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Consider reading the sacred texts:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/
I reread some of the SSC classics, and I think they were very much a reaction the specific 2010s era of hot-take new-media clickbait. Most of the sites he links to as bad examples don't exist anymore, like Feministe, Jezibel, The Huffington Post etc, or only as a shadow of their former selves. In retrospect I think they were just desperately writing the most provocative clickbait they could possibly get, to get eyeballs, because web journalism is just a brutal business. It lead to a lot of angry discussion in comment sections, which they were happy to allow, because it meant even more eyeballs for their next piece. Scott's posts were great because they couuld go through the entire gish-gallop of bad arguments, one by one, without losing his cool, which most of us were not capable of doing.
Now there's no arguing, sites just ban anyone they dislike. Whether that's discord mods, corporate HR, or university admissions officers. There's no "argument," not even a bad one, we're just shut out. Most sites don't even have a forum or comment section anymore.
The sites died out because their format of pouring incandescent hot rage into your eyes has moved to youtube, tiktok, twitter, etc. Those offer either condensed format or visual augmentation, whereas for as bad as those former sites were for humanity they at least forced you to READ a bit.
The comments on youtube/tiktok/whatever are still largely unmoderated even if the more text-based social media sites are.
True... I feel like that stuff is well "silo'd" be the algorithm though, so you just don't see it unless you go looking to it. I haven't seen Scott or any other rationalist blogger offer a big rebuttal of Andrew Tate or any big feminist vlogger on youtube, twitter, or tiktok. And I would have to laugh if they did. It just seems unnecessary.
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Your "sacred text" includes the phrase "glob of snot" in the first (spoken) paragraph
It's a technical term.
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It sounded better in Aramaic.
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I read "the sacred texts" as they were written. Do you know what I noticed? Scott's prime example of "whale cancer" was not strangled by infighting like he predicted. Instead, he's a major democratic party influencer, with a reach greater than Scott himself.
I'm starting to think that the sacred texts were maybe wrong on a few things, and the prophecies never came true.
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