Fear and Loathing in OO Gauge

Now, you might well imagine the world of model railways to be a genteel sort of place, full of people admiring each others' layouts and swapping notes on the correct operating procedures for stopping goods trains.  But trust me, if you were to dig into any of the various online model railway forums, you'd find that the hobby is a hotbed of rivalries and acrimony.  This past week, the YouTube model railway community went into meltdown for a few days after one established and respected YouTube model railway personality posted a new video in which, instead of confining himself to talking about his layout, showing us some of his locomotives and rolling stock and offering modelling tips instead chose to take aim at various other members of the community, criticising their layouts and, worse, making personal comments about them.  Not that I've seen this video - it was apparently taken down after being met with a barrage of criticism in the form of video responses by other members of the YouTube model railway community.  Some of them were pretty forthright, even vicious and, not having been able to see the offending video myself, I have no idea whether any of it was at all justified.  Personally, I found it all a bit disturbing - the, perhaps justified, criticism looked as if it was quickly turning into a campaign of bullying.  An impression reinforced by the fact that the original offender subsequently took his entire YouTube channel down and has pretty much vanished from the site.

All of which illustrates one of the aspects of the web that I deeply dislike - the mob mentality.  Or, to be more accurate, the lynch mob mentality, whereby any perceived infraction by an individual leads to a mass pile-on with the aim not of getting an apology for the aggrieved parties, but instead to hound the alleged perpetrator off of the web altogether.  Bully, abuse and public vilification are the favoured weapons in these campaigns, where the 'punishments' being meted out are far out of proportion to the original 'crime'.  That it even happens in a community as niche as model railways, where most established practitioners are at least middle aged, many older, simply underlines just how prevalent these behviours have become.  The better strategy in this case, in my opinion, would have simply been to unsubscribe from the alleged miscreant's channels, (many of those posting those video responses admitted to having been long-term followers), and making appropriate comments on their videos, in measured terms.  The message would soon have got through and a lot of energy could have been saved.  Of course, then all the critics wouldn't have been able to make those attention-grabbing videos - or am I just being a tad cynical in suspecting that some of them were simply jumping on a band wagon to increase their viewer counts?  Anyway, all of this nonsense is the reason why I don't have a YouTube channel with videos of my layout - I can do without running the risk of getting involved with this sort of nonsense.