window in regards to what's can be said in discussion.

I speak Russian, too, and I noticed this type of talks, YEARS before current times, in RU-net, where users don't make any effort to understand anything, and keep hurling creative, vile and unhinged insults at each other for DOZENS of PAGES straight. No really! Look at comments on Russian LiveJournal (it is mostly Russian now, and is very political). For example, even in like 2003 any thread involving Ukraine, always, always always devolved into a series of abhorrent mudslinging.

You see, my interest in English-speaking net (apart from it's size and usefulness) is partially fuelled by deep respect many online users have to each other and adherence and celebration of logic, rules of discussion, using meta-language like 'evidence, your point, reference, criticism, perspective', and desire to look into stuff, and constructively solve even controversial and painful stuff. So I gravitated more and more to English-speaking parts, just because ru-net was filled with illogical flood, stupid spamming and and general intolerable atmosphere.

The was even a joke about it: "What's the difference between English net and Russian net? - In English net, you describe you problem, that you get some useless feel good stuff, and than and couple of useful on-topic solutions. In Russian net you get zero help, and 50 pages of comments about why you are a moron for even asking such a question, and how you should get off, and how literally everyone else is a superman without any problems like topic starter has, another 50 pages about why everyone answering is lame and stupid, and the rest is complaining why this thread sucks.'

Now I am sad to see the same somehow this super-angry style has seeped into English net. I feel like it was engineered, first there are paid trolls, and than the mind-virus spreads by itself.

Have you noticed something like that?