Try to give a balanced, 360-degree view on the Internet...

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...and trolls will gleefully cherry-pick words out of your post to make you look bad. And it's easier for people to respond to one extreme with the other than to actually read a post of some length that has intelligent insight, let alone respond with intelligence. There's just something alluring about outrage...

Balanced, intelligent views can get very long (since real life is generally more complicated than neat little one-liners) and with the degree of ADD on the Internet in general, simple-minded people won't want to take the time to read something long - however insightful - and many at least are especially afraid of any opinion differing from their own (simple-minded and extreme) one.

This seems to be one way the Internet is ruining intelligent discourse in general.

I think it's more likely that broad access to the Internet is shining a light on the massive amount of unintelligent discourse that was previously only heard in private. The intelligent discourse is still there, but being drowned out.

The common slang 'TL;DR' (Too long, did not read) exemplifies this.

But the intelligent discussion is still there, if 99% invisible.

Disagree. TLDR is also used in response to unnecessarily lengthy drivel, not just intelligent stuff that people don't feel like reading.

I think people in general are just stupid as hell. I post insightful quotes and other meaningful content on FB, and they garner zero likes or attention. Yet if I wrote "I just pooped yo," I bet you anything it would get 10 likes in under 60 minutes. It's like people are attracted to glitter, glamour and other meaningless stuff. I don't really get it ...

Same with chatrooms. The discussions are always the same boring meaningless crap. And it's funny because many chatrooms won't allow people to talk about REAL stuff like politics and religion.

*shrugs*

But Outrider is right. Well, you both are. It's not used for one specific thing, just whenever someone can't be bothered reading something because they think it's too long.