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.
0, because it’s an armpit.
Lurked a fair amount in college (2006-2010ish) on /b/, /x/, /lit/ for the memes and spoof creepypasta. Don’t miss it in the least.
Very little. I was always content to wait for the actually funny greentexts to break containment and land somewhere else. I went to /b/ in like 2010 after hearing it was funny but it was pretty much just racist. Other boards seemed fine just sort of boring.
Similar experience with Tumblr, I like the funny stuff other people find for me and bring to reddit (and now Lemmy) but the site itself tended to be a little dull day to day.
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.
I haven’t spent any time there. 4chan’s reputation makes it seem like it’s not the internet experience I’m looking for.
/g/, because it was one of the only places I could ask tech questions without needing an account
From like 2004-2006 and mostly /b/ because I was an edgy teenager. Probably some others but I honestly don’t remember much of 4chan
Damn and I thought 2009 was early.
Im old now 😭 lol
Same
How’s your back feeling? 😅
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.
Good job being introspective.
Love the introspection here, way to grow :)
I lurked a bit in high school, and I’m pretty sure it fucked me up for years. Once reddit took off I switched over to that, since you could access screenshots of memes without exposing yourself to the horrors of 4chan itself.
Yeah pretty much all of the worst pieces of media I’ve seen have been on 4chan.
Used to look at /b/ fairly frequently. Eventually though it just turned into constant really boring porn (like, “rate my friend/girlfriend/sister” and a load of boring pictures of an attractive person who is almost certainly unknown to the OP)
It contained a lot of new, funny stuff, before then. A lot of racism and paedos, too, but I was never easily swayed on anything so it didn’t change my views. Back then I thought a lot of most extreme views were just ragebait, and didn’t take them seriously, due to how far away they were from any views I’d hear elsewhere (online or in real life) by serious people. With the Nazis coming out of the woodwork with Trump, I don’t know how true it was. I still tend to think quite a lot was not reflective of the views of the person posting it, but realise that a fair amount will have been.
I have never frequented the more mundane boards as I always felt like I could find that stuff somewhere else easier to use.
Yeah I agree with all of that.
0
/b/ and /r9k/.
/b/ because edgy teenage humour. /r9k/ because that’s where the fellow incels hung out. Before incel got such a bad name.
At some point though i noticed that /b/ was sharing nazi/racist/homophobic “jokes” but they weren’t really funny and nobody really seemed to be laughing any more. And quit r9k because incel stopped meaning “foreveralone virgin” and started meaning “serial killer/sex offender in training”.
I was never into incels but /r9k/ did have some insane posts here and there that were interesting. The rest of what you said I’d agree with.
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.
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.
Same. Like tourism into an exclusion zone to see the mutated local biota. Then promptly getting tfo and taking a mental silkwood shower lmao
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
im sure I have been on it because I heard about it and wanted to understand it and if its what im thinking it is its all haphazard and unorganized and I can’t see anyone spending time on it. you know its a bit why I was never wild about chat clients like discord. lived up to its name the way everything is just chaos to me.
