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I have very few thoughts on the actual topic of your post, but as someone who spent more time than was healthy on 4chan a little before 2009, your description of 5channel now sounds similar. As I stopped using 4chan around 2009 and started using other social network sites, I found that the quality of conversation on places like Twitter or Reddit were substantially worse in comparison to 4chan, and it has only gotten worse in the 15 years since. My pet theory is the enforced anonymity and abrasive/offensive social norms helped to keep everyone from taking things too seriously, which in turn helped to keep conversations from getting enflamed. I've heard 4chan also got worse in the meanwhile, so maybe those golden years are forever gone. But if I could wave a magic wand and destroy every social network and replace them with something akin to the mid-late-00s 4chan, I'd do it in a heartbeat.
4chan felt that way once, but those times are long gone. 10+ years ago, each board had a community feel, and the centralizing factor is that everyone was just a nerd with an unusually deep interest in the topic of the board. On /v/, you had guys obsessed with Yume Nikki and E.Y.E. Divine Cybermancy and Godhand. On /mu/, you had guys digging through labels to find obscure bands. /lit/ helped popularize eccentrics like Nick Land. At some point, the boards lost this exploratory, communal spirit, and modern 4chan just talks about whatever media product is the most advertised. Old 4chan had this sort of 90's mentality where they worshiped authenticity, weirdness, and indulged in old stuff, but on modern 4chan all those values are pretty much gone.
Waxing poetic about some old site is lame, but it really did have a positive influence on a lot of people. It was a sort of special place, nothing with that combination of optimism and passion is really around nowadays.
Yeah. The fact that one of the threads with the highest number of posts on /lit/, is basically /r9k/(at least it's slightly better than what that board is today, but still), says a lot about the site.
On most of 4chan today, sincerity is despised.
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