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 2/11)

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/, arguably /lit/, /adv/ and /sci/ on r9k).

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. (Cont 3/11)

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 posting from his phone between checking his twitter and browsing reddit 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. (Cont 4/11)

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If we look at the activity of 4chan in the last 7 years we cannot help but notice 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 is more than 2 posters who only STARTED posting on 4chan in 2015 (if we set our benchmark further back from 2010 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? (Cont 5/11)

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 invented 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. (Cont 6/11)

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*ear shattering fart noise*

TLDR

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. (Cont 7/11)

While this part is purely my own musings, I think that when initiation into learning the ropes happened when a kind poster would graciously deign to provide new users with a general guide of how to post on 4chan (how noko works, how sage works etc...) it 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. (Cont 8/11)

The trouble I see with the idea of 'unlimited freedom' 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 in 20 seconds or less places 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 say 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. (Cont 9/11)

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. (Cont 10/11)

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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-- 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)

Nigger you need to get off 4chan and use your valuable insight on something worthwhile

A fact of life is that everything ends

>>39240422
Jigaboos belong in the motherfucking zoo now git boy

>>39240849
Why did I write all this...
I guess part of it was that I wanted to give words to the swelling feelings I get when browsing 4chan today. I felt as though the 'quality' of 4chan was a topic that rarely gives rise to purposeful examination on any side of the argument. I want to see too, if my thoughts rang true with other souls. I wanted to see if others felt a disappearance of that old spirit of camaraderie 4chan once exuded.

Why did I write all this...I wanted to give 4chan my best efforts for all it has given me.

>>39240422
yeah 4chan as a whole is more user friendly now and lots of unassimilated posters cause a more open less hostile environment
however the generals almost every board has you mentioned have basically slipped into the role of the old 4chan with inaccessible reaction images and varying degrees of hostility towards new users
they always make sure ppl get assimilated either by the op or other users and dont shower unoriginal bait posts with (you)s
ofcourse it isnt exactly like old 4chan and you probably have to go to other imageboards to experience something closer to that

>>39241381
I feel you on this. I spend a lot of time just digging through websites looking for content, but I can never find any.

If you have any recommendations on where to go next, I'm all ears. I hope to God there is somewhere else, but I doubt it.

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What more needs to be said?

To everyone who's brushing this off because it's long:
>READ.
>THIS.
I've only been here for this summer and this is ENLIGHTENING.

It's really great that you wrote this all out, OP, I haven't read anything this thought-provoking and genuine on 4chan until now.

All you robots telling newbies to fuck off, you guys NEVER EXPLAINED WHY!

I never realized I'm part of the problem. I just thought it was bitterness. It's because I'm actively deconstructing a culture.
I'm sorry, robots. I really had no idea.
But, now, I'm kind of hooked. I like this website.
How can I help fix the damage that has been done?

Lay off the crystal meth and quit smoking your own cock. Go outside, the wide world awaits you.

>>39242550
Give us reparations in the form of delicious chicken tenders

I feel this is an accurate and well written sentiment, but it doesn't offer a solution. Homogeneity is a trend for a reason, it's just the way the internet works.

Real talk, 4chan isn't for the same things anymore. It's not for anonymous discussion, the new purpose of this website is laughs and jokes (usually at the expense of others) that people would be too embarrassed to exhibit in a non anonymous medium.

>>39240422
The lack of attention this is getting is making me depressed.
Have all the robots left?? Good God.

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Do you remember who told you about 4Chan?
Do they remember you?

>>39240422
can someone give me a TLDR?

My attention span is too short to read more than 500 words.

I am saving it for later, i m too tiered to read through all of that. Get a bump tho some people might have the courage to read that.

>>39243084
Theyve long since gone once feelers took over and narrative changed. Your post is observational and insightful but doesnt give in to what the board now demands.

Best post this elsewhere as this is unfortunately no longer a place for this much thought, sorry if you feel you wasted your time.

>>39240422
Shame that the hug your family thread gets more attention then this.

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This.... This is an amazing post. An amazing piece of content. Very rarely do I find someone with a similar passion and interest in imageboards as me. Do you happen to have an e-mail or other contact method? I'd love to get in touch with you and have conversations sometime in the future.

>>39243218
You replied to my post. I'm not OP. Just to clarify.
I don't know if you're just a normie who doesn't care about internet history or a robot that has given up, but this is a board for stories.
This post is awesome. And it totally belongs here. OP did NOT waste his time writing this.
I learned something valuable about this website today. I see it in a different perspective.
And if you can't empathize with what OP's trying to say, you're missing out. Really.

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Insightful post, and I saved it, but 4chan really was always fundamentally shit and sealed its own fate. The most visible sign of the site's deterioration is the way anime and 4chan's status as an anime site are now attacked so relentlessly and with such suspiciously reddit-like logic (i.e. it is assumed that 4chan is functionally identical to reddit). It has become an epidemic, and threads are constantly being derailed left and right for as little as a single anime image being posted. Anime is now the single most "controversial" topic on the entire site, and "weeb" is now the most common attack and the worst thing a user could possibly be (alongside "autist"). Even the staff are against anime.

This isn't something that was really introduced to the site by redditors though, because after all the wapanese/weeb hysteria started on 4chan long before the floodgates opened. Western "fans" have never been comfortable with anime, and at best keep it at an ironic arm's length away from themselves and at worst denounce most of it. Maybe this remained at tolerable levels in the past and was mostly ironic--the userbase was much smaller too, and the site did start its expansion from a bunch of anime boards. But when redditors started colonizing the site they must have concluded they are in good company, and who could blame them. And where did they get the weeb hysteria from in the first place? From 4chan. It escaped confinement and came back with a vengeance.

Anons did not have the conviction to resist, and just let the site get taken over. They were embarrassed by what the site was supposed to be about and could not defend it. There was no clarity of purpose. Yelling at newfags to lurk more from your treehouse is useless when the tree is being cut down and you are doing nothing about it. Anime is--or was--the identity of 4chan, and when you are surrendering the identity you are surrendering the site with it.

I only read the first of eleven, and it seems that you know what you're talking about, so I'd love to read the rest. Unfortunately, I lack the attention span to do so.

I blame social media for destroying the anonymity of the internet. In the old days no one gave out their real name online to every single website, and companies even advertised to not give out personal info online. I guess thats what happens when big businesses get their hands on something and try to milk it as hard as they can.

I truly share the sentinent, OP, but, as is painfully obvious, you writing this long rant isn't going to change anything. Although you did a remarkable job at reaching out and finding the actual problem of the site, it isn't going to solve anything and all that's left is to either the few that took you seriously to start putting more effort into posting or to leave 4chan to what it currently is and to what it will eventually degenerate into.
What I am trying to say is that there is nothing we can other than escape to another recluse community and expect that the inevitable never happens.

Russian chan sites are pretty nice and have their own culture and OC. If you speak a foreign language maybe look for fourms and chans in that language.

All English chans I have seen are shit. Even the deep Web ones.

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>>39243336
I deeply appreciate the sentiment but I'm incurably avoidant

>>39242550
First of all decide whether you can really fit into a certain board's culture. In r9k, you need to be a virgin with a tough life to truly fit in. Otherwise you'll probably be a detriment.

>>39242779
The solution would be for posters to take it upon themselves to maintain a higher standard of conduct. I'm not one who believes that the problems 4chan faces is something that can be solved through increased activity by the moderation team. The biggest issues with 4chan stem from the users and the solution must ultimately spring from the same place. More bans wouldn't change the way a poster operates and bans are so easy to evade that it's a largely useless tool anyway.

If changing the way low-effort posters treat their entire conception of 4chan seems unlikely, it's because it is. But accurately identifying the problem and understanding it is the first step towards the possibility of correcting the course.

OP,

Incredibly well written post.

I consider myself a curator of the web1.0, as I started on 4chan with one of the original crew of users back in the early 2000's (has it been so long?).

I think what you say is incredibly accurate. I reflect often on the changes our imageboard has gone through and more often then not I found it difficult to break apart the dopamine-rush associated with social media posts vs posts on 4chan: what was the reward?

As an oldfag, I found ti hard to grasp but how you explain the use of (Yous)s is exactly what I was looking for. We now have a similar system of up/down immediate gratification which very much spells the end for one of the last vestiges of uniqueness to the 4chan experience: your post quality is judged no longer by it's staying power, by but it's immediate attention earned by the amount of (You)s.

It is interesting that you associate the mods with the newfags however. Consider that the actions of the moderation team are not self-dictating, they are directed by the Admin and we have now had 2 in our history each with different visions for the website. I think that for each, the preservation of our culture was not a priority and thus implementation of web2.0 operating procedures followed and are merely enforced by the regular staff unquestioned as this has always been the modus operandi of the janis and mods. If a mod or jani was not happy with this, they were simply removed.

We must look inwards at one another if we hope to preserve out board and web1.0 culture, as our leaders look beyond it.

>>39245834
(You)s also encourage dogpiling unpopular posts. At some point the ball gets rolling and everyone shits on the poster just because everyone else is doing it too.

>>39245938

There was a time when unpopular posts were simply ignored.

One thing I've noticed as well is the template of OC has changed. Remember all those rage comics you made, or how you did x and y to avoid z and protected your gf/princess? Hell I remember playing OP curated strategy games about island survival and nation building.

The speed of 4chan's boards, and the utter lack of fresh templates for memeitc production outside of the totally politically-driven is eye opening.

When was the last time we saw a new meme on this board? One with the staying power of others? OP has nailed that on the head. Especially when you consider the division between phoneposters and desktop posters. Which one is more equipped for creation? Which one is preferred for simple browsing?

The actual environment we now use the website in is against us.

>>39243118
internet forum culture is dead and reddit is the replacement.

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>>39241966
>tfw you see your favorite website pass you by before your eyes

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Wow. Just, wow.

I came here from another thread, some anon had posted a link to the OP and I read through all of it. This needs to be a sticky.
No, there needs to be a board called "/grave/" or "/ded/" or something where this is the sticky, and there are only stickies on that board to be looked at as memorials.

Point being, this was a quality post. It wasn't a greentext, it didn't make my laugh or cry; it was just real. I've wasted years on this site. I've been here for what's felt like forever, and seen this site grow ever since I was posting as an underage fag back in 2008 or so. I'm not an old fav or something great, but I can relate to the OP. I know the feel he is describing, and I have never been able to put it into words. It bothered me for years, and I never realised the reason I couldn't get it out was because it required more words and context than I had ever posted in a single thread before.
Seeing how this was made on this board almost makes me proud to be a regular part of this fucked up place-- if only it wasn't that I was here only because I can emotionally relate with the robots and NEETs and failed normies. For as crazy and retarded and amazing as a thing you've done, good job OP.

Give me a (you) so I'll remember to come back and read this after work

>>39248116
>Give me a (you)
No.

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OP, I think you might find solace in IRC these days. 4chan used to be a scary place - you had to wade through oceans of porn, gore, whatever, but that was thrilling for your 15-year-old self. Nowadays that doesn't bother people as much, and since the site format has been simplified, it's easier than ever to navigate.

On the flip side, IRC has gotten less accessible over time. Back in the day, it was just something everybody did, to get the newest fansubs or to hang out with people they talked to once. Now, however, people are loath to deal with anything not granting an immediate social interaction or requiring even the slightest time or technical investment. Fewer and fewer people are using it, and those that are, are the ones that still care about the old ways simply by virtue of still being there.

4chan stared into the abyss too long. It was only natural the the abyss would stare back.

>>39248607
I'm not sure when I started coming to 4chan, but I just about immediately avoided /b/ because of all the gore and CP. I've been to /b/ probably only two or three times since then, I don't even think about the place.

I used to be on IRC a lot in the late 90s to mid 00s but there's too much drama and dickheads so I haven't used it in years.

>>39247196
Not to go for that cred you were talking about, but this has been a thing for years. Reddit has only accelerated the process. No one makes new forum communities anymore because they can just make a subreddit. It's an ever growing hivemind that infects, eats, and moves on.
Even without that you'd see these communities die. It's just what happens. People move on for one reason or another. Modern life is just so demoralizong that we lack the means to move ourselves forward and out of the internet.

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>>39248700
Regardless of your personal experience, /b/ is the entry point for the overwhelming majority of the userbase. What I was describing is simply the pathway of the typical user.

I myself was not around in those early days but my experience is precisely the opposite - on IRC, you are likely to find levelheaded, interesting discussion. Those that sought only to stroke their egos were there because it was the only thing around at the time. Now they have all moved to Discord, and the air is clear again.

>>39243124
Tldr huh? You are the problem OP is describing.

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>>39243748

We need to post more anime to counter the redditors! To arms lads!

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>>39242550
Produce OC you humble faglord

>>39243336
I'm not nearly as eloquent as OP but I have had the same feelings and drawn many of the same conclusions. Maybe we could talk? I'd like to get some like minded anons together so we could try to figure out and implement some sort of solutions. Honestly it scares me how homogenous the internet (and by extension almost everything) is becoming. It's like the world is slowly becoming more grey and bland.

>>39244860
OP, you don't have to be our friend and chat it up with anyone, but could you consider sending me an email? Easily one of the most articulate and well thought out posts I've seen in years on here. You are knowledgeable and could help immensely. Please do it out of duty if anything.

[email protected]

>>39243638
I feel op did, it wont get the attention it deserves, i wish it would be i know it wont.
And youre right i am a robot from long before the board got nuked thats given up. Too much has changed and this board WAS for posting stories and OC but its now mostly a self hating circle jerk that i witness and pray will go back.

I doubt it will at this point.

>>39249210
I'd love to get in touch you with as well. I've been trying to create some sort of group to talk about imageboard for ages now. I'll get in touch with you via e-mail soon enough. Should come from airmail.cc. Maybe we could setup an IRC, or something?

Anyway, talk to you soon.

>>39240422
Thanks for making this OP

>>39249405
This is exactly what I've been thinking! Looking forward to it anon.

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>>39249210
Not just homogenous but also consolidated. People now tend to visit only a few major sites.

Well, the solution probably is to just to make your own little sites and communities (although we already have an overabundance of low traffic imageboards).

>>39249210
>>39249244
Here. Just shot out an e-mail.

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>everyone shaming the guy who is trying to make you all a bit more smarter

Last bump on this thread. Since I never got a reply I'll just leave my e-mail here incase anyone else wants to talk about imageboards and how to improve them.

[email protected]

>>39249767
Is there that much to talk about? Seems like the solutions are obvious by now. The bigger problem is getting enough people to join. There's already so many imageboards out there that have hardly any traffic.

>>39249814
I have my ideas. I think the solutions are doable, but we need to discuss them and we need to do them in a coherent fair way for everyone.

Honestly, you shouldn't have posted this on r9k. While I understand that this doesn't belong on any other board, sometimes forcing your way in a board as off-topic is the way to go.
It needs to be screencapped (imaged text is a lot more likely to be read) and posted on the now popular /meta/ threads that have started popping up since Hiroshima allowed them.

Don't let it die with this thread.

I'm more interested in what you think of sometihng awful than what you think of here. I also think that youre somewhat overvaluing oc in terms of relating it to the quality of a website community when you can think of more factors. It is also important to mention the discord shitpost groups.

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I haven't read the OP post yet, but I saw other posts commenting to it.
And it's funny, because I was just about to make a "where my old robots at" type of post.
It must be the hive mind calling. I promise I will read your post through OP, after my words.

Because I too was thinking about how the original feeling, not just of 4chan, but the internet itself, is getting lost in the wash of internet use becoming hyper normalized.

I mean there was a distinct cultural shift at one point of,
"Don't let your children on the internet, there are strangers there who want their personal information"
to
Teens snapchatting their drunk driving, people making facebook accounts for babies, and now invasion of privacy at the hands of governments and corporations is not just tolerated, not just expected, but even reveled in sometimes with the "I've got nothing to hide because I accept every part of myself" attitude.

But lads...I think this is just how -time- goes.
And I think it's because such cultural changes used to happen much more infrequently. Maybe between several generations.
And over recent centuries of human development, that time period got shorter, and shorter, and shorter...

Now? It feels like...a surging miasma of cultures vying to rise and fall within the span of months, weeks, and days. The powers that be have now finally understood how to prod the internet directly into the animal minds of humanity, but I don't think they were prepared for what it would bring.

And here we are; us oldfags, that found our little island on the internet, watching the miasma rise higher, eroding the spaces in which we reside.

And glinting through OP, I think this is what it comes to: whether we like it or not, we are the keepers of our culture.
We either disregard the responsibility, and watch the culture erode
Or, we take responsibility, and fight the tide. As humankind has done since culture existed.

>>39250162
Not him but surely there is little reason to think about SA in 2017. The two main reasons it went to shit was incentivizing bans (bans mean money) and going full social justice.

>>39250162
discord should never have been invented
it is single handedly killing more than a few boards i.e vg and this shithole

hope this thread is up after I wake up I'd gladly read all of the opinions posted here who am I kidding this is r9k

>>39250202
what I think is interesting is what exactly happened for it to go full social justice and the relationship of the fear of getting banned and making posts. To me the fear of getting banned in another now gone I belive elephant trained me to post with atleast sincerity.

>>39246059
Fist we right now lets distinguish oc and memes. I belive templates for oc have crashed because of moot making canvas. Memes have their own templates as well and still survive.
Memes are also always fighting the idea of the forced meme

>>39250324
If a fear of bans worked like that then the redditors coming here wouldn't be such god-awful shitposters.

>>39250524
Removing the "user was banned for this post" probably should have not been removed

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>>39242550
>I've only been here for this summer and this is ENLIGHTENING.
>I never realized I'm part of the problem

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>>39243748
>"weeb" is now the most common attack and the worst thing a user could possibly be

is it though? i've always usedit ironically (because it's a fucking anime website duh)

I quit op's posts halfway through but I've been here through 5 years of this website "going to shit" and have attributed the most recent sentiments to the majority of user's slowness to catch up with "meta trolling" (similar to the disparity to your interpretation of "weeb and my using it) and the natural homogeneity spreading through internet culture and many 4chan users interpreting that as an increased presence of normies with all these fucking emojis and nigger speak (and again, sarcastic use of it)

that all is naturally amplified by the current cultural climate, i guess starting back to blm and the last election cycle...

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>>39240422

My people learned this the hard way thousands of years ago as we let in people of all creeds and traditions from throughout the world. First to build walls, only to have them stolen from the inside out.

Somewhat disappointing to see the same laws apply in the virtual space. How I miss web1.0. The magic is long dead and gone.

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>>39241454

I really hate general threads still. I didn't like them when they got popular either. I don't like that all discussion of those certain topics has to get lost in those huge threads rather than having the freedom to start your own thread about one specific aspect of it and let that grow as desired. I don't like the need they create to have constant discussion always. What I liked about 4chan is the transience of it, that everything goes away; it's what made it so different from the forums I was browsing back in '07 when I first moved to /a/. On those forums there'd always be these huge 1000 post threads with no end in sight at the top of the listings, made by users with tons of posts to their names and sway over all the other users, and it was a pain in the ass to be a new person trying to make a topic or be taken seriously.

This is ironic given the essay at the beginning of this thread, but I thought /a/ was way more accessible back then than the forums of the day were, merely because content went away and left a vacuum to be filled by whoever was up for it, and with no persistent identities required it was easy to break in. Heck, even tripcodes didn't have stats or anything, they only had what other users remembered about them when they saw their name. Sure, you might step a toe out of line and get flamed, but you would just learn not to do that anymore. Nevermind that /a/ had far more thoughtful and interesting takes on anime/manga than the entire rest of the anime-interested internet at the time.

I didn't like how general threads on /a/ took away a lot of the Darwinian content-filtering effects of BBS posting; all that mattered was whether the OP was worth discussion. No ego, no inertia, no reputation, no shame, just interesting ideas or not.

But now we have a whole board for video game generals that never, ever go away. Every time I check for the Katawa Shoujo general and find it still there...I lost on this. I lost hard.

meta threads are the worst threads on 4chan.

sage

>>39250268
I know what you mean by killing those boards
tho I don't think it affects the average thread on /r9k/ that much, I do think that threads in the general format move to discord since everybody is either tripfagging or doesn't really care about the feature of anonymity
it's just a way more convenient place to post for all these ppl

>>39240504
I see the celebrity nude leaks, Gamergate and the American presidential election absolutely annihilated this site for good. I'm afraid the cancer is terminal now.