Big inspiration for the question is the assertion I’ve seen on Lemmy a few times that this user base is as bad/misogynistic/hateful. But also just curious.
I lurked on /a/, /an/, /b/, /f/, /g/, /t/, /wg/, /gif/ previously and now /wsg/.
I spent quite some time on /b/, when it was good. Because of the anonymity you’d focus more on the content and engage more based on the ideas themselves and not who said it.
I used to consider the deranged content as trolls but nowadays I’m not quite so sure… Many have been brainwashed into becoming extreme. Overall the board became a trash bin with 98% sexual content so I’ve lost all interest.
I like ttrpgs so that board was fun
I also like arguing with people so /b/ was fun for me, but yeah “asshole of the internet” is polite term for the place.
Better question is “What year did you visit 4chan” because some people will say /b/, some will say “when /b/ was good” and others with say “/b/ was never good”.
I remember coming back some years later and everyone was talking about /r9k/ and /b/ was old news.
Look, all I’m saying is just triforce. That’ll say how long they were on there for.
▲ ▲▲HOW THE HELL DO YOU TRIFORCE?
nice try FBI guy!
Some number of years in my teens browsing mostly /b/.
Looking back it’s interesting to see how much the company you spend your time in makes you become like them. It pretty successfully radicalized me into many stereotypical right-wing beliefs. Then when Trump got elected I over-corrected to the other extreme. I’ve since settled somewhere in the middle and now it’s curious to see this exact same influence on other people I hang with. I was under the illusion that the thoughts and beliefs were mine but they weren’t. I simply adopted the views of the group wholesale. Then I discarded them all and did the exact same thing again from the other extreme. We’re so gullible.
People assume propaganda is obvious, its actually very subtle when used effectively, breaking from a hive mind is difficult as, as humans we want accepted. I think a lot of radicalization is the exploitation of loneliness
Propaganda is not a term I’d personally use. Makes it sound more systematic than I believe it is. I’m sure that on every social media platform there are also the state-level actors wanting to put their thumb on the scale but how I see it is that there’s simply this Overton window of acceptable speech and views on each platform and it’s mostly set up by the loud minority of “activists” on that platform. People grow accustomed to encountering their views there and it becomes normalized and creates the illusion that this is a commonly held view among the userbase there independent of whether it really is. People quickly learn that expressing certain sentiment reliably gets them praise and approval whereas others result in them being attacked and ostracized. This then leads to an echo chamber where that small minority with the most extreme views basically holds the rest of the platform as hostage. If one tries to bring in nuance it tends to get viewed as opposition and that person gets labeled as the other. This leads them to then just self-censoring, remaining silent or simply parroting the same cliches even if they don’t agree on the details. It is in a way exploitation of loneliness because group membership is what it ultimately boils down to: if you want to be accepted to the group then here’s the stack of views you’re to agree with - please sign below or get the fuck out.
Love the introspection here, way to grow :)
Good job being introspective.
Zero.
Here and again, less as a place to interact and more how one might look at a perti dish on a lab. A lot of Internet culture has been born there in a virtually unrestrained chaos, no accounts, no names, no reputations, just doing whatever comes to mind and seeing what sticks.
That lack of any real reputation or responsibility lends itself to people letting out their worst parts that they wouldn’t publically sometimes, but can also let people explore other ideas they might not elsewhere too. Just so long as one doesn’t take it too seriously and has a stomach for some nasty shit it can be interesting.
Same. Like tourism into an exclusion zone to see the mutated local biota. Then promptly getting tfo and taking a mental silkwood shower lmao
Yeah that’s been how I’ve viewed it since 2009ish. Only ever lurked there. I used to like spooking myself on /x/ when I was a young teen. The sfw boards always had pretty reasonable content. /b/ had its place for memes and general wild shit. Lots of good video game, meme and general pop culture stuff. It always had a spectrum of normal people, edgy users and literal proud Nazis/extremists. Its always been a place to go to see the most recent horrible thing thats happend. I’m pretty unaffected by seeing horrible shit so I’ve always been able to wade through that to find interesting posts. That said, almost all of the worst things I’ve ever seen have been on 4chan. Nowadays its really shitty with nearly zero redeeming qualities. Only time I visit it now I go to the catalog on /b/ and search for ylyl threads. I find 1-5 good memes per 150 image thread, the rest is typically deplorable. Plenty of memes I’ve harvested there have gotten hundreds to 1000+ upvotes here.
None. I just know 4Chan from memes and !greentext@sh.itjust.works
I lurked most of the time, especially when the captcha system got out of hand.
Mu, co, tv, r9k, trv, TG, v, fit, ck also, po & toy when I wanted something I wasn’t interested in doing but wanted to see something other people liked. Also the porn boards.
I visited pol to see news, but didn’t agree with the opinions there.
The site has a bad reputation due to b and pol. The other boards have a lot of interesting new culture stuff and honest opinions that are pragmatic and nihilist.
Unfortunately lots of astroturfing also happened there.
I also hung out in 420chan and britchan. Those were a lot slower, and RIP. It’s just a nice format for a board.
I forgot about 420chan
That’s because marijuana affects memory.
Lmao I never went there and hardly partook so that’s probably more the case
I used to be a regular on /tv/ and /r9k/ between 2011-2015, I was even a tripfriend on /r9k/ for a while. It was very entertaining, all the interesting schizos were on the chans at some point. I even “drew” my own wojaks and pepes, lol, but only once each because I have no artistic talent, I’m just a big yapper.
/r9k/ was always a fucking trip. I only ever lurked but I used to frequent lot’s of boards. Now I solely see if theres a decent meme to find in a ylyl thread once or twice a week.
That’s kind of surprising. You’re the outspoken Catholic, right? How did you rationalize that back then? (Not a callout, I’m aware people change and grow)
Outspoken monotheist, Muslim persuasion. 🤓 And I wasn’t then, lol, that’s a more recent development. At the same time, much of the content was just depressed teens being edgy, not necessarily evil or overly malicious. /tv/ was basically all memes! Let’s not forget the chans had blue and red boards and blue boards were sfw. Fashion, cooking, technology, and many other boards were pretty “normal”.
My bad. I do lose track of people. Thanks for the honest answer 👍
Peace, brother. ✌️
/g/, because it was one of the only places I could ask tech questions without needing an account
/p/ (photography), /g/ (computer)
i used a filter in 4chanx to hide some words i find offending. it’s true there’s many hateful/misogynistic/racist people there, but there were also many interesting stuff. they have a very minimal moderation policy, i’m not sure if it’s a good thing.
haven’t went there much lately though.
/b/ and /v/ semi randomly, /tg/ more when it was created. Then I took a year off snd the place was ruined with ragecomics and all the other zoomer bs.
A few years in high school, mostly /b/, then much less as I found other chans and eventually settled on 420chan. I thought the incel/MGTOW/neckbeard population of 4chan was insufferable, annoying, woe-is-me, crybaby losers who found a way to blame everyone else for their own problems.
420chan was much better; it was full of reckless idiots, jaded addicts, and degenerate losers who found a way to blame society and “the system” for their own problems. Totally different. Not the same flavor at all.
When 420chan started to die, I started trying out Reddit. I stayed there until the API-pocalypse, where I switched to the Fediverse; first Lemmy, then here because, while leftist, I can’t stand tankies.
I agree with pretty much everything you’ve said.
None, ever, because I’m not a degenerate Nazi fuckbag
Not everyone who uses Lemmy is a tankie, right? Yeah the worst users on the 4chan spectrum are literally the worst humans, agreed. Used to be plenty of good shit on there though. Granted I used it most a decade+ ago. I’m a leftist and nothing I’ve ever seen there has swayed me from that stance.
Not a Nazi
Degenerate
You’re using concepts the Nazis used heavily in the same way that they did, just against them. You might want to interrogate that.
You might want to interrogate that.
shines a light in the face of using words against nazis TELL ME WHY YOU DID IT!
We live in a world where I’m now seeing various slurs that originated in Nazi circles being used as regular slang.
“Degenerate” as an insult is based in social degeneration theory, notably something coined by the original Nazi party to describe people they classed as sub-human, and they thought were leading to the degeneration of society.
Forgive me for not liking when people use concepts coined by the Nazis in the same ways the Nazis used them, just on different groups. It’s not like classing people as sub-humans has lead to problems in the past or anything.
Yes, fuck Nazis, but also fuck Nazi ideas, and maybe we shouldn’t be using them.
On the other hand. We should take things from Nazis and use them as we see fit because Nazis shouldn’t be allowed to have things.
What the Nazis had was bigotry, and violence, I’m good???
And we should take those things from them so they don’t have them anymore. You see what I’m saying.
Yeah I’m not disagreeing. It just sounded funny and I decided to make a silly/bad/stupid joke.
Ahh, sorry, misunderstood!
No worries, all good.
Yeah, mostly this.
My only exposure was screenshots of /r/ and /b/ posted to reddit
