Trumpism ruined a a lot of good people.

Yes both pro-Trump and anti-Trump people are a little extreme, moreso than any president in my lifetime, and the corporate-owned media encourages this divisiveness in extremely petty ways.

It makes me question if the person ever actually held any of the opinions they represented. Could just be throwing out different nets in hopes they catch a school of fish.

Yeah I know what you mean, and I don't really like his comics anymore. But there were a few from that era that are ridiculously insightful. Usually those are the ones that have been photoshopped by extremists to smear Ben: https://media.wired.com/photos/59446bb3bdf4147696f427d9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/979.jpg

Like I had to search hard to find the pyramid comic I sent you, instead of the photoshopped one, which is now more widely available. Genuine culture getting hijacked in a smear job, basically.

I'm sure Ben got sick of being portrayed this way, and was probably like "well, if I'm going to get insulted and misunderstood like this anyway, I might as well make lots of money doing it" so he just went full-in on being a Trump guy. That's my theory on Ben Garrison anyway.

Ruqqus is cool and interesting, I agree they did rise up really fast though. Lots of fervent advertising, I agree, I see it everywhere. But that's not necessarily bad, they might just have a vocal userbase. They're still ranked only 161k (as opposed to saidit's 43k rank and notabugs 70k rank), so they're not actually used that much and are still small, but they do have a lot of people pushing it.

The problem with social media alternative is that no one wants to go to an empty social media site, and more content usually means more activity which attracts people. So we wind up with everyone on a few sites. But I think maybe that trend is reversing as people see the value in smaller communities? I don't know. But I do know people are sick of the monoliths of reddit and facebook and so on.