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[-] dwt@feddit.de 35 points 11 months ago

Not something I would have expected from 4chan. Do they do stuff like that often?

[-] MossyFeathers@pawb.social 50 points 11 months ago

Yeah. I'm not sure if it's as common now as it used to be, but there was a time when most of the racism/sexism/homophobia was legitimately ironic and for shock value, and generally 4channers were a lot nicer under the surface.

My experience having used 4chan from around 2012~2016ish was that you could kinda tell when someone was being legitimately bigoted and when they were doing it "for the lulz" or because slurs-as-generic-insults was normalized. Typically the bigots would use slurs as an insult that was focused on whatever community the slur typically referred to. The """normal""" 4channers would just use them generically and would push obvious bigots towards /pol/ (literally called "politically incorrect"; it is/was the containment board for assholes).

The one exception is in green texts, where slurs would sometimes get used to refer to someone's race, religion, gender and/or sexuality; however, the "good" greentext stories would typically reverse it on the writer, making the writer look like a fool while the person they're denigrating looks good in comparison.

For the most part, 4chan users were actually kinda cool and could be really kind despite the crusty exterior. There were several times where a thread would take off in which they made it a goal to collectively donate $X to a charity or whatever, but I have no idea if they still do that stuff.

This changed around 2015~2017 (I was still occasionally visiting) during the trump election and got a lot worse after Stormfront was temporarily kicked off the internet. A lot of Stormfront users washed up on the shores of 4chan and proceeded to colonize it. Afaik most of them went back to Stormfront when the site found a new host, but there were a number who stuck around and just made 4chan a lot worse.

[-] Caligvla@lemmy.dbzer0.com 25 points 11 months ago

As someone who has been on and off 4chan for a good 15 years now, yeah the site's culture definitely got shaken up for the worst after 2016, but I find most boards can still be welcoming and sometimes even wholesome once in a blue moon, there's still decent people there.

[-] ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca 37 points 11 months ago

The different boards of 4chan have vastly different cultures. The tech board isn't much different than what you'd find on Lemmy. It's filled with Linux and Free Open Source Software geeks who love to ~~interject~~ argue over the finer points of operating systems.

There was a poster on 4chan's math and science board who solved a previously unsolved math problem.

The video game board sometimes sings songs from games

A large scale protest against Scientology also started on 4chan.

The negative stuff you hear about 4chan almost always stems from the boards that have little to no moderation. The boards with moderation aren't much different than Reddit or Twitter. Actually, Twitter might be worse nowadays.

[-] Waluigis_Talking_Buttplug@lemmy.world 12 points 11 months ago

b is the majority of the traffic and therefore the face of 4chan.

I personally spend a lot of time on advice trying my best to prevent more incels from forming or an heros

[-] glimse@lemmy.world 9 points 11 months ago

An hero... What a throwback.

I cringe to think about it but I was friends with the person who took over the Myspace page after the family deleted it. Myspace deleted the new page before I met her so I thought it was bullshit but she proved it with the sign up emails.

[-] RandomStickman@kbin.social 17 points 11 months ago

I'm no 4chan historian but I've heard them sending care packages and cards once in awhile. Oddly wholesome some times.

[-] Hubi@feddit.de 8 points 11 months ago

/g/ is very tame in comparison to most other boards. IMO it's one of the best and I go there from time to time for actual advice on niche stuff. I guess I share a lot of interests with their core audience.

Though I'd only recommend to follow any advice from there if you're at least a bit technically proficient and are able to ignore the schizo-posters.

[-] Blamemeta@lemm.ee 5 points 11 months ago

More often than you'd expect. /b/ is not representative of the whole

[-] Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 11 months ago

I was heavy into /b/ from like 2003-2009. It was wonderful for my edgy teen phase.

Seems pretty terrible now.

[-] PRUSSIA_x86@lemmy.world 4 points 11 months ago

Honestly, /an/ is probably my favorite place on the whole internet. It's all stoners and mycologists arguing about dinosaurs.

[-] Rentlar@lemmy.ca 31 points 11 months ago

Aw, how nice of the "hacker who goes by the name 4chan."

[-] MossyFeathers@pawb.social 26 points 11 months ago

Aw, I read through the thread and I kept having this image in my head of a bunch of peepos sitting around with crayons, glue sticks and crafting paper making the card. Then occasionally some dickwad comes in and starts fucking with their shit, only for all the peepos to get up and push them over before going back to playing with crayons and eating glue.

[-] Tb0n3@sh.itjust.works 19 points 11 months ago

I didn't know RMS knew about 4chan. If he had no idea then he would have parroted the 4channel name.

[-] MossyFeathers@pawb.social 20 points 11 months ago

/g/ loves RMS. There's no way he wouldn't know about them. Tbh I wouldn't be surprised if he occasionally shitposts on /g/ and judges people for their choice of Linux distro.

[-] Tb0n3@sh.itjust.works 18 points 11 months ago

Excuse me but what you're referring to as Linux is actually GNU/Linux...

[-] Sibbo@sopuli.xyz 13 points 11 months ago

Very wholesome!

this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2023
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