I've been kicking around these thoughts for a while and

One of the most common arguments that I've seen advanced and wish to preempt is that 4chan doesn't 'decline' as much as it 'evolves'. That 4chan in effect goes through distinct and identifiable periods that can be distinguished from each other, but that none of them represent a change in quality so much as they amount to a simple costume change. I fail to see this as anything other than an attempt to deny the concept of 'quality' altogether. It's an opinion that doesn't reflect an examination of what those changes actually meant, but simply claims that 'for my own concern, they are interchangeable' which speaks more or less to an agreeable and uncritical attitude in the individual than a serious attempt examine the issue. I hope that my arguments will put this notion to rest or at least encourage someone to rethink that idea.

I want to firstly try to engage the notion that quality on 4chan does not change: that it is 'zero-sum'. That as one board declines its creative energy is spread totally undiminished to other boards and the quality of 4chan doesn't change even as boards get worse. I do not think this is the case. I believe that more realistically the creative energy of a board is a unique configuration of particular posters to particular board. Someone who generates amusing OC on /sp/, for example, cannot simply be transplanted to another board and produce the same level of content. For one he might not even want to. His impetus might be entirely limited to that one board and he might not have anything to say on a different board. There are structural conditions unique to boards as well which dictate what posters can actually post. Boards with strict moderation are generally going to have less free-wheeling OC than more relaxed boards. Turning a lightly-modded board into a highly-modded board (like /sp/'s experience) diminishes the overall creative capacity of 4chan itself. It doesn't simply just shift it from one board to another (Cont 2/?)

Secondly the addition of new boards disperses the efforts of posters, even if quality was zero-sum across the whole of 4chan, it can't all go to the same board. The addition of new boards means that 'quality' is dissipated by being spread thin across a host of hitherto nonexistent boards, which has the effect of diminishing quality on individual boards (some of these new boards have unique interactions with the quality of others when their subject matter overlap /qst/ for example had a substantial impact on /tg/, /asp/ on /sp/ etc..).

The idea that quality on 4chan is zero-sum becomes even more ridiculous when you elaborate what it actually means. That 4chan in 2003 is the same as 4chan in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008...2017. That in the entire evolution of 4chan from a niche community of SA weebs to its vertiginous rise to 'last boss of the internet' and onto today with the changes that entailed, 4chan was qualitatively unchanged. I propose that quality on 4chan instead resembles an organic life-cycle with fertile periods of intense activity brought about by unique conditions which attract new users, eventually reach maturity, and then exhaust themselves and become pale imitations of those high times (paradoxically, more users and more activity do not equal greater creativity which is the lifeblood of quality, since only a tiny minority of posters are actually responsible for content https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture) , more users can actually have the opposite effect and drown or drive out the content creators under heaps of worthless shitposts). Quality then is not simply users posting but it is the right kind of user in the right environment.

All posters are not created equal. It's common sense but its an idea that's worth exploring. Not all posters are able or willing to make the same contributions in their posts. Not only does intelligence and articulation vary wildly, but so does their effort and experience. Broadly speaking a 15 year old highschooler on his first week is not going to provide the same level of maturity and thoughtfulness as a 25 year old whose been here for 10 years (ironically in this regard, a NEET might be a better poster than a high-functioning adult because of the level of commitment they can invest in their posting). 4chan is the sum of its users and what they see fit to post so it stands to reason that changes in its users or their attitudes towards posting have a substantial impact on the general quality of the site.

So what makes a 'good' 4chan poster? This is something that can vary greatly depending on opinion, but there are a number of things that I think we can generally agree on make for better posters: intelligence, wit, creativity (e.g. creating OC rather than being a passive spectator), commitment (someone who invests more time and effort in their posts is preferable to someone who spends as little time as possible), familiarity & respect for the respective culture (nobody wants posters who treat their boards no different than they would 9gag). Too little of these respective qualities wreck havoc on a board and if we examine the change in 4chan activity over the last years we see signs that indicate legions of new users who exhibit a staggering lack of these qualities.

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If we look at the activity of 4chan in the last 7 years, we cannot fail to see the explosive increase of new posters in the last several years. From 2010 to 2017 the number of unique visitors has more than trebled (with a bulk of that increase in the staggeringly short time of the last two years). For each poster who was here as recent as 2010 there's more than 2 posters who only STARTED posting on 4chan in 2015 (if we set our benchmark further back to 'conventional oldfag' territory the displacement becomes even more extreme). From here we ask ourselves, does this matter? A new poster might be just as good or even better than a old one right? Seniority on an anonymous image board doesn't matter, but the issue is more important than arbitrary years spent on 4chan. If we associate 'quality' with old posters, not simply because of their seniority, but because of their familiarity with 'board culture' and their ability to self-moderate the question we have to ask is: have the new users been assimilated to take up these values? If new posters have a fundamentally different conception of their relationship with 4chan and the boards they post on, can that fail to have a profound impact on the quality of the site? Is it even possible for older posters to assimilate a new generation that outnumbers them more than 2 to 1?

It's not a stretch to say that a poster on his first day is going to be less savvy with the board culture to provide the same level of quality as someone who has been there for many years ('lurk more' was not a common saying for no reason). While the original users of 4chan came from a background of internet forums where community was an important and endearing feature (which is why namefags were extremely common in the early years on 4chan, there was no stigma in identifying yourself because you were part of a tight-knit group), newer users totally lack this experience. Coming from twitter, or reddit, or facebook--They see 4chan not as a community but as a roiling arena of all-against-all where the only object is to extract the maximum amount of dopamine in the form of (You)s with the least amount of effort. They lack the communal experience of growing alongside a board where one has so many brushes with like-minded souls that fosters endearment and respect for the board and its users. They interpret 'belonging' to a board as license to post whatever comes to mind. They claim the rights of being one of the community, without the responsibility of upholding board quality. They abuse this privilege by routinely crossposting material to and from other boards and other websites (they are dumbfounded why someone would even care if their pictures came from reddit). They confuse attention with quality. They prefer the constant stimulation of a fast moving board to the intimate space of a genuine community. They see no difference between posting from a phone or a desktop. They care little for the subtle art of affixing just the right picture to their posts (the same few all-purpose reaction images are sufficient for them wherever they go). In short they treat 4chan as a communal piss trough and ridicule the idea that it was or could be any different.

Now this is not to say that all new users are categorically terrible and that after a certain arbitrary time period they become good. We were all new users are one point. What is different is the change in what assimilation meant in 2007 to 2017. In 2007 there was no autonoko, there was no catalog, the FAQ was tucked away, knowyourmeme didn't exist, smartphones were still on the horizon, 4chan 'culture' hadn't merged with the general internet culture (indeed 4chan was practically incomprehensible to a layperson on his first visit), the site was generally only found through internet forums, the standard entry point, /b/, was extraordinarily hostile to newfags and it was difficult to not reveal yourself as one. Frankly 4chan was intimidating and there was nothing to hold your hand and the only way to integrate into 4chan was to 'lurk more'. Contrast this to present day, the site is streamlined to make it easy for new users to navigate on their first experience, 4chan 'culture' has become so ubiquitous and stale that they're not uncommonly found on the most popular sites in the entire world, there exist a plethora of guide material for one to learn anything about the site, 4chan is commonly referenced in the most visible of places, 4chan memes are no longer so inexplicable or esoteric that they confuse or repel people--they're basically advertisements to the site. Wherever the new user arrives, it's unlikely he'll even be recognize as such unless he just comes out and admits it. No longer does a new user have to 'lurk more'. That period of trepidation and awe which lead to a feeling of accomplishment and belonging(to finally earn your place) has been replaced by an express pass that entitles anyone to access and turns 4chan into an open and willing receptacle for common trash.

While this part is purely my own musings, I think that when in times past those moments when a kind poster would graciously provide new users with a general guide of how to post on 4chan (how noko works, how sage works etc...) inspired a sense of goodwill and connection to the site. It was a rite of passage, an acknowledgement by a senior that bestowed a certain sense of obligation and responsibility. Assimilation was a delicate balance of hostility and generosity, oldfags jealously guarding the secrets of operating on 4chan which was their privilege while offering occasional moments of leniency and attention that strengthened the bond between the new user and the site. That moments like this which used to be routine are totally gone from the site is nothing but detrimental in my eyes.

What all this amounts to is an obliteration of 4chan's ability to self-moderate. Visible sages were taken from the users for being 'improperly used' (a change made alongside other changes in streamlining it seems as though moot felt this tool was perhaps too unwelcoming to new users), mods started handing out bans for 'boogeyman posting' (though nobody could deny the encroaching overlap in users between 4chan and the rest of web2.0, the trouble it seems was users treating this change as unwelcome). With new users streaming in, old users powerless to exert influence and mods firmly in the camp of the new arrivals, 4chan's metaphorical immune system was annihiliated--4chan was now figuratively dying of AIDS.

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I'm going to print this shit out and read it on the toilet later

Another important change in 4chan which I think nobody will deny is that growing resemblance of both 4chan boards to each other and 4chan as a whole to the rest of the internet: a unmistakable trend towards homogeneity. Where many 4chan boards used to have unique standards of conduct, unique reaction images, unique tripculture, unique memes, a general sense of independence and community that differentiated boards from each other (board-tans were the most obvious expression of this), boards on 4chan today, especially the fast moving ones, have long started to blend together. Where /a/ used to pride itself on its elitism and impenetrability, it has given way to the same lame-brained regurgitated phrases and images that are found not just on /tv/, /v/, /pol/, /r9k/ but on reddit, twitter, youtube comments, imagur, etc...Where before the internet 'stole' its memes and lingo from 4chan, now many 4chan users freely borrow from the most mainstream parts of the internet and have no qualms with dumping them on 4chan. 4chan has become so porous to cultural transmission that it is rapidly becoming indistinguishable from the rest of the internet. Where once 4chan stood as one of the last bastion of web1.0: independent, hostile to outside influence, creators not spectators, mischievous, a pervading sense of elitism--it can hardly lay claim to those attributes today. 4chan in 2017 bears more resemblance in content to reddit than it does with 4chan in 2006, and there is no doubt it has more users that frequent reddit than were around in 2006. The now common practice of attacking posters with 'reddit' does less to repel reddit than it solidifies and highlights the link between the sites, a routine of the pot and the kettle. To me this represents a long slide towards mediocrity. The only resistance to this swell of complacency that new 4chan offers is a cynical sneer as the ship sinks. (2nd to last post)

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Now as users weened on web2.0 displace the old users for good and 4chan faces its most formidable challenge yet--assimilation into generic webculture & a growing lucrativeness to commercialization -- there lies the danger of the past being rewritten. Pernicious truisms taken for fact. Limited perspectives presented as the whole story. Activity mistaken for health. All restraints loosed. That the sheer weight of the 'new' might overbear the value of the 'old'. The last thing I want is for this effort to be summarily dismissed as simply a crotchety fit, an 'attack of nostalgia'. I didn't write this to simply 'damn the newfags' or to prophesize doom. What I wanted to do was to get past the puddles and eddies this conversation always gets stuck in, address those concerns and hopefully move the conversation forward. We like to believe that anonymity allows us to be brutally honest, but if we can't appraise ourselves then how do we uphold the things that hold value to us here? (end)

>>1536420
>Turning a lightly-modded board into a highly-modded board (like /sp/'s experience) diminishes the overall creative capacity of 4chan itself.
This especially caught my attention, because I've always believed that truly good moderation is heavily based in moral, level headed choices, and not a simple matter of Yes/No. That's not to say I think staying on-topic is unimportant, but that keeping things honest and true are the keys to happiness and quality. It's more than keeping a board or community in order, it's about helping to make people genuinely happy.

All in all, I'm glad someone could put my thoughts into words I couldn't find. Thank you.

>>1536413
Im currently writing an essay on 4chan and in my reading came across Lee Knuttila's concept of 'contingency' in regards to 4chan.

They define contingency as 'that which is neither necessary, nor impossible', then go on to say that 'to "dwell-in" 4chan is to dwell within contingency'.

The term is unpacked a little as the 'complete absence of certainty'. It is that permanent uncertainty and limitless possibility which 4chan has at any moment. This is a true aspect of virtuality, one with the real world lacks, even an anonymous stranger is embodied.
(In an anonymous crowd you will soon start to pick up ques of individuality, notice patterns and identity markers, the crowd becomes less and less anonymous. But 4chan may have moments of clarity which then disappear entirely when the thread dies.)

Knuttila actually goes on to say 'Contingency through anonymity becomes the wellspring through which the expected repost, the variable non-meme and the unexpected meme emerge'

The point IS, that mayhaps this concept of '4chan was always shit' is an example of this contingency coupled with self-denigration. That by resisting any sort of analysis of where it 'is, has been and where its headed' the user is merely dwelling within contingency. Within the 'now' and all the potential it holds. Thisis what I would see as 4chans strength, its now-minded ephemerlity. This is what keeps it lithe and interesting.

If 4chan has always been shit then I am at liberty to post anything without feeling like I risk stepping outside of the bounds of expected content.
Perhaps it is important for 4chan to always be shit.

>>1536436
You have some really interesting and good points, Id love to discuss them more. Especially your last sentence, as well as your point about the old generation of forum-users vs. the new generation of users.

I dont largely agree with your fears for where 4chan is headed however.
I think that an appraisal of its history would evidence its extreme flexibility and ever-changing ways. Im sure youre aware of this and I would say it is precisely this flux that will keep 4chan -4chan. It has the capacity to deal with this new world, this new internet.

But of course youre right to point out how an increased casual userbase could dilute this ability to change, and you might be right. You really might be, im half-convinced myself.

BUT I believe that the genesis of this flexibility is not necessarily a result of its user base but a product of the culture that ANONYMITY itself inspires.

So 4chan is not built necessarily on the shoulders of its oldfags but is rather engineered by 'A-culture ('Anonymous-culture', Auerbachs term).

This sort of goes with my point about contingency, that it is rather the state that 4chan is in and the affordances of anonymous communication which makes possible its culture.

New users may come, new cross-internet culture may develop. We may be uncomfortable with this just becasue it is unfamilar, it may not infact spell doom.
Becasue as long 4chan remains anonymous it will be the 4chan that we dont-know and love.

Great read OP. You've tied down some contentious points that no doubt many users, including myself, have pondered over in a very succint way.

One thing that I often wonder is the matter of personal perspective. As 4chan is inherently an everchanging beast with threads and the contained interactions having only a limited lifespan (I'm going to use my experience with /a/ - being a relatively fast board - as a sort of basis for this point) it can be difficult to observe change over a long period of time. What I mean is that as a board regular with a certain amount of time spent browsing each day; individual cases are easily spotted but a gradual shift can be more elusive. For example a post with a Facebook filenamed image attached garners an immediate reaction and is immediately observable whereas the gradual disappearance of a style of thread or group of posters is something that may go entirely unnoticed until pointed out. This gradual change is something that the user may not notice consciously but will have a feeling of; and I'm sure you've experienced it yourself. The feeling that you as an individual have changed and that just maybe you've outgrown the community you once so fondly called home. This inward reflection is the result of the outside pressures of the current observable 4chan in the instance that the individual begins to feel this way. What I mean is that having come to this realisation the once familiar boards might start to feel alien, eventually leading to the individual ceasing to visit (or at least participate) altogether. While the archive exists and can be used to hold the same board or type of thread side by side for close comparison I feel as if this clinical method will always fail to capture an essence of the board or thread as it lives and breathes - call me a romantic but this sort of "4chan spirit" that is so hard to define.

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>>1536529
Of course a change in a board and a change in an individual can occur simultaneously and I wonder how many posters have put it down to one without realising the other. I don't really have a statement to sum this up and it is very much a personal musing. To tie it in I suppose this feeling of change and the loss of a sense of belonging happens when population displacement happens and a poster's contemparies move on. Do they move on because of the feelings expressed above? If that is the case then perhaps an entire aspect of the nature of a board's change is born of self doubt on behalf of the poster.

tl;dr have you changed or has the board? Is it possible to observe one without the other?

>>1536529
great point, could this be the case with any culture? Like the culture of a certain town or sports team?
are we just getting old?

>>1536453
>If 4chan has always been shit then I am at liberty to post anything without feeling like I risk stepping outside of the bounds of expected content.
The trouble I see with this is that a surfeit of freedom for everyone to post whatever one wants paradoxically constrains the actual breadth of discussion and thought, and that's something that I think can be observed on many boards.

Take /tv/ for instance. It's at its most active period in its entire history yet it is now less equipped than ever to intellectually discuss its subject matter, and it's a great example of the kind of inverse relationship between activity and health that is seen across the entirety of 4chan. Logically we might think that:

new posters->new activity->greater capacity for creativity and fresh opinions

but it doesn't work like that. An endless barrage of one line threads shot off by the OP 20 seconds or less place an irresistible downward pressure on everything that doesn't receive immediate and sustained attention. So what does receive attention like that? Generals, inflammatory bait and flavor of the month memes. The board gets buried by its most popular elements.

So much attention to given to FREEDOM TO POST that we ignore the RESPONSIBILITY that comes with posting which gives PURPOSE to that freedom of speech. The obligation to treat the board with respect. To weed out or ignore invasive or detrimental elements. To make the board a place where people WANT to invest effort. Without these elements 'discourse' becomes worthless, only the loudest and most garish posts make themselves seen. Posters who might have something worthwhile to see are turned off by want of an audience equipped to receive them.

This marks a huge difference to me in the outlook of older internet forum users and new users. The conception of being responsible for your own quality without needing a mod to pick up after you.

>>1536867
>we ignore the RESPONSIBILITY that comes with posting which gives PURPOSE to that freedom of speech.
Too bad people don't understand that doing things without a real and honest purpose makes them depressed. There comes a point where you're posting just for the sake of posting, and nobody worth more than $10 cares about what you posted. Leading to zero satisfaction. The lack of satisfaction leads to misery as much as any other self-destructive act.

>>1536867
*say--not see

There must be self-imposed boundaries on style, content and form or else the board devolves into a mirror image of generic internet culture. You may think this sounds like censorship, or an infringement on free speech, but more or less it's asking 4chan to live up to its own self-image. Going back to holding itself as a place for disaffected, intelligent, forward-thinking, independent, mischievous and ELITE individuals to dispense with the superficial bullshit the permeates the rest of the internet. It's holding ourselves and others to the standards conducive to utilizing that freedom of speech which anonymity makes possible.

For me the displacement of web1.0 holdovers and new arrivals matters most for this very reason. Someone who fundamentally conceives of 4chan as a 'peeing in an ocean of piss' is incapable of holding themselves or others to a basic standard of conduct which makes worthwhile speech possible. A site made up of these users turns the site into a receptacle of the most attention-grabbing content.

>>1536888
>There must be self-imposed boundaries on style, content and form
The rules on 4chan are good, astonishingly good, and the FAQ page is also extremely well done and thought out. A quick look at the first 6 rules show that the website is meant to be a somewhat quality place to be, and the rest of the rules all reinforce that. Aside from poor self-control encouraged by relatively easy ban evasion, I think a serious issue is the lack of appropriate rule enforcement from mods and janitors, as well as the poor mod/janitor-to-user ratio. Moderation is needed because it's completely unrealistic to expect every single individual to be able to practice proper self-control. Maybe it's the inherent lack of trust I have for most people, but I don't always trust them to do the right thing because I think constant contact with the worst of the userbase has eroded their morals and ability to think straight over the years. Hard examples that support my train of thought are /jp/ and the attitude that at least some of the mods have towards /qa/.

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More enforcement of those rules is NEVER going to give you the 4chan you want, despite the fact that it might appear higher quality on the surface.
You're looking at a certain aspect of our past through a modern day filter without realizing it.

It goes back to the notion of "community". Older internet communities were very different entities back then. They would have been better described as federations of individuals than as "communal".

In my opinion it was the absolute obliteration of the federation mentality which directly caused the slow decay of internet culture.

The alternative to being a federation of individuals with individual opinions, is one in which we fight over community opinions and influence, day in and day out.
Old 4chan most definitely still carried that early internet federation attitude which is also why it had so many tripfags and its attitude toward arguing was a complete 180 from today.

Early 4chan had this overwhelming attitude that although we all had differing opinions the different sides had a superiority complex which didn't need to explain shit to anyone, and that actually engaging in argument was more of a weakness than a strength, while ignoring things or responding with a joke to avoid actual debate was respected and more funny/humiliating to the other person.
THAT was the environment that made people want to fit in and lurk. Because it was a much more interesting way of fighting, it encouraged wit rather than memes, it made each individual an impervious fortress not so easily roped into taking bait from people who obviously have no intention of being rational, and made not knowing inside jokes personally humiliating (which in turn encouraged the creation of more inside jokes), it encouraged having an actual spine of your own and a thick skin to take an insult without breaking your own composure, and made people bold enough to do their own thing leading to unique culture and colorful posters.

>>1537061
Adding:

4chan was just an awesome coincidence that took advantage of the federation mentality of the time period. It was a synthesis of the individualistic "ain't gotta explain shit" mentality and a community one that led to the "final boss". But it would never last.
4chan itself is not equipped to sustain the federation mentality which was a large part of what made it so great. It's format is obviously completely communal and that's why we've become what we are today.

That's not to say we can't still have anonymity and imageboards that have more of that old federation feel, it's just saying that something NEEDS to change other than forcing more "ideal community approved behavior" by adding more rules and moderation. That might lead to a certain quality, but it won't be the quality of old 4chan that's for sure.
The format of anonymous imageboards just needs a completely innovative rethink.

We need to be moving back toward that federation as much as possible.
Reduced moderation, remove any semblance of an overarching "community opinion" which only serves to make people fight over it, we need to move toward posting systems that make it a _priviledge_ to receive a reply rather than a right.
Sort of like the days when trolls had to blend in acting sincere to bait replies
(this is where the name "trolling" comes from, trolling is a fishing method where your lure is designed to blend in with the other fishes and the boat "trolls" along slowly to seem like your lure is swimming. The original meaning of trolling was literally to blend in to get replies. "trolling" today is more like fishing with dynamite and is nowhere near as creative, funny, or even rewarding because the communal atmosphere of the modern internet is so easy to exploit and attack group identity)

>>1537061
>>1537062
I don't think adding more rules is even necessary. Federations need governing leaders. The mod and janitor disconnection from a boards intentions and rules is what causes many problems. The sheer number of current users, and the change to the entire internet outside of 4chan makes the old way of doing things impossible. 4chan does need to change, and it really needs to adapt as well. What is 4chan. Not the topics and the memes, but why does 4chan exist? Why should it continue to exist? What purpose does it serve? Look for reason why the rules are there, and not simply the fact that they are there. Things will not simply revert to a time where you were younger, because the rest of the world is already beyond that. A modern 4chan need not be as drastically different as you might think.

>>1537085
Considering 4chan is 14yrs old I think instead of defining what it is it might be better to ask why it needs defining now (e.g. what went wrong with this place that's making users want to rethink things)

The problem here is the same as with all modern discussion sites. Exploitability.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I've always been under the impression that the real reason people always complain about 4chan is not because someone made a low quality post.
It's because someone comes to your board spamming something which they believe is having an effect on your users (even if it isn't) so much so that everyone begins to actually believe that said material is a big deal on your board.

Stuff like that is why people are so fed up and frustrated with newfags. Not because they bring shitty stuff here but because they think we care. Take /pol/ for example, the reason they're so annoying is because 4chan never had a problem with being non-PC, racist, sexist, whatever until /pol/ newfags started implying that everyone on other 4chan boards was an SJW or some shit.
What can you do about that besides just sit back and watch as the whole community's image is slowly warped over time into something it never was and never should have been.

In my opinion that completely sums up everything most people view as "wrong" with 4chan. But how do you solve something like that? The whole federation thing is my best attempt

>>1537103
That is one thing that will make people upset. How do we solve the problems facing 4chan? Both moderation and the more dedicated users should demand higher standards via warning, banning, reporting, ignoring, and sometimes by injecting a bit of knowledge where it might just be useful. After all, wouldn't complete nonsense only be disruptive on a board with a topic? Of course, we have to keep open minds and be lenient where it won't be destructive, but there are some lines that simply should not be crossed, and most of them are very bold lines to a mature and intelligent person.

I only want sincerity. OP's satire is exemplifying the problem... no one wants a dialogue. It's a social website where the loudest people that aren't completely stupid talk to themselves and make asinine assumptions of how a conservsation will go based on archetypal schizophrenic expectations. It's self-centered and neurotic.

nobody read this thread because it was long and boring

This thread should be stickied

Anyone that actually wanted a decent place to discuss things already went somewhere else. You should just accept that 4chan is what it is and it will only ever be that thing.

sorry. I don't feel at home anywhere. I'm not asking for wordiness because I've gotten dumber. It's nice to be around unbridled enthusiasm that is not forced, relaxed and childish. Actual children are hard to talk to

>>1537164
I guess this is what 4chan needs more of then so that underaged and low attention span faggits gtfo.

>>1537212
>Actual children are hard to talk to
Sometimes when I make posts, I can't figure out how to respond to most of the replies I get because so many of them are so blatantly pigheaded and/or immature, I don't know where to start. It's really bad when it's a thread about something I like, but it's so bad it's not worth posting in at all.

>>1537230
yes, i've had this experience as well. i'm not asking for serious debate, but it's easy to tell when someone is having fun posting on 4chan and when someone is being aggressively contrarian—or worse, repeating an opinion they believe to be consensus—because they think that's how they'll fit in

>>1537240
I'm not asking for hyper serious discussion either, I just want to talk to people who are genuinely interested in the things I like, without being worried about being surrounded by drooling morons and people smearing their feces on the things I like because they're bored and craving attention. And because of the rules, I don't feel out of place. I feel like I should be allowed to go somewhere I can enjoy, a place I can leave at the end of the day without wanting to shoot some random idiot in the back of the head. But no, the state of 4chan is dominated by people who don't want to try with even the smallest of things, and people who want to make things worse.

>>1537259
>I just want to talk to people who are genuinely interested in the things I like, without being worried about being surrounded by drooling morons and people smearing their feces on the things I like because they're bored and craving attention.
Okay, you want that, but you're trying to make that happen in a place that is pretty much perfect for all of those things. I don't see how you could retain the current format of 4chan and also get rid of those things unless the entire world's population were to suddenly become more mature. All most people have to do to post here is complete a captcha, so because of this low barrier of entry, you're going to get those that would normally not even put the effort into registering for an account. You can't keep 4chan the way it is and ever expect it to be anything different than what it is.

>>1537263
Now we're getting to the meat and potatoes of it. That low barrier of entry is something that does attract low quality posters, but I believe that ease of ban evasion is what solidifies 4chan's reputation as a shitpost website. A person could post trash and get banned, and they wouldn't be around to make nearly as many bad posts. If there aren't as many bad posts, then new people won't think 4chan is just for shitposting quite as often. Now what methods could be used to help curb ban evasion?

>>1537274
I think bans and ban evasion are actually part of what makes 4chan fun, and wouldn't want to get rid of either. it's nice to have real discussions, but it's also nice to have dumb threads and deliberate rule-breaking and punishment for aforementioned and avoidance of said punishment and it all makes the whole thing a little bit like a big game

the problem comes when both users and mods stop having fun and the users start being rude and mean instead of funny

>>1537313
Limited intelligent silliness is great, but most of it isn't, and is just a waste of time. The ban evasion is a huge part of why we can't have nice things consistently. Some things are so bad that you can't even discuss them without people barging in and making a mess of the place.

>>1537333
basically you want to hang out with cool people but cool people won't hang out where the moderation isnt relaxed enough to have fun. but if the moderation is relaxed, idiots will post bad and theres way more idiots than cool people on the internet so they'll all gather together and jack their dicks and call cool people who say they suck newf*gs. its a problem but moderation wont fix it especially sinc ethe moderators of 4chan.org are dumb homos

>>1537313
The problem is that nothing has consequences for anyone anymore. The mods used to be held as accountable to the rules as the anons did, and as WTSnacks showed moot wasn't afraid to B& a mod if they were misbehaving and it was easier for them to get banned as well since they didn't have the luxury of dynamic IPs. Now that dyna-IPs are widespread and hiro doesn't care what the mods do so long as 4chan is running in the green, neither side has any obligation to acknowledge the rules other than when it's personally convenient. The only thing the rules denote is that a rule breaking thread might be deleted without further notice, but to the people making those threads it's no problem as they can always swap IPs and repost it the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that, which can be seen in /bant/ where stubborn goreposters and spammers get hammered to no effect.

>>1537341
There's a line that needs to be drawn somewhere between what's cool and what's not. I don't know what I would call the mods. Bind and seemingly uncaring, I guess? It feels like they don't care enough, or something. I don't know. To me at least, 4chan feels a bit better now than it did a few years ago. Still, I see some things last longer than they should, and can't figure out why such bad habits are allowed to stay. Something might seem much like another on the surface, but that doesn't mean people will receive those two things the same way. Maybe I just understand the psychological impact of some things better than some people.

>>1537274
>Now what methods could be used to help curb ban evasion?
Email registration. Of course posts are still anonymous so the accounts would only be a sub-system just to permit posting and allow mods to make more solid bans.

This is what all the major sites rely on, because instead of IP-range banning you could just issue domain bans for certain email providers. Eventually it would probably be limited to only the major email providers and those are quite difficult barriers for ban evaders to cross, like google's requirement that you link your account to a cellphone number. So those major email providers would take care of spammer detection for free.

However, if you're going to make bans more heavy hitting I would say we REALLY need to almost just nuke our mods/janitors. Some of them are ok I guess but there are absolutely some very corrupt, biased, clueless (almost bona fide newfags in some cases), people in charge of this site who absolutely will use any opportunity to force culture to change in ways they personally desire.
That shit needs to go.

>>1537356
Email registration would be an effective way, but what about other ways? I've heard people talk about something to do with the website detecting whether an IP has accessed the website or not before, and if it hasn't, there should be a waiting period placed on that IP before you can post with it. I might agree with you about the mods and janitors. I frequently see things stay up where they really shouldn't. It happens so often that it feels sketchy. Maybe there are fewer mods and janitor than I think? Either way, I seriously doubt that there isn't a single corrupt or ill-suited mod or janitor on team 4chan right now.

>>1536428
>If we associate 'quality' with old posters, not simply because of their seniority, but because of their familiarity with 'board culture' and their ability to self-moderate the question we have to ask is: have the new users been assimilated to take up these values?
The more time I spend on this site the less I care about the retarded concept of "board culture".

>>1537372
The vast majority of users have dynamic IPs. Just make passes mandatory for posting, adopting the highly successful SA business model.

>>1537578
>Just make passes mandatory for posting, adopting the highly successful SA business model.
Then immediately close the entire site because the world does not need two SA Forums.

>>1537580
But it would be like SA, but an imageboard!

>>1537578
I've thought about pass only posting and it would just make shitposting worse if mods don't crack down in addition to it.

>>1537578
>Just make passes mandatory for posting
That's one of the few things that would make me leave.

>>1537585
How did you come to that conclusion? You have money on the line when posting with a pass, after all. Shitposting throws it all away.

>>1537590
An acceptable loss.

>>1537591
It's an addiction to getting replies. They'll buy a pass if it means they don't have to go on an attention withdrawal.
In fact, I would say trolls and shitposters would be the first buyers.

>>1537591
I don't think buying the right to post would actually improve the quality of the website.

>>1537595
>the amount of underage users plummets
>the amount of people who haven't been using the site for years plummets
>you literally get fined for bad posts
Cool opinion, but wrong

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>>1537578
>Highly successful SA business model

>>1537599
Did you post that just to support my point?

The SA model is perfect. More dedicated users but less people overall, and Hiro gets his shekels. See >>1536428. We can absolutely afford to lose like 9/10 of the users here.

>>1537603
SA is dead/dying because lowtax is absent and the mods suck, and goons spend a lot of time a) whining about lack of good content b) shitting on everyone around them, and c) speculating on how they could return to the good old days. sound familiar?

charging 10bux wont fix a community that's lost its direction.

>>1537603
The population should drop, but I don't think it should be quite that drastic. I'm sure there are other ways that could remove at least half the userbase from 4chan. I don't like the idea of involving mandatory payment. Something about it sets off red flags and alarms off in my head. I can't put my finger on it, but I get the feeling it would destroy the website.

>>1537609
>I'm sure there are other ways that could remove at least half the userbase from 4chan.
delete /pol/

>>1537610
That would only work if the mods went on 24/7 damage control for months. I don't hate /pol/ because of the political opinions, I hate /pol/ because of the sheer number of people it attracts to the rest of the website.

>>1537598
>underages save up 1 month's allowance to post for 1 year
>problem has not been solved
>lose 20$ when a mod on a power trip decides to ban you for some spurious motive

Are you retarded or acting?

>>1537617
That's the kind of the thing I was talking about when I said I think it would make the website worse. We can't fully trust the mods or janitors to do the right things, even if they are trying, the things they miss and the slow response times make the website not worth paying for. For 4chan to have mandatory paid access, the moderation of this website would have to be top notch to be really worth it. When money comes into the equation, you really can't slack or else people with money AND brains will leave, and you'll be stuck with people with money and without brains. I don't think Hiro has it in him to go that far.

What /qa/tards will never understand is that OC and quality attracts newcomers. We have observed this in the 2016 electoral cycle and Trump's candidacy (And if you think the tons of high-effort memes made in the name of Trump aren't "quality content" - NOTHING IS. You are chasing fancy.) That's what brought many of the newfags to the site.

4chan naturally regulates itself. Quality increases > Traffic increases > Quality slumps > Traffic decreases.

If we find some means of purging the casual browsers of the website, we will remain with the inveterate shitposters, the kind that ban evades to make /pol/ bait threads on /tv/ 24/7, and even if content were to magically manifest from a void, it would eventually attract more newfags

>>1537624
meant to reply to
>>1537623

>>1537623
The difference this time is that /pol/ is actively trying to attract new people here to further their activist cause, which eventually led to a trend like >>1536428 this. That's not something that ever happened before.

>>1537629
In that case I would agree to a curtailment on /pol/s current attraction policy. But to suggest a fee for posting on 4chan is bafflingly naive.

But it's a risk to change the balance of power in favor of these autistics that want to strip 4chan of it's chaotic character in favor of highly regimented moderation and limited access. I'd much rather get a kick out of off-topic shitposting than visit a forum of fops that smell their mutual farts. The internet already brims with them.

>>1537623
>And if you think the tons of high-effort memes made in the name of Trump aren't "quality content" - NOTHING IS. You are chasing fancy.
Such as?... The vast majority of the "memes" /pol/ produced during the election were low-effort edits, typically out of spite for other boards by placing a MAGA hat on a fairly well known anime character. The other memes which /pol/ _coopted_ included pepe and wojak, most of which were only simple photoshop effect or filter edits. Those things may be OC, but they were neither high-quality nor effort intensive and to state otherwise is to overestimate the difficulty of image-manipulation. Image-manipulation requires little time to become proficient at, however it does require that one cares to some degree about what they're creating; /pol/ simply cared more than other boards to create OC and as such their signal-to-noise ratio made them a more visible and pronounced facet of 4chan "culture". Quantity beats quality every time when a higher quantity correlates to a higher visibility.

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>discredit yourselves by advocating the removal of (You)s and /pol/ before the board metastasized
>now that /pol/ actually harms the website nobody takes your valid request seriously

Cried wolf, played yourselves

>>1537638

Indeed a small portion of the content was good, but such a volume of memes was created that even that portion is dazzling viewed absolutely. Pic related. I might dump more HQ maymays

> typically out of spite for other boards by placing a MAGA hat on a fairly well known anime character.

That wasn't spite, that was appreciation for the character.

>>1537640
fitting for this board

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>>1537640
meant to reply to
>>1537639
>>1537638
>>1537635
>>1537629
>>1537623

All of this text hasn't been read by me

>>1537680
me neither lol

>>1537610
>>1537612
If what it takes is several people to be on full-time jobs to moderate the fallout, I would gladly donate money to their salary.

>>1537639
>the removal of (You) happened before /pol/ metastasized

And that's where you're wrong.

>>1537212
>>1537230
>>1537240
>>1537259
I'm curious what all your thoughts would be on an email-like system.
Because I've had pretty much those exact same thoughts and for some reason I keep getting the idea that email is perfectly suited to it. I don't like email though because it always feels so clunky and difficult to navigate or view everything at once.

But still when you get right down to it it's kind of perfect. As far as I can tell mailing list archives have "namespaces" which would act like boards, they have threads, you can effectively "mute" anyone at any time by filtering them in your inbox, you can also just privately send an email to individuals, cut someone out of your CC list, and even "fork" threads for sub-discussions or just to continue discussion among those actually interested rather than continually being subjected to trolls and spam

I just wish they had simpler interfaces and that I could find a sort of all-purpose mail archive sort of like a 4chan equivalent.
I mean you could easily imagine sort of "recreating" the email paradigm for anonymity, or at least just masking the addresses in the archive and only presenting ID's or something

>>1537623
>4chan naturally regulates itself
Except that absolutely isn't the case. Boards change permanently and so does the whole of 4chan. A look at the graph of 4chan traffic is enough to disprove this idiotic notion. We see an inexorable trend towards more and more traffic, not any kind of 'self regulation'.

Since quality is a unique configuration of certain posters, on a certain board with certain conditions, it's something that can utterly ruined and never recover. /b/ obviously is a board that was at one point the 'cultural epicenter' of 4chan, a place with the most active and creative energy for a time, but that period ended--the creators on the board were entirely replaced with spectators, passive consumers and low-effort posters so that the board is a gross exaggeration of all its dullest elements. That's not a 'natural regulation'. That's a life-cycle. /sp/ is another board who experienced a similar fate. /r9k/ went from being a small community to a fast-moving shitpost heap. These aren't regulatory processes. They're the stages of life with the conclusion being the valuable aspects of a board being extinguished.

>>1537612
>spend a month logging every IP that posts on /pol/
>delete /pol/
>one week ban for every IP on the list
>vast majority of the "problem posters" won't bother coming back to the site and those who do will be scattered and ineffective

I'd be caught in the ban and I wouldn't even care.

Does anyone think 4chan is getting better?

>>1538597
Well sure, the elections over so things have improved a bit between then and now, but a lot of the cancer is still here to stay. Don't let small fluctuations fool you, we're worse off.

>>1538597
I think it's a little better.

I think the best period of 4chan was when the majority of the community was comprised of people who were tired of the shitty, standard internet forums. Pointless rules enforced with permabans, no freedom of speech, sterile posts, reputation and epeen, socializing mattering over content, all that shit. People came here and they would speak their mind, post porn every now and then, and have a good time. Mods had a good time, they didn't autistically ban someone for posting a nipple or a few nsfw pictures as long as they were related to the thread at hand. OP mentioned something about honesty and I feel this was it, people were finally able to express themselves honestly. And when outsiders showed up, they'd promptly leave if they didn't like how things were run.

And that's why I feel generals are the worst cancer to ever touch the site. Generals provide the sterile, old forum experience, and a place for people who like that to find a safe haven here. Next thing you know all of 4chan is filled with this type of people who care more about feeling like they have are in a hangout than the actual content being discussed. Then comes the excessive shitposting as means to force activity to satiate their urges of socializing. It's just a disgusting mess.

I'm not gonna start yelling out solutions or the like, but honestly /a/'s quality has gone up a considerable amount since the sticky a few days ago.

>>1538662
>Then comes the excessive shitposting as means to force activity
I think that's partially a mechanical issue. Most people don't know about ghost bumping or consider it cheating, so they make dumb posts to keep their threads alive. Increasing the number of pages could alleviate this and simultaneously eliminate one of the reasons for generals to form in the first place, which is to keep alive topics that wouldn't survive on their own by combining them.

>>1538668
The other thing encouraging generals being overly strict moderation to the point where people are afraid to start their own threads.

I swear, some people think something was good in the past because they were young and naive. Striving for the past and ignoring the fact that many of the things they reminisce are the same things that are happening now, they're just on a larger and more obvious scale now, and they don't like it in the present because they're more mature. They're more aware of all the crap being flung everywhere now. I'm so glad to be who I am, and to not have bothered posting on 4chan before I was 18. I don't have to worry about the way I perceive life because I wasn't raised by equally clueless teenagers in a shitpost hugbox without adult supervision when I was a teen.

Let me guess you've been here what? Maybe a year? A few months? Got tired of your initial little chuckle rush?

Listen here, and I'm saying this for your benefit, I singlehandedly create about 40-70% of the original content on this board on any given day. I'm 5 different namefigs, and I'm maintaining over a dozen different unique /qa/ content projects at the current moment I type this. Meanwhile you probably came to this board for a couple of cheap laughs, have never created an original joke in your life, and now that you've run out of laughs, and being a person with no creativity, you've decided the board is sh*t. So were you an avatarfig hoping you'd get some attention? Maybe you spammed a copypasta or image a few times hoping it'd catch on but gave up when no one would indulge your stupid little non-joke? Have you even ever created an original post yourself or is everything you've ever done already created by someone else and you're just posting it again and again?

Honestly, I'm being nice here and saying this for your sake. The difference between you and me is you come to this board to get a laugh and I come to this board to have fun. You will never ever contribute a single memorable thing here. Literally every poster here is aware of at least one of my OC or one of my names or even just a phrase I created. I've been 4 years and this board hasn't changed one bit other than improved because of my great contributions. You're not getting anything else out of this board, your few months of "fun" here are up.

The only thing left for you now is to constantly complain, but believe me I've seen you over a hundred maybe a thousand times. Posters like you are a dime a dozen. Get bored, complain, leave. Nothing ever changes with you newfigs. The worst part is you probably unironically believe you're accomplishing something here.

TL:DR; Just leave you f*cking newfig

>>1538709
uncalled for copypasta

>>1538706
Thanks for your pointless and inane opinion!

>>1538713
Nostalgia blindness is a common symptom of age. You want old fashioned teen attractants instead of the new ones.

>>1538706
I have a pretty good time on other imageboards in my language because they actually know how to function

>>1538662
>4chan is filled with this type of people who care more about feeling like they have are in a hangout than the actual content being discussed
BUT isn't that how 4chan always worked?
Serious discussion wasn't the main reason why people came here.

>>1538726
Sure thing guy. You've got the whole situation pinned without needing to actually examine any of the substantial changes 4chan has undergone or their effects.

Your opinion definitely isn't just a reflexive pseudo-thought that doesn't actually say anything of substance but assumes an unqualified posture of authority.

>>1538730
It was for every board except /b/.
If you want to see how an on topic board is supposed to look like look at /trv/.

>>1538116
I've been playing with this idea myself. the concept i came up with is an imageboard that you post to by sending an email to a central server, which extracts the message body & attached image and creates a new post in a thread specified in the subject line. posting could be restricted to a whitelist, or domains like 10minutemail could be banned, depending how strictly you wanted to regulate content. I even spent a little while putting something together in perl but it will probably never see the light of day

a cool feature of this system would be the ability to get email notifications of replies to your post or thread, which might be nice for slower boards. also you could post from the command line

>>1538730
Fun. There is a line between entertainment, and posting like a jackass and ruining the fun of others because you're bored. What might be fun you, might not be fun to other people. In fact, your idea of fun might just ruin someone's day. Defend that, and you admit to being part of what actually makes 4chan worse. Balance. Middle. Moderate. Moderation. What do you think they're here for?

>>1538731
>Your opinion definitely isn't just a reflexive pseudo-thought that doesn't actually say anything of substance but assumes an unqualified posture of authority.
That reminds me of something I recently read: >>1538713
How about you take your false posture and really put some thought into what you say. Considering your destructive/self-destructive posting mannerisms you chose to defend, it will require time and a reevaluation of what it is to be a decent person to be around.

>>1538740
I don't know why you think that your useless blathering deserves to be engaged on an serious level. Your opinion was utterly devoid of substance. It said nothing whatsoever to the topic of the thread and was exactly what the OP mentioned in the very first post about 'flaunting meaningless psuedo-cred'.

You didn't engage the OP or anyone else's posts, you simply went off on a needless tangent attacking imaginary 'people' who held an opinion that you gave them.

>>1538740
in other words
Thanks for the pointless and inane opinion!

>>1536413
That was a great read. Thank you for your hard work.

Though this is nothing more than an empty comment, I desperately wish I could remember the old essays I wrote about 4chan years ago. It would have been interesting reading it all these years later.

>>1538745
You deny the reality of the situation in favor of your own opinion. This goes for every conversation, that I know for certain I've ever had with you: You really are an awful person to talk to whether you're serious or not. Every time I provide you with valid points, you look in the other direction for one reason or another and you ignore basic facts. You aren't fun, you aren't entertaining, and you only serve to make the website more miserable fr me than it would be otherwise. You know who you are. You know what you're doing. Stop making life worse for everyone either through incompetence or willingness. Do what you need to do without acting like an insufferable, contrarian, nostalgia-riddled child raised by /b/. If people like you are around, then it's no wonder moot left.

TL;DR: To appease your affinity for the past: ur a fagit.

Is that what you wanted to hear? To finally feel right about something because you're bored and can't accept someone can actually challenge your opinion?

PS: With your nearly copy paste response, the lack of effort shows I know something that you know is true about yourself.

>>1538727
But do they function at the traffic levels of 4chan?

>>1538738
What advantage does that have over a regular mailing list?

>>1538762
You didn't bring up a single valid point in your entire post. You strawmanned an opponent and then said it was wrong without bringing up anything to substantiate your point. You get what you give in and all you've given this thread is worthless babbling so that's what you get in return.

>>1538733
>It was for every board except /b/.
No, at least not for the current fast boards. Boards like /a/ for example had balance between silly stuff and serious discussion, mostly the former.

>>1538740
Who are these jackasses exactly? to you who are these people the ruin other people fun.

>>1538776
Balance is a good thing but boards should never become fully /b/

>>1538770
it's easy for anyone to look at and browse because it serves up a normal board/thread to the viewer. people are probably more likely to engage if they've lurked a bit, and seen what the posting is like, and mailing lists suck to read

Yeah, biggest issue is that the underlying culture has changed but any means to retain it, especially moderation, stifles any new original content only leaving neutered discussion. This happens lot in the death and births of subcultures. 4chan has had a good run, it's time put it out to pasture.

>>1537610
Literally redirect /pol/ to 8 rotated 360 degrees chan's /pol/ or some other site like sometimesredsometimesblue.

>>1536435
>it has given way to the same lame-brained regurgitated phrases and images that are found not just on /tv/, ...
It's funny since most of the times it's just people not recognizing crossboarder's memes and such.

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A simple model can be used to describe the cultural shift on 4chan:
Any poster is assigned a 'point' that describes the style and content of what he posts.
The 'culture of 4chan' is weighted average of all 'points' of all posters; posters who post more frequently are weighted heavier. 'Board culture' can be calculated similarly.
The frequency of a poster is determined by the difference between his 'point' and 'culture of 4chan'. The less the difference is, the more frequent the poster posts.
Lurking causes the difference between the poster's 'point' and 4chan/board culture.

Based on this model, it is easy to explain the cultural shift of 4chan:
Originally, 4chan culture was very different from the rest of the internet, and thus newfags had a hard time to post on 4chan, because unfamiliarity produced fearfulness. As a result newfaggotory had limited impact on 4chan culture and board culture.
Every time 4chan got media attention, the rest of the internet was partly introduced of 4chan culture and reduced the difference between 4chan culture and the rest of the internet. Because of the sheer number of newfags, although they didn't post frequently because cultural difference still existed, the amount of new posters, with their 'points' introduced in 4chan culture calculation, slowly caused 4chan culture to be more similar to the rest of the internet. At this point the cultural change towards the rest of the internet was irreversible as the posters with original value were not able to pull back the change through self-moderation.
As the cultural difference becomes smaller, newfags were more likely to post, which caused newfags of newer generation easier to post. Oldfags were driven out by the self-moderation of newfags, accelerating the cultural shift.
4chan is on its way of becoming a more aggressive version of the rest of the internet. When the culture that makes 4chan unique dies, 4chan is spiritually dead.

(1 of 2)

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>>1538906
But how does the cultural shift implies the deterioration of quality?
Because old 4chan newfags came from forums while 4chan newfags nowadays come from social media.
The format of social media determines their contents are of low quality. What, you expect anything good and original comes from a format of 140 character limit, or an extension of real-life social interaction (a.k.a. bluffing and attention-whoring)?

From the model above, if the moderation does not directly address board culture, there is no turning back for 4chan, even with the strictest enforcement of current rules, unless, the 'quality' in GR6 is defined explicitly to conform what it was for oldfags. Without this, the currant userbase will not report low-quality posts because in their social media standard they are not low-quality posts so that they will never get the attention of moderation team (remember how report queue works, posts reported by most ips are prioritized).

(2 of 2)

>>1538674
The only thing encouraging generals is shitty chatroom behavior. 4chan is not a place you come to to sit in one thread and exclude yourself from the rest of a board.

>>1538997
what if the rest of the board stinks but the topic the thread is about doesn't belong anywhere else? are you supposed to go post with the teenagers, answer their inane questions, and gracefully accept being called cuck, newfag, cancer, &cetera, by people who have no place on the board?

>>1539023
>cuck, newfag, cancer
Trying to have a discussion on /pol/ was your first mistake.

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>>1539031
i was talking about /g/ although the difference is decreasingly obvious every day

>>1538906
>>1538908
this partly sums up how i see the userbase changing recently, thank you loli poster

>>1538997
The problem is too many idiots browsing this place from the catalog

>>1539385
Idiots? Browsing the place from the catalog has a distinct advantage in finding good threads (as opposed to cancerous high post rate threads) quicker. Only idiots wouldn't use the tools at their disposal.

>>1539389
You don't find good threads through the catalog. You may find good opening posts but you miss all the interesting things people say at the bottom of each thread which is nicely displayed in paged view. Plus, with infinite scrolling it barely makes a difference if the thread is one with high rate of posting (mostly because of catalog dwellers only inhabiting that thread) and you can see all the latest discussion that is going on and can easily have multiple conversations at once just by refreshing the frontpage.

>>1539397
>you miss all the interesting things people say at the bottom of each thread
No, I don't. Install 4chan X.

>>1539401
Already did that and used to browse through the catalog viewer as well but infinite scrolling is vastly superior once you get used to it. Catalog view is very limited compared to it.

>>1538906
>>1538908
I agree with the general outline, but I feel it leaves out some aspects worth mentioning like how the site was purposely streamlined to be easier for anyone to join in as well as made more difficult for any board to self-moderate at all.

I find invisibro's rebuttal to quality control about how the mods can't be held responsible for content if a board is full of bad posters so hypocritical because of the way the site has been deliberately changed to welcome new users and keep older posters from trying to regulate the content on their boards. Invisible sages and bans for announcing sages & reports made it impossible for anyone to even try.

The idea that online culture has become interlinked over time, to the point where sometimes it can be almost impossible to pinpoint where something "originated", is pretty fascinating. In the beginning, while there absolutely were communities, they were minuscule and far apart, right? It mimics real life but the stages progressed much, much faster than they have over the ~1.8-1.3 million years modern humans have been on this planet (or if we start from the idea of communities forming/sharing spaces together with others, approx. 800k years ago). I can't help but wonder just how online community culture will evolve from here. Will it evolve at all? Will we mimic it in real life due to being used to the changes online? If we follow the idea that bubbles inevitably burst, will the online bubble burst first and possibly foreshadow what happens to us in real life next?

>>1539941
The internet has just become consolidated. Everyone goes to a few key nodes where practically all content passes through or coalesces, 4chan happens to be a prominent point in that system.

I don't think the problem has anything to do with culture and content.

Things could always be "better" sure. But I don't complain about the internet as much as I do just because people aren't being interesting enough. I do it because the internet has become fucking annoying rather than fun and I want to understand why, or if it can ever go back to what it was.

and by going back to what it was I don't mean in terms of content I mean in terms of the attitudes.

bunp

hmm....

>>1540927
When it was fun for you, you were being the annoying one.

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There's one profound sentence I could say that would completely discard everything said here in this thread yet at the same time have the power to change History in the Making.

I rather not say

>>1542444
That would make perfect sense if I could actually imagine there is any group at all on 4chan today who is completely enjoying themselves
I tend to side with whoever is the most carefree or just having fun, which is why I tend to favor shitposters.

But even though there are some individuals having some fun occasionally, it seems that by far the largest and most vocal demographics on 4chan are not having fun at all. I don't think it's a generational thing and I'm just being old fashioned while they're having fun, because as best I can tell what seems to actually be happening is they put in effort to look like they're having fun but in reality are angry or just trying hard to influence something.

>>1542435
you are the one ruining /g/. you. take your console wars back to /v/ you fucker. never post about graphics cards or cpu releases again

Bump because I really want to read this thread but it's 23:30 and sleep is more important

tl;dr

>>1542451
You're bluffing, there's no way one sentence could be that powerful...

>>1544866
Believe me, I've read the thread day one (1) and contemplated all week like many of you, with a potential input. However, there stayed this one thought in mind and you might noticed, a glimmer of said truth is already in my initial post, as I can harldly contain it myself. "I'd rather not say," I should rather say. I respect each and every one's input and the discussion for what I would consider as Family History.
The line is more of a Question, a question that asks everyone here and their experience of the subject and the incentive to pass on the message.

Remember, the words you choose can determine the future.

I wonder if moot gives a shit anymore.

>>1545405
He gave a shit (pun intended), that's all that should matter and be asked for from any single person.

age

Hate to see a thread like this die so soon...

File: 1314314926222.png (140KB, 933x408px)

140KB, 933x408px

shouldn't die yet

>>1547921
>>1550078
Don't bump it. If there's nothing interesting left to say it should die. Just screencap the posts if you like them so much, I did that.

>>1550310

I still would rather see this live longer than pepe or kohaku thread xxx

OP actually cares about 4chan and this is the closest thing to old /qa/ i've seen in some time.

Thanks to everyone who posted!

:)

:)