Someone in my life does the whole "oooh I'm so dark oohh you wouldn't want to know the type of stuff I'm into" but he's a total boomer who doesn't even hide his hentai games on Steam. I asked him point-blank "Are you talking about snuff/gore/loli/illegal content?" And he was totally shocked because he's really not that deep or dark at all. He thinks 4Chan is the dark web. He thinks those SCP ai-narrated slop youtube videos are edgy and dark. He thinks the porn games you can find on Steam are out-there.
So I have 3 grievances.
1) You are not a leet hacker man. You are super fucking normie. You are so normie you have a SmartTV and just let the ads play. You are so normie you use your real name as your userID everywhere and watch Youtube Shorts. You are so normie that you had smart lightbulbs that you paid money for an app to control, and when you didn't have money for the subscription you just let that hallway be dark because you were totally okay with the concept of "if I don't pay for this app my lightbulbs don't work."
2) Your interests are not arcane, rare, or dark at all. Children watch SCP videos on their iPads. If you are watching the video because it played next on autoplay on your smart TV YouTube app, it's not that fucking deep bro. He has this vague concept of stuff like Lovecraft, but has never read a single piece of his actual work- because he has maybe an 8th grade reading level, max. Anytime he's talking about a thing that's real deep dark and cool, he's only learned about it through content slop producers on YouTube, like those interaction bait channels that recap movies without naming the movie.
3.) Degeneracy is not cool or edgy. It's just a sign of weakness. The porn games are there on Steam for weak coomers. Porn is on your anime forums etc for weak, lonely men. If you're deriving any sort of "oohh I'm a dark person...." from your wacko DeviantArt-level inflation drawing porn consumption habits, you're fucking retarded. Porn is everywhere to catch people up in. I think he talks sometimes like he found a big secret. Bro you are not cool because you discovered the Adult category on Steam or egirl roleplay ASMR on Youtube with tens of millions of views. And most of all, people are going to assume and wonder (rightfully imo) if you are like an actual pedophile or otherwise into illegal or at least immoral forms of degeneracy if you are literally bragging about your ability to find "dark stuff on the internet."
I haven't been able to get these points across to him because he assumes anyone who takes issue with it is trying to one-up him or "Of course they'll persecute me for being so edgy... I didn't say it was for everybody.... not everyone can take these levels of darkness *werewolf howling at the moon*"
He is otherwise a normal and great guy with many positive traits. It's just that he's fully convinced he's edgy with a deep dark side because he plays coomer games, reads korean romance novels and watches youtube content slop. I can't get him to understand that I view those as comically low stumbling blocks of sin. He just always assumes "you're too innocent to really get it.... you just aren't as deep as I am..."