There have always been flame wars and personal attacks. But this is different.
Yes, I agree. I understand flame wars, and at least at one time it seemed that the personal stuff was in some way tied to things that at least made some sort of sense, even if it was ugly and out of place. This stuff really is kind of demented. The randomness of it all is just so weird. It makes you miss good ol' killfiles.
When I first joined FR we learned from the older signups how to debate and to use links for proof. That kind of thing is gone now. And posters aren't using HTML to quote others so there's proof of what was said. They just make stuff up. You probably remember making statements and having to prove them with links too. Now posters don't care. They ignore links (except for old school posters) and info and make wild claims and accusations. It's like waking up in a foreign land.