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4Chan Is Turning 15–And Remains the Internet's Teenager

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Re: 4Chan Is Turning 15–And Remains the Internet's Teenager

#41
post #36
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, nobody's going to keep using a site they hate unless they have to. > ignore the crap you don't care about The problem is that plenty of people seem to use it for recruiting to make the world worse for non-users, whether by campaigns of organised harassment or disinformation, or other means.

First point: then why write an article about it? Get someone who knows what they're talking about. For your second point, how is that unique to 4chan? Every message board I've ever used does stuff like that.

> Every message board I've ever used does stuff like that

I just went to /pol/. No -- every message board I've ever used does not do stuff like that. And how the hell are you okay with using one that does?

Re: 4Chan Is Turning 15–And Remains the Internet's Teenager

#42
post #3

> Yet this cannot last. At 15 years old, 4chan has reached adolescence. Up till now, trolls—children—have been in control. It’s not so funny anymore. After all, even the lost boys had to grow up. Just because one can write that it cannot last doesn't make it so. Putting 4chan in terms of "human age" and development does little to quantify anything. Facebook is 14 and Twitter is 12 and that doesn't say anything about…

Who says it isn't mature? Is it immature because it doesn't fit your content expectations?

Reminder that after 15 long years of chaos, it still exists. It's a very specific, essentially impenetrable market of 4chan users that can't really be pushed away except by catastrophic mismanagement. The features of the site have stabilized and reacted to user demands over the years, and though good boards (/prog/ :( and others) have been terminated, lovely discussion still happens.

4chan isn't selling your identity to data scientists. 4chan doesnt fail whale every few moments, 4chan doesn't have a huge amount of bot accounts relative to human users, though I'm sure there are some.

People love to hate 4chan because there are deplorable users that use it, but it's just disingenuous and dishonest to make the claim that 4chan isn't a good product in terms of capturing their desired users.

The fact that so many other chans exist is a testament to the success of the format. Reddit has an entire sub reddit /r/RedditAlternatives, which I think accomplishes the same thing: letting reddit know "the product is good, I just don't like YOU."

The difference is that 4chan is a very strong anchor of all chan-related traffic, outside of Japan and Germany. "competitors" don't really pose an existential threat, but rather a topical, and therefore fallible threat of feature envy or fashionable content envy.

Disclaimer: I haven't used 4ch since the /prog/ days, but I check in now and then, and lo and behold, it still exists.

Re: 4Chan Is Turning 15–And Remains the Internet's Teenager

#43
post #38
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First point: then why write an article about it? Get someone who knows what they're talking about. For your second point, how is that unique to 4chan? Every message board I've ever used does stuff like that.

...what message boards are you using that every single one of them "does stuff like that"?

kiwifarms?

not a message board though, but a forum.

Re: 4Chan Is Turning 15–And Remains the Internet's Teenager

#44
post #14

How many of these anti-4chan articles are written by people that regularly use it? I'm guessing zero. 4chan is an interesting site and has better discussion from a broad userbase than reddit or here. Plenty of interesting projects were born out of 4chan, particularly /g/ but the other boards have created valuable things for humans in general, not just internet culture. The positives IMO come from the whole "FREE SPEE…

> using 4chan and ignore the crap you don't care about.

Can you even imagine using 4chan as a woman or a black man? Like not only in real life do you have to deal with people being racist as hell, but hey here's this forum that's entirely shameless about it too.

You seem to believe that folks can just ignore being called the n-word day-in and day-out as if it doesn't really affect them.

The only people who can go to 4chan and just ignore the toxic stuff are the people who aren't affected by the toxic stuff.

Re: 4Chan Is Turning 15–And Remains the Internet's Teenager

#45
post #14

How many of these anti-4chan articles are written by people that regularly use it? I'm guessing zero. 4chan is an interesting site and has better discussion from a broad userbase than reddit or here. Plenty of interesting projects were born out of 4chan, particularly /g/ but the other boards have created valuable things for humans in general, not just internet culture. The positives IMO come from the whole "FREE SPEE…

> using 4chan and ignore the crap you don't care about. Can you even imagine using 4chan as a woman or a black man? Like not only in real life do you have to deal with people being racist as hell, but hey here's this forum that's entirely shameless about it too. You seem to believe that folks can just ignore being called the n-word day-in and day-out as if it doesn't really affect them. The only people who can go to…

On the internet nobody knows you’re a dog.

Re: 4Chan Is Turning 15–And Remains the Internet's Teenager

#46
post #3

> Yet this cannot last. At 15 years old, 4chan has reached adolescence. Up till now, trolls—children—have been in control. It’s not so funny anymore. After all, even the lost boys had to grow up. Just because one can write that it cannot last doesn't make it so. Putting 4chan in terms of "human age" and development does little to quantify anything. Facebook is 14 and Twitter is 12 and that doesn't say anything about…

Holy shit, Twitter is just 3 years younger than 4chan?!

Re: 4Chan Is Turning 15–And Remains the Internet's Teenager

#47
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> using 4chan and ignore the crap you don't care about. Can you even imagine using 4chan as a woman or a black man? Like not only in real life do you have to deal with people being racist as hell, but hey here's this forum that's entirely shameless about it too. You seem to believe that folks can just ignore being called the n-word day-in and day-out as if it doesn't really affect them. The only people who can go to…

On the internet nobody knows you’re a dog.

But you do.

Re: 4Chan Is Turning 15–And Remains the Internet's Teenager

#48
post #14

How many of these anti-4chan articles are written by people that regularly use it? I'm guessing zero. 4chan is an interesting site and has better discussion from a broad userbase than reddit or here. Plenty of interesting projects were born out of 4chan, particularly /g/ but the other boards have created valuable things for humans in general, not just internet culture. The positives IMO come from the whole "FREE SPEE…

> using 4chan and ignore the crap you don't care about. Can you even imagine using 4chan as a woman or a black man? Like not only in real life do you have to deal with people being racist as hell, but hey here's this forum that's entirely shameless about it too. You seem to believe that folks can just ignore being called the n-word day-in and day-out as if it doesn't really affect them. The only people who can go to…

> You seem to believe that folks can just ignore being called the n-word day-in and day-out as if it doesn't really affect them.

They can't? Almost no matter who you are, somebody somewhere is musing about your death, if you can't handle that in words, I doubt you could live much, regardless of your identifiable characteristics.

Re: 4Chan Is Turning 15–And Remains the Internet's Teenager

#49
post #14

How many of these anti-4chan articles are written by people that regularly use it? I'm guessing zero. 4chan is an interesting site and has better discussion from a broad userbase than reddit or here. Plenty of interesting projects were born out of 4chan, particularly /g/ but the other boards have created valuable things for humans in general, not just internet culture. The positives IMO come from the whole "FREE SPEE…

Are we going to just ignore how bigoted and racist 4chan is in general?

Understanding why it is that way would probably be more useful than trying to get brownie points for your signaling.

It's like that because people with your outlook have deplatformed so much discourse that 4chan is the last bastion of a truly free exchange of ideas. Voat comes in a close second.

Calling something bigoted and racist is just an attempt to deflect and ignore the conversation. Offending people is generally the backbone of controversial discussion.

Re: 4Chan Is Turning 15–And Remains the Internet's Teenager

#50
post #36
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, nobody's going to keep using a site they hate unless they have to. > ignore the crap you don't care about The problem is that plenty of people seem to use it for recruiting to make the world worse for non-users, whether by campaigns of organised harassment or disinformation, or other means.

First point: then why write an article about it? Get someone who knows what they're talking about. For your second point, how is that unique to 4chan? Every message board I've ever used does stuff like that.

.. then you might be part of the problem.
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