What are some of the rules about the Internet that were taught to you but are now completely ignored?
For me, it was that the Internet never forgets and that you should never enter your real name. In my opinion, both of these rules are now completely ignored.
As in real life, it's pretty sound advice to ignore, block or otherwise disengage from trolls and other forms of belligerents. Even in the '90s when I first started using the internet, the phrase of the day was "don't feed the trolls". But people just can't help themselves. They will even reply saying "I know you're a troll, but...".
The Steam forums are a great example, where every other thread is a fake "is this game woke??" screed. The fact that you can be rewarded for being a cunt there with jesters (which translate into points that can be spent to buy profile items) just makes it a thousand times worse. You get 'paid' to be a troll on Steam. It's insanity.
The only anti-troll weapon that works or is needed is oblivion. Let their steaming turd of a post curdle in solitude. Don't even downvote it. Being downvoted is a victory for them, an acknowledgement that they exist and that they've gotten your attention and that they've annoyed you. Shadowban them from your mind. Block them so that no future posts of theirs will infect your screen. Report them so mods can remove/ban them. Just don't engage directly with the post or the user. Don't say "blocked and reported" in the troll's thread/post. Just do it silently.
Ive blocked so many award baiters on steam, when an update for one of the bigger games comes out the first few comment pages are filled with "you've blocked this user. If you've blocked enough of them the comments get usable again.
This is how I felt about online gameplay too. Someone being a turd? Block em. I still had some GREAT interactions with random players.
But nowadays every online game is dead silent. People are scared of toxicity so they're all sequestered in separate discord servers. Might as well be playing with bots. =\