All of these things are correct, but I would like to posit there was a specific era when it actually became intolerable, and that was about 2013 or so. It was a gradual process, but you noticed more and more “normal threads” getting hijacked and brigaded. Baw threads, or threads where people would post tumblr core sad images (mostly about missing ‘her’) got hijacked by incels (who said something like, “shes fucking chad bro” although the incel vocabulary had yet to be calcified.) You laugh you lose (YLYL) threads got brigaded by people “banana posting” or flooding the thread with images of a specific meme of a banana opening his peel like a trench coat and “exposing” himself to a pair of apples. It was boomer shit, but their alleged point was that YLYL was cringe.

Now, were Baw and YLYL cringe? Maybe. But they were also like, “normal” threads. Normal users would come and post normal content. YLYL threads (and their cousins, Epic threads) were how board culture was preserved, posting collages of greentext posts of particularly noteworthy threads or stories or interactions. The point wasn’t to point out cringe. It was to radicalize young male users who self identified as unlucky in love, to degrade board discourse so no one wanted to even post in “culture” threads, and to either radicalize the young and impressionable who might be receptive to Nazi messaging, and to push away those that were not. 4chan always tolerated Nazis, and there is an old proverb against it.

Moot used to get a ton of hate from the Nazis, because he actually tried to police them. I don’t know if they targeted him or just got lucky, but they had been trying to get rid of him of a while. He left after users found his girlfriend was cheating on him, and posted the photos on 4chan. months later, trump descends a golden escalator…

I miss /tg/. it held out longest from the /pol/ siege. Like nazis would still be there, but it was still a place where you could talk about games and be reasonably sure people wouldn’t talk about nazi shit. I lurked until maybe the first Trump election, whereas I had given up on the rest of the boards long before.

I have this dream that one day I’ll like, sit next to him on an airplane and have a chance to ask him.

I wonder about this sometimes.

Poole knew he had a contentious base of users. I remember in 2013 or 2014, 4chan users posted photographic evidence his gf was cheating on him, and I think it broke him. I dont blame him for selling the site, but 18 months later… I wonder if Moot knew he was holding back the end of the world.

its like… getting a whiff of something I haven’t felt in a long time.

I got banned in 2022 for hate speech against Cops. Ive been lurking with libreddit.

Please, Smithers, who are they going to complain to? Their parents?

I’ve found Gmail really hates firefox, especially with VPN. I have to use one of those masking extensions. I’ve found that its basically locked me out of my student email.

wasnt this motherfucker also Hector in Veronica Mars?

In Exodus, Moses asked to see God’s face, and was not allowed to. God told him he would allow Moses to see his “back” instead. When I was a boy at Yeshiva, the prevailing wisdom was that God showed Moses the back of his neck, and his Tefilin knot. The Tefilin contains passages relating the Shema, and my Rabbis connected it back to how God has a devotion of his own to Israel in his tefilin (which this source also does).

The tefilin is a rite only permitted for men to practice, so I guess that’s ones thing for this meme. But the word used for back, אֲחֹרָ֑י, is more accurately translated as “butt.” Now why would God need a butt?

This is old Testament by the way. The J source for those who care, who often portrays God as a little earthier than the others.

“This guys name keeps showing up all over this case file” “Thats because he’s the victim!”

This has always been a fascist psyop

I primarily use Discord as a one stop shop to play and run dnd campaigns. I first hopped on it around 2017, and its was way better than any other group chat app. Around the pandemic all my groups started playing on it and it became relatively seamless. I joined exactly one streamers discord but that is totally it. In general I wouldn’t expect it to be a good archive, or forum, nor do I expect it to be secure. I use armchord on PC. I started using it before it was enshittified. For what it does, it does it pretty well.

For the record, I have used matrix and Signal. I think both have the issue that a critical mass of my friends don’t use them. I liked Signal a lot when it had SMS support. I used it as a my primary SMS app, and some of my friends had signal as well, so that was cool. now its more like a specialized messenger app, and I fucking hate having yet another one of those on my phone. Matrix encryption keys are giant stumbling blocks to my friends who do give a fuck. I play ttrpgs with some people who could not give a fuck. I would have to set up the server, set up the account, and then I would have have to do the encryption key for them. And like people say, Matrix logs you out every little while. You can turn notifications off and totally forget about it. For my non techy friends, this is literally a bridge too far.

I literally have two friends who think Matrix is cool. No one else even has an account, much less a server. And the support to meet people who have this app is very limited. Cool, but I think it will always be a niche.

Hail hail Genovia! A land I didn’t maaake up!

The princess is Mia Thermopolis

I went to my banking account page, where I can make transfers and look at my money. My ad blocker had blocked a GIANT ad in the center of the screen.

I dream of a world where we are free to create art without having dance for Capital

I think of them when I dream about them facing a firing squad.

Shadowrun also has the halloweeners

This is such a weird take. There is 20 years of content on youtube and not just like, unboxing videos or AI generated kid stuff or whatever. Theres family recordings and DIY vids for literally everything, to college courses from like, Yale and Harvard, to vocational videos I use for my job. All of the videos that radicalized me into an Ancom on are youtube. Every song ever recorded, including rare songs like second hand accounts of slave field hymns. Old, obscure movies, especially where the copyright holder doesnt give a fuck, are available for free. Small indie projects, like small groups producing shorts, and small bands making their own music, are on youtube. And yes, millions of hours of people playing video games, or sports high lights, or wrestling high lights, or video essays or whatever, are all on youtube.

The world is the way it is. Do I wish the web was more diversified? I do. Do I wish Alphabet didnt have us over a barrel like this? Of course. But youtube is almost a utility at this point; its like saying dont use the roads bro, eventually they will listen to us and put in light rail tracks. I would love for that to happen but you gotta get to work in the mean time.