I grew up in Finland during the 1990s and was pretty active in the demoscene.
It was a really great creative hobby, but it doesn’t deserve to be viewed entirely through rose-tinted nostalgia. There were a lot of awesome people, but also toxic assholes and mean-spirited bullies. I suppose that’s par for the course for any community with so many teenagers.
I agree. Mobbing and public shaming was definitely a thing, just have a look at all the "XYZ is a lamer", Federations against XYZ, anti demos, and stuff that was published using disk magazines, and sometimes declaration of war against other groups.
I always took that as harmless posturing, given that the 'XYZ' was invariably a pseudonym. Modern FLOSS development needs codes of conflict that forbid this behavior because we fully involve our personal and professional identities in it.
Not at all. During the 80th and early 90th I encountered many personal attacks, and few of them escalated into physical encounters. I was involved quite heavily into the C64 and Amiga scene, attended quite a few copy parties.
Most conflicts I knew of, started on a personal level. 98% of the persons that attacked each other knew each other in real life. The scene met at copy parties, or did phone conferences.
There were also some funny encounters, when groups who were at war with each other met at copy parties.
In Venlo for example, I remember the bouncer quite well, because he was some huge 2.10m dude.
I can tell you of dozens of other encounters. Some works, that caused trouble, are even sanctioned by officials. And this is good.
It was a really great creative hobby, but it doesn’t deserve to be viewed entirely through rose-tinted nostalgia. There were a lot of awesome people, but also toxic assholes and mean-spirited bullies. I suppose that’s par for the course for any community with so many teenagers.