in defense of 4chan in its current incarnation

4chan dot org is probably in my top 5 most visited sites, like, even in the past year. (...)

I am in a lonely and isolated chapter of my life rn, and have come to realize that online is where I'm attempting to have a social life. Which is why, when I refresh SNA over and over and none of my posts are being replied to, and I'm not interested in the most recently bumped 20 threads, I feel like I either have no friends, or an awkward silence has come over the room.

This is when I often turn, sadly, to the reeking, fetid cesspool that is 4chan. Where the conversation doesn't stop.

The conventional wisdom is that, these days, the site has next-to-none value. /b/, not worth discussing. /pol/, home of the alt right. /mu/ sort of a cringey melange of newbs and spergy (sorry) elitists who you sense do not leave the house/basement. These are, I think, the big 3, aside from /v/ (video games) which I have no interest in.

I'm going to focus on /b/. Even though it's still very "active", it's considered dead, or on life support, by oldf*ags. Many feel this way about ILX, and good-ol-days syndrome hits every forum, but it's inarguably true with /b/. Compelling "conversations" are very few and far between now amongst the weeds of porn and dicks and trolling and rekt/ylyl/loli/political and issue bating, etc.

But there is still value there imo, the same sort of zeitgeisty stuff that was considered the gold-in-the-hills of yesteryear's /b/. Let's take the everpresent FB/IG/VSCO threads, which on the surface seem just like another porn thread, just nonnude. Examine the thread, though, and you'll find that anon is not fapping. They're studying. What is a VSCO girl, why is shit like this popular, what is the aesthetic, how did it come about, how is changing (and why). And, ultimately, what does it MEAN(...)?

(tbc in thread a little later, have to run errand)

but first

YOU

STILL

VISIT

THIS

WEBSIT

(well, a few of you anyway)

its bad and due to /pol/ it didn't mellow out and slide left over the past decade the way SA did. i get the appeal of a super active traditional forum over e.g. twitter but not when half the posts are unreadably trolly or hateful

i check in once every few weeks but it's pretty bleak over there, esp /pol/ which isn't even alt-right so much as just neo-nazi. like porn is to /b/ nazi stuff is to /pol/. i agree that ilx is also v uninteresting these days i almost bumped the ilx boring thread the other day but was too bored to do it. first we lost a lot of critical posters and of the ppl who stayed either they mellowed out or just lost interest and it's ok i more visit just bc of force of habit and some ppl i like are here. there are still some ppl with great taste who post to ilm and turn me onto new music but yeah both communities have seen their most vivid compelling days past. much like humanity maybe.

if I had all the time in the world it wouldn't be enough to bother with that website

like probably there are some music board posters at 4chan who like things that i'd potentially be interested in but it's too bleak + nasty for me to make the effort. i guess despite its stagnation in some important ways ilx is just comfortable for me in a way that a site full of nazi pedo edgelords ever could be. but maybe i'm wrong about some of the subboards and the worst of that stuff is largely avoidable? maybe on the books sub? even if true (and i'm skeptical) you still know who your neighbors are. i'm pretty sure aeon flux and subjectivisten are fine even tho i have no idea what goes on over there.

i don't really feel "i don't have anywhere better to go" is a strong defense, though i do feel really bad for you. you deserve better.

Mordy, enlighten me: what was so remarkable about ILX's olden days?

there were great posters who have since left. the conversations were more lively. people were interested in wide ranges of stuff and people wrote long paragraphs with interesting information they knew, or things they had considered. conversation was broader and more opinions on a variety of subjects were tolerated. the clusterfucks were also much larger the personalities larger there were way more people ppl were less mellow in some ways and more mellow in others. there were a few other active boards of more experimental natures which had enough ppl to populate them and make them active.

I only haunted ILM in the early 00s and don't recall it being all that different except for its greater number of posters and more cred-obsessed musical opinions, the latter of which I can't say I miss.

maybe you had to be there but whenever i see a thread from the early days necrobumped there's usually someone saying something acutely stupid, grossly offensive, or both right at the start.

Yeah, aside from missing particular posters, pining for the olden golden days of ILX is generally some rose-colored glasses shizz imo.

nope

I haven’t ever really gone to 4chan, even when it had less of a bad reputation, so to speak. I’ve almost always had my “homes” online, and some have ended badly (I got banned from one, which was a total joke) but for better or for worse I kept going for the same things.

I have commented on ilx for almost nine years, which feels shorter to me than my three/four year periods on either of the other places, probably because most of my participation has been much more casual?

Ilx is the only place I didn’t discover myself and so it doesn’t really feel like “mine”. It’s also the only place I’ve been a member of where I came after the “remember when this board was great” stuff started. Understand the feelings of people who’ve been here a long time about that, but ultimately you aren’t ever going to get new people if you’re constantly implying (not necessarily deliberately) that the people who do bother posting nowadays are of lesser quality or whatever. I always think, whenever one of those edgelord threads circa the GWB era gets unearthed, “really? This is what you’re missing?” Most forums have a pretty high noise to content ratio anyway.

Ilx is interesting to me because it’s one of only two places I’ve ever posted online that had the issue of people wondering why more women didn’t post there. For the most part, since my last forum that was like that, almost all my online friends and places I go are mostly female and ilx is the only exception. This is a part of why I never took to Reddit. I guess it’s like Mordy says above about 4chan; you’re just browsing a thread and suddenly you’ve got some cunt brigading or regurgitating MRA rhetoric. (Though tbh the thing that really was shit about reddit was how often comments just descend into the same stupid jokes and sings again and again).

tl; dr all online places are like this, but I like forums more than almost anything and so you shouldn’t let them die

My opinion, which may satisfy golden-age truthers and objectors alike, is that nascent ILE (2000-2002-or-2003) was kinda choppy, cringey, desultory as it found its way. 2004-2007 or 2008 were indeed golden years with and embarrassment of intellect, charisma, and edge thanks to a live Pickle Bar. I think ILX is still very good, but it has kind of a "minor" feel compared to prime ILX.

*lively

I've habitually hung out at 4Chan over the years, usually on the /co/ (comics and cartoons) and /mu/ boards, but recently decided to stay away. The problem is that, while there is some good stuff to be found there, it isn't enough to make up for all the bad. I can remember the topic of Daria come up on /co/ one time and there was a really long thread full of engaging discussion and different perspectives. But every other time I came across a Daria topic, there were a few one-line opinions, a few shitposts, and then the thread died. Someone posted the 80s DC comic Angel Love a few months back and it was pretty damn funny - both the comic itself and the live reactions.

But it felt like there were just occasional good spots in a sea of hateful racist shit and images I can't unsee.

IMO fuck 4chan

2004-2007 or 2008

i have seen my share of (and, honestly, done my share of) breast-beating, in various spaces, over the "why aren't there more LADYWOMEN on this forum" question, and i'm overall not impressed by it, any more than i'm impressed by white communities making a big deal about being welcoming to minorities, rich communities making a big deal about being welcoming to poor people, etc., etc. because usually it's not the mystery it's made out to be. it is not actually a huge challenge to understand, for instance, why there aren't more women in science - it's just that a lot of men in science are resistant to acknowledging or addressing those reasons. why bring it up if the only result is that you're going to get yelled at and nothing will change?

golden age ilx depended to an underappreciated degree on posters who took an active hand in community-building activities like inventing thread types and 'games' (kind of like parlor routines), encouraging meetups, and trying to bring order to the burgeoning buzzing vitality (remember the thread-categorizing phase?!). coming up with six different ways of running polls wasn't quite a replacement for that but i suppose it partakes of the same spirit.

Examine the thread, though, and you'll find that anon is not fapping. They're studying.

really, dude

well, in November at least

haha yeah that was b.s. but i'm arguing a side

you're not making a very convincing point

in the same way it can be fun to poke the wound of "indie guilt", it's evident that 4chan is similarly stigmatized around here and i was hoping finally talk some about it. i was going to continue my case but super bowl and all, plus it's a horrible place

Kinda inevitable that the thread became about ilx instead

next week: storm front friend or foe

If OP is in a lonely and isolated chapter of their life, they could do worse than look at /soc/ from time to time. It's possible to meet interesting people on there.

This thread was always about ILX tbf

∆ ∆
 ∆

I, a self-avowed decadent, am glad to be contributing to the Decline.

never understood that triforce stuff. It took me ages to work out what "dubs", "trips" and "quads" meant.

xp

I am in a lonely and isolated chapter of my life rn, and have come to realize that online is where I'm attempting to have a social life. Which is why, when I refresh SNA over and over and none of my posts are being replied to, and I'm not interested in the most recently bumped 20 threads, I feel like I either have no friends, or an awkward silence has come over the room.

This is when I often turn, sadly, to the reeking, fetid cesspool that is 4chan. Where the conversation doesn't stop.

The conversation on R3ddit doesn't stop either iirc. I don't know why this makes you go to 4ch. I'm sorry you're lonely and isolated, but it's not an inevitability that that will make you go to 4chan, like you seem to make it out to be. I've difficulty seeing the implied causality here.

Wanko, come and raise merry hell on the 2019 albums poll rollout that should be starting shortly

I'm sorry you're lonely and isolated, but it's not an inevitability that that will make you go to 4chan, like you seem to make it out to be. I've difficulty seeing the implied causality here.

― Le Bateau Ivre, Monday, February 3, 2020 8:06 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

the speed of the conversation, or rather the idea of having on-demand conversation, is genuinely different, though, and I think an undermentioned component as to how teenage boys* get radicalized **

*
**: maybe if I use two separate sets of asterisks to denote the aside about my referring to teenage boys and not the OP or anyone in this thread, the aside will actually get through

It totally is imo - not just the stuff circulated on there, but the general sense of nihilism is fertile ground for extremism.

gyac, what sort of femaley online places do you go to? The few I've been on (not so much now) I got the impression would've been sneered at for being about womeny things. E.g. one was a skincare/beauty -based one but was about a lot of other stuff too.

I was never on the SA forums I don't think but I visited the site a lot when I was a wee teen.

I often think I'd like parts of Reddit but it seems hard to navigate and it's just too big.

Ah, think I pressed clear!

Previous online “home” was a livejournal community, now defunct, that was ~95% female, and literally everything was discussed.

My main spaces now are less public than that, really only ILX is now that space for me. I have various private discord/signal/twitter chats going with (female) friends where we discuss games, books, and various geeky shit but also personal stuff. I think it’s unfortunate you’ve had that experience but usually most female-majority spaces I’ve been in there will always be someone to talk to about skincare etc. Ofc there are dickheads there too who’ll shit on you but that’s the same with any forum.

the interesting thing about reddit is that it's not one community with an overall "community vibe". different subreddits have different group personalities. places like facebook and twitter have a more porous vibe, they seem to be more coercive towards behaving in certain platform-dictated ways.

although there's really only one subreddit i ever still lurk on i sort of feel it's the least worst Content Industry site right now (discord aside).

re: online places and radicalization - of course 4ch radicalizes your hikikomori _in a certain way_, but though 4chan is a key actor and should cease to exist the underlying problem goes deeper than that imo.

the interesting thing about reddit is that it's not one community with an overall "community vibe". different subreddits have different group personalities.

Yeah, this is why I'm wary of generalizations about reddit. It's a lot more diffracted than first meets the eye.

My last year on Reddit involved realizing that most of the subreddits I was active in were essentially anti-reddit groups

https://genius.com/Aphrodites-child-the-system-lyrics

4chan (and 8chan) are diabolical in the classic sense of the world. The hateful, bitter “blackpilled” ideologies—whether they be misogynistic or white nationalist or just gleefully anarchic—are tempting because they are nihilistic and if you embrace this way of seeing you don’t need to hold yourself to any kind of standard. Nothing is worse than these communities.

Otm

It's fucking eye-opening to learn some of you do this shit. Like, go to a "Murder, She Wrote" forum if you want intelligent discussion about your hobbies.

to be fair here, there are apparently no other forums on the internet apart from the absolute fucking worst one

I go to MSW forums to write fanfic

i think i've looked at maybe two 4 chan threads in my whole lifetime and i assume that all the other threads are exactly like those two threads

r/murdershewrote is pretty horny

https://www.reddit.com/r/murdershewrote/comments/aut7m6/wtftheres_actually_full_blown_nudity_in_murder/

In this episode about a ballet gone wrong, there's a scene where a man bursts into a room and a semi nude woman (80s hottie Nancy Valen) quickly covers her bare chest.

Of course this was filmed at a time where it was virtually impossible to pause a video frame by frame so I'm sure no one noticed or cared, but if you pause at the exact moment you can clearly see her nude breasts. This was on the family friendly TV broadcast too!

discord's only as good as the server and most public servers are crap extensions of some subreddit or twitch stream

I am too old and square to have been on any discord servers, but occasionally I'll see someone interesting on twitter/twitch throw out a discord link and say "come join us", but since I always feel like I'm the only person watching their stream / following on twitter that they don't already know, the invitation is probably not really open to me

but... maybe that's the old way of thinking, idk

well I fully expected and am savoring the high-horsery. but, try as i might, i cannot relate to the mind that dismisses out of hand something so singular, culturally impactful, controversial, and is by no means thoroughly toxic. i've partaken in countless "conversations" that were as astute, informed, prudent and nuanced as any I've read here. the toxic stuff is easily circumvented. you learn rather quickly what boards and threads to avoid. (and I'll concede that's 90% or more of the site). I just find this stance "incurious" and impetuos. And I suspect a lot of it is plain bullshit.

*impetuous

The place really opened my eyes to a ton of fetishes I'm glad I don't have

New board description.

I’m shocked shocked to find gambling etc

how do you even “chat” on 4chan don’t people just post images

teenagers

idk about 4chan but am more than happy to throw rvw an otm in the general sense

I do t think ppl are dismissing 4chan out of hand, they’re saying they’ve been there and it sucks

yes, but also

* there are roughly ∞ better websites to spend your time on
* it has been a malevolent influence on the internet and the world and if it were closed tomorrow I would be very happy

if it were closed tomorrow the anime nazi frogs would still have their discords and satellite sites

it wouldn't solve everything, no. but it would help.

something I struggle with is that with DJP as a poc, I get it. and i'm making the presumption that his position is informed by his race and I might be wrong.

but if that were the case, why do I endorse his stance, but think it's "okay" for me to participate there (4chan)? I cannot answer that question satisfactorily, and that does bother me. I guess I see at as, racism exists, it sucks, but I don't see my visiting the site as an endorsement of, or casual indifference to racism.

it would be a good thing if the site closed. another problem...

Your viewpoint isn’t objective, and you’re thinking that you know for a fact it’s all good and you’re not handwaving racism by being captain defend 4chan on here. It doesn’t work like that, though, and your comment about “savouring the high-horsery” doesn’t really suggest that this is a stance you’re very sincere about.

the toxic stuff is easily circumvented. you learn rather quickly what boards and threads to avoid. (and I'll concede that's 90% or more of the site).

it's just interesting to me how ilx, liberal as it is, can be so reactionary and predictable sometimes

idk about 4chan but am more than happy to throw rvw an otm in the general sense

― BSC Joan Baez (darraghmac), Saturday, February 8, 2020 5:49 PM (fifty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

you're being trolled :D

xp ehh scratch that. may be true for a couple dissenters but by no means all

it's just interesting to me how ilx, liberal as it is, can be so reactionary and predictable sometimes

I don’t think ppl are dismissing 4chan out of hand, they’re saying they’ve been there and it sucks

There were posts here during occasional toxic moments in, like, 2007 where people were begging not to turn ILX into 4Chan

really if you want to take a stand on creepy sub rosa racism then dig into 4chan and all that, shit is rife

― gff, Friday, August 17, 2007 4:29 PM bookmarkflaglink

no no no that’s only 90% of the board, don’t get it twisted

sorry I’m done. Seriously, though, 4chan?

something I struggle with is that with DJP as a poc, I get it. and i'm making the presumption that his position is informed by his race and I might be wrong.

but if that were the case, why do I endorse his stance, but think it's "okay" for me to participate there (4chan)? I cannot answer that question satisfactorily, and that does bother me. I guess I see at as, racism exists, it sucks, but I don't see my visiting the site as an endorsement of, or casual indifference to racism.

it would be a good thing if the site closed. another problem...

― otm into winter (rip van wanko)

well, compromising on shit like this is an _option_ for you as a cis white man.

just know that the more you associate with them, the more that you listen to them, the more you will become like them.

i will leave others to address the sociological and emotional implications of your recent statements; i'm not totally up to it right now tbh.

except to say that it sounds to me like you have, in fact, already picked a side (with or without considerable charm), and i'm not sure it's necessarily compatible with the ilx hivemind circa 2020.

Even if you found some niche on 4Chan that wasn't Nazis or revenge porn or whatever, I don't know how you could look at it for more than a couple of minutes without your eyes bleeding.

oh i'm thoroughly desensitized and would be a little suspicious of anyone who's very online and claims not to be in 2020

perhaps i'm being a little naive/solipsistic in that i presume others share a curiosity or even attraction for the taboo. that is what initially drove me to 4chan. again, it's hard for to relate to that, but i must respect it

(but that curiosity cab be satisfied and then exhausted verrrry quickly at 4chan, and is no longer a factor in why i visit the site*)

Transgression has lost its zip in the 21st century, the bourgeoisie have been thoroughly epatered.

perhaps i'm being a little naive/solipsistic in that i presume others share a curiosity or even attraction for the taboo. that is what initially drove me to 4chan. again, it's hard for to relate to that, but i must respect it

― otm into winter (rip van wanko)

i do believe there are other ways to explore "the taboo" besides hanging out with shitposting nazis. for instance, one could, for instance, come to the belated realization that one is, say, trans, or otherwise queer, or even just spend time hanging out with people who are.

i'm not saying i'm intrinsically interesting, i'm not, i'm kind of a boring middle-aged lady, i'm not interested in being "provocative". one doesn't necessarily get the thrill of the transgressive from me that one does from jim goad. but the sense of the "taboo" fostered by goad, hicks, 4chan, there's no depth to it, it's shock coupled with profound despair.

and i think it's maybe the latter that attracts people more than the former? the opportunity to be a lifelong learner of helplessness?

There were posts here during occasional toxic moments in, like, 2007 where people were begging not to turn ILX into 4Chan

Those were the days, eh?

there's no depth to it, it's shock coupled with profound despair.

― you know my name, look up the number of the beast (rushomancy), Sunday, February 9, 2020 2:03 AM

The depth of the despair is pretty scary. Tumblr never got credit for how utterly foul it could be in this way. That's where I seen the scariest shit.

I think the comics sections of the chan sites seem to get all sorts of visitors looking for torrents. When I first discovered Gurochan I was looking for scanlations. If you're looking for some kind of digital piracy, Chan sites seem like a good bet.

Thinking of that assumption about trolls being mostly teenage boys and trolls often assuming other users cannot be women ("there are no women on the internet" meme), there was a tv show that tracked down cyberbullies and they often turned out to be someone unexpected, like a really furious old lady. Makes me wonder about how much of Daily Mail's audience got into 4Chan.

Rip Van Wanko - Why do you need an all-purpose site? I initially disliked that ILX did everything (don't know why) and stuck exclusively to the music section for a few years. Surely going to separate forums should work? I think they might be healthier than multi-purpose forums.
I'm still not really getting a sense of what you go to 4Chan for. I think it's best used as a last resort but I would prefer the politically orientated Chan sites were gone. Wipe out twitter and facebook while we're at it.

I suspect a lot of people use the anonymity to talk about things they'd be too ashamed to even under a fixed pseudonym username. Like how many Nazis admit all the ways they like to be humiliated? I suspect that's why sex workers were doxxed, they know all this stuff.
But a lot of the confessions probably wont even be as sinister as that.

Discord seems like an app and I couldn't view it from outside, fuck that.

It's fucking eye-opening to learn some of you do this shit. Like, go to a "Murder, She Wrote" forum if you want intelligent discussion about your hobbies.
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, February 8, 2020 8:21 PM

Where were you when I needed someone to show me a better place to find Hans Bellmar-alikes, cars exploding with brains and the newest zatfig sensations?

Also, I miss people on ILX who are still here but no longer talk about books.

Searched Desuarchive for Shelleyan Orphan and got a Nazi thread all in german.

good bet that the "tv show that tracked down cyberbullies" wasn't interested in accurately reporting the demographics

I think it was one of those things that just covered specific cases. How could anyone get accurate demographics on anonymous communities where you cant even track a users posts?

Or cyberbullying in general?

i mean, not knowing exactly where this program falls on the "reality show/local news investigation <----> peer-reviewed documentary" spectrum, that it probably had more interest in a juicy narrative than an typical one

I'm still not really getting a sense of what you go to 4Chan for.

boredom, too much time, force of habit. when 4chan jumped the shark, in what seemed like overnight sometime around 2012, and I can't remember why, I wondered where the users went. (I never found the answer.) I appreciated 4chan, despite all the grossness, for being the vanguard of so, so much of internet culture. so i go back partly, and almost always in vain, looking for that. some new cultural observation/interpretation that's bubbling somewhere in your head that you're hoping to find fleshed out (in a dumb meme probably) that's probably already been discusses in Baffler or the Awl or somewhere but I'm too ADD to read those.

But it's a waste of time now. I failed to convince myself it's worth visiting

the corona stuff on /pol/ is all "IT'S HAPPENING! omg we're all going to die" vs. "stop exaggerating, it's a total nothingberder"

I did find something pretty funny in Desuarchive recently. Vox Day was bragging about how he could beat up SJW Jack Kirby (some said he was previously claiming that Kirby would have liked to work for him) and criticizing his drawing skills. Then one of Day's fans tweeted that Kirby was on twitter, sending all his SJW hordes against Vox Day. This guy didn't realize how long Kirby has been dead.

Kirby wouldn’t’ve hesitated to clock that nazi punk tho cf famous anecdote.

Kirby ate nazis for breakfast iirc

I think that's why Vox seemed to start having reservations about Kirby.