I don't know if it was willful blindness or just a different set of norms, but a lot of the shit that went down would not (I hope) fly today. It amazed me then (and now) that so many people bought the "stalking" and "omg so persecuted" wanks, when thinking about it for a minute would lead you to the conclusion -- Hmm, this seems like a convenient way to become popular on the internet.

Weirdly, there were a few people who knew how the internet worked, but I think they stayed far to the side. Flourish was the one who did the code for FA and was a teenager at the time (I think she made a statement after the Cassie-is-a-goddamn-plagiarist write-up that made me think she had a good head on her shoulders); I don't think she ever operated as a BNF or was consulted on these matters. I have no idea how old Cassie is, oddly, and Heidi was certainly an adult. Maybe it's a case of adults thinking the internet is a series of tubes?

Actually, the more I think about it, the more I wonder if age really was a huge factour here. I owned a domain and was fairly savvy with regard to these sorts of things -- because adults taught me that everyone on the internet is a pedophile (or working for a pedophile). If a story was too good to be true, it probably was, and that's why you verified. Hell, even the trolls were easy to deal with, since half of them left their web address in the hope of boosting their traffic through outrage.