What do you think of anonymous forums and imageboards?

[José Mourinho]

Excellent for lurking, and some would argue being anonymous would enable opinions to be spread better but even then there’s shitposts that you don’t even know they’re real anymore, or namefags namefagging for the sake of it.

 

[Shit Waifu]

I only like lurking. They can be entertaining to read, sometimes, others are cesspools. I suck at following the rules, that’s why I lurk

My one particular gripe that the 4chan style UI/formatting is horrible.

 

[Sicko Hunter]

I grew up on 4chan so I have a soft spot for imageboards but it's really, really, hard to have a good discussion on there. I think 4chan specifically has gone way down hill in the last 4 years (gamer gate was the turning point) and politics has leaked into every board derailing discussions and causing a shitstorm on boards that were once semi on topic. I'll give an example, back in the day I could go on /v/ and talk about video games and there of course would be some porn and some "nintoddler, sonynigger" stuff but I could still have a good time posting. The times I've been back I've seen people bringing up racial /pol/ type stuff that was never on the board before.

I stopped going on 4chan a year ago and I pop in to some of my old favorite boards maybe once a month just to check in and it's just different. It's not fun anymore. Maybe it's me growing up but I think there was a shift in the userbase. Low effort shitposting, bait and political shit was around before 2014 but you could escape it and now it's everywhere and I feel like I'm wasting my time on the boards I enjoyed.

TLDR: imageboards have become overly political and overrun with shitposting and I don't enjoy them like I used to. /pol/ used to stay on /pol/ but now that it is the most trafficked board on the site easily beating out the irrelevant /b/ the spill over just shitted up everything for me

 

[AnOminous]

I only like lurking. They can be entertaining to read, sometimes, others are cesspools. I suck at following the rules, that’s why I lurk

If you suck at following the rules, get good at breaking them.

 

[r4ndom]

they're a funny concept that suffers from the monkeys with typewriters situation where they get lucky enough to do something impressive and it happens just often enough to avoid being completely irrelevant and forgotten.

also they only exist because of their legacy as something more people used due to the internet being smaller and not having as many places to go on it.

 

[escapegoat]

They ugly.

 

[ICametoLurk]

TLDR: imageboards have become overly political and overrun with shitposting and I don't enjoy them like I used to.

The same can be said for every site in existence.

 

[r4ndom]

last 4 years (gamer gate was the turning point) and politics has leaked into every board derailing discussions and causing a shitstorm on boards that were once semi on topic

i never went on them during their prime but from what ive seen nowadays they just act gay and kinda rapey.

 

[Sicko Hunter]

The same can be said for every site in existence.

There has been shitposting and politcal stuff on forums since they existed I'm not arguing that that's not the case I'm saying in the last 4 years is has become much, much, more intense and out in the open. You literally can't escape it on modern 4chan, you could be on /x/ a board about spooky paranormal shit and people will start fighting about Trump.

 

[Robotron]

There has been shitposting and politcal stuff on forums since they existed I'm not arguing that that's not the case I'm saying in the last 4 years is has become much, much, more intense and out in the open. You literally can't escape it on modern 4chan, you could be on /x/ a board about spooky paranormal shit and people will start fighting about Trump.

Any thread on /v/ is at risk of degrading into a flame war about /pol/ and politics. Hell I saw /v/ posts leaking onto /pol/ when the Nintendo Labo was announced.

 

[Sicko Hunter]

Any thread on /v/ is at risk of degrading into a flame war about /pol/ and politics. Hell I saw /v/ posts leaking onto /pol/ when the Nintendo Labo was announced.

Yeah and I don't remember that happening just a few years ago. Like, I'm not offended or bothered by /pol/ people I just don't want to have boards I enjoy that are non political be totally derailed and ruined by totally off topic garbage about race and stuff

 

[Robotron]

Yeah and I don't remember that happening just a few years ago. Like, I'm not offended or bothered by /pol/ people I just don't want to have boards I enjoy that are non political be totally derailed and ruined by totally off topic garbage about race and stuff

I honestly find both sides annoying, the /pol/ side and the "FUCK OFF /POL/" side. Mostly cause they always degrade the thread into a flamewar.

 

[AnOminous]

Any thread on /v/ is at risk of degrading into a flame war about /pol/ and politics. Hell I saw /v/ posts leaking onto /pol/ when the Nintendo Labo was announced.

More like any thread on /v/ is at risk of degenerating from a flame war about politics into a normal /v/ thread.

 

[Sicko Hunter]

I honestly find both sides annoying, the /pol/ side and the "FUCK OFF /POL/" side. Mostly cause they always degrade the thread into a flamewar.

Yeah I mean both sides are just as guilty for ruining the board, screeching about the other side is just creating more off topic shitposts. I know /v/ is famous for never being actually being about video games but I feel like this is different, like the old derails were someone dumping hentai pages or posting trap porn, it was never intense political fighting. One is kind of funny and the other is just unpleasant to read. I specifically remember there being a "keep /pol/ in /pol/" rule being sitewide and enforced

 

[Autopsy]

I think they're interesting. I mean, remove a face from a person, and what you are left with is who they really are.

Hesitate before assigning any legitimate weight to statements and ideas posted anonymously. Pseudonymous forums see honest individuals building the most honest representations of who they are or want to be, sans consequences but with social pressure from 'peers'. Total anonymity generates conversations based on immediate whims. Consequence-free honesty, but also consequence free provocation, conceptual sounding, whinging, competition, stress alleviation, confidence building, etc. etc..
I find anonymous forums interesting precisely because of how far detached people can get from their real self once you've unshackled their meandering mind.

Edit: Also, referring specifically to politics and anonymity, it's important to note that 4chan is a really shit example of how an anonymous forum works precisely because it's been overrun by clueless blowhards of all shapes and stripes. Even still, you'd be hard pressed to find practically anyone who retains and espouses the ideas they bicker over on /pol/, /int/, or /po/. It's a sport, with most everyone acting out the game. The few who are dead serious have an alarming tendency to be exceptional individuals.

 

[Pop-Tart]

Yeah I mean both sides are just as guilty for ruining the board, screeching about the other side is just creating more off topic shitposts. I know /v/ is famous for never being actually being about video games but I feel like this is different, like the old derails were someone dumping hentai pages or posting trap porn, it was never intense political fighting. One is kind of funny and the other is just unpleasant to read. I specifically remember there being a "keep /pol/ in /pol/" rule being sitewide and enforced

Best place to go for games on 4chan now really is /vg/ because things generally tend to stay on the topic at hand and shitposter are actually dealt with.


How many posts on /k/ now go.

"Hey how is Austria surplus 9mm?"
"(((9mm))) (((NATO))) KYS kike shill"
"But I just wanna talk about if this ammo is good"
"9mm is a round used by NATO a key part of the Jewish order you ameri-mutt lover"
"But 9mm is literally used by most of the fucking world, everyone uses it. Fucking Nazi German used it."
"Nice try scholomo this info-graph says otherwise"

End of thread, this is not even getting into the actual political threads talking about gun laws. Where there it always boils down too "Kill fucking everyone, or you are a soy goy ameri mutt".

You can either try and actually argue with them but then it just a constantly shifting goal post shit show of nothing, that and its one big Kafka trap. The very act of trying to disprove it or talk about something else will only prove their argument no matter what. You cannot argue with a court jester because they are not saying anything coherent in the first place, because to them everything fits into their master plan world view.

But we are hitting the point where even /k/ is either never talking about guns or actively wants to take away guns. Its a fucking joke. At the end of the day none of this is new, for a key example see when /v/ called fun buzzword before even games journalists did.

But it could be argued that /v/ was always shit. The issue is its just harder and harder to find shit on even the outlying boards as well.

 

[AnOminous]

But it could be argued that /v/ was always shit. The issue is its just harder and harder to find shit on even the outlying boards as well.

Thanks to this.

 

[Florence]

/b/ has one or two good threads surrounded by an ocean of shit.

 

[whatever I feel like]

I like anonymous boards, they will never rise as high as a good forum with users who want to build their community up, but they will never sink as low as the safe spaces or shit flinging zones that certain forums turn into over time.

I wouldn't discuss politics in one though. There's just no point if you have to start from zero every day because you are in a new topic.

 

[Sicko Hunter]

Thanks to this.

View attachment 362413

This image is literally exactly what I was talking about in my rambling ass post. Exactly why I don't use 4chan anymore. All the major boards are ruined. You either have to go to a specific niche hobby board /m/, /tg/?, (I heard SJW's have shitted up the board but I don't know if that's true) or some other board that gets 5 posts a day to find a decent conversation or to a smaller chan site like 420chan to have a good time. Who exactly is having a fun time derailing threads about videos games into furious racially charged shit flinging?

The only thing about that comic is it totally glosses over the people who respond to /pol/ shitspoters who are just as bad as the /pol/ people. The reason threads are derailed by shit like that is because people respond with "FUCK OFF BACK TO /POL/ REEEEEEEEEE" If people were smart they would filter and ignore the off topic posting and move on but they engage them every single time