We found Fight Club in the FT comments section

I’m going to break the first rule of Fight Club. I’m going to talk about Fight Club

For those who haven’t seen the movie, Fight Club was where guys bored with corporate life went into basements to beat each other just to feel something. They wanted their faces smashed to escape a numb existence and remember that they were still human. Well, that spirit hasn’t died, it’s just become much more expensive and moved to a place no one would suspect: the comments section of the Financial Times

The new Fight Club doesn't smell like sweat. It smells like expensive fragrances and it costs a subscription of nearly €1000 a year just to get into the ring, making it the most exclusive sport in the world

During the day, these fighters are CEOs or hedge fund managers talking about "synergies" and "macroeconomic adjustments." But the second they cross the paywall, they strip off their civilization. Under usernames like ArbitrageKing69 they loosen their virtual ties to tell you that your analysis of the FED “is the most neo-Marxist garbage they’ve read since the Communist Manifesto”

The typical FT reader is a pillar of Western society. In glass-walled offices they are forced to be paragons of virtue: inclusive, empathetic, and HR-compliant. However, when they get back to the penthouse, they take off the gold cufflinks and enter the FT comments section. That is their dark basement

There, a CFO becomes an intellectual gladiator who no longer has to be "nice." There is no mercy: they can blow up the reputation of anyone who dares to suggest that Brexit wasn't that bad or that ESG is the future or they will use the Strait of Hormuz crisis to explain why your grasp of energy security is as shallow as a TikTok trend 

Honestly, it works as a necessary safety valve because the FT isn't really a newspaper. It is the place where people with the world's most over-inflated egos go humiliate each other. It’s a safe space where the size of your yacht, how many Apple shares you own, or how many people work for you doesn’t matter. Everyone gets the opportunity to be beaten up (intellectually)

The drama is that in real life, no one contradicts these guys because they are "the boss"and that lack of friction leaves them empty. That’s why, when a top manager gets a random user to explain them with condescension why they are a complete idiot for suggesting gold is a store of value they feel a pure shot of adrenaline. They need someone to crush them because that is the only way they feel alive in a world that always tells them they're right

It’s fascinating to see how the liberal class (the ones who most publicly defend tolerance) has created one the most intolerant space on the web. Many blame Elon Musk for the hate we see today, but the hate was already there 

The fact that this savagery happens on a paid platform, full of “educated" people with no bots to manipulate you, is the ultimate proof that hate isn't manufactured. Hate is a fundamental part of the society we live in