internet being dead

is there any space in internet worth visiting? with real communities still active & content worth consuming? or is it really over?

Bruh, I've been asking myself this for months. Especially the last two. The Internet has become so sterile and empty, it's truly baffling.

Who knows, man. I'm here because a kinda Anon told me to come here, and it's comfy. But it seems like the rest of the internet is just a fuarrrking cesspit. Hope you can find a community you're looking for too, fren

>>90137 https://sizeof.cat/cafe/ Try that.

I like this place and other altchans but they're slow as hell. Maybe that's a good thing There are also hobby-specific forums (I won't name any here) Other than those, any worthwhile community will probably be something some random people build themselves

I've mostly migrated to reddit and I only visit imageboards out of habit. These spaces are inhabited by one of three kinds of people: it's either someone who got derezzed from everywhere else (and is frequently derezzed on imageboards too), someone from a polshit/soyjak discord channel who likes to derail every thread, and some brilliant people which are, honestly, a dime in a dozen. You have to sift through a mountain of soykaf to find their posts. I report 20+ posts a day across many imageboards and the soykaf keeps pouring in. It doesn't stop. They won't give up until every imageboard that rejects them is thoroughly destroyed. These people should have never been let out of /b/ but there is no mechanism to keep them there. At some point, you just decide you have better things to do with your life and pick whatever place that works for you. For me it's some subreddits and a couple of forums that I will never mention to anyone on imageboards.

to those who want to mention their hidden gems, please leave breadcrumbs so I can escape soykaftinernet

>>90146 >hidden gems No. Kill yourself.

>>90145 I have a feeling you're describing me. In more ways than one.

>>90145 I will (to a certain extent) back this by saying that in an odd twist of fate reddit is now considerably better than imageboards and you can find actual info there. That aside and to answer OP's question - your problem is your own. Meaning, you don't actually belong to a subculture and so aren't participating in any community. You merely want to be a tourist that observes "funny animals" in their natural habitat without sharing in their anything. This is why everything feels empty to you and others like you. you don't actually have a genuine interest and are thus filtered from places that do have an interest. I'm involved in a subculture and we have our own board and ecosystem, it's all very much alive and thriving. I'm not even sharing what it is, because if you are a part of my subculture you're already aware of and participate in all relevant places. Get it? That's what's changed and what confuses you and others like you. Imageboards and to an extent the whole Internet hit a point where they became mass culture for a time and drew in tourists and outsiders who never had anything to share or do except gawk at actual subcultures and actual participants in said subcultures as one would at a zoo. At the same time they were ridiculing their interests and making fun of them. Somehow, with time, tourists became convinced that this is what imageboards and the whole Internet are - places to laugh at people with genuine interests while simultaneously expecting those very same people to entertain them and offer themselves up for said ridicule. Now that this has ceased and the Internet is once again becoming decentralized and with closed off, gatekeeping cultures you act confused and lost. But there is a place for your kind as well. Kiwifarms. There you can LARP as a based traditionalist or similar and laugh at all the "degenerates" and "lolcows" who have actual interests and actually enjoy things.

>>90155 You described exactly what I do, lmao, lurking but not for laughing at schizos in internet, but because there are truly hidden gems awaiting to be discovered. Yes, the problem is myself. Thank you for pointing it out.

>>90155 I agree with you in spirit, but internet centralization is a growing problem. Consider youtube's monpolization of long-form videos. There used to be NicoNico culture, but the all-consuming maw of google siphoned its activity.

>>90137 There is. Not that i'm exposing them because we don't want soykafty people coming over. but they do exist.

tech guys check this out: https://github.com/LeviSantegoets/MOW

>>90145 >reddit user who reports 30 posts a day go back

>>90155 This is a very powerful insight for me. Like recently, due to my addiction to the YouTube algorithm, I've been taking a liking to watching videos by pannenkoek2012 (you might be aware of him as the Super Mario 64 speedrunner behind that viral video where Mario enters into parallel universes), and yeah, everyone was laughing about the video because the complexity of the ideas was clashing with the fact that this is a videogame targeted at children, but I have learnt some more now about the "A Button Challenge" that Pannenkoek2012 was concerned with (i.e. the challenge of beating Super Mario 64 with as few presses of the jump button as possible) and I've grown to admire the passion and dedication of him and his community for addressing the challenge. Keep in mind that this is an arbitrary challenge that they have freely taken up. All of the content that YouTube feeds me about him, and I find it interesting and engaging, it's all the result of this man and his community and their joint efforts to freely engage in this activity. That is to say, as you said, I am a tourist, gawking at the content of this authentic subculture, consisting of people who really enjoy what they're doing. It's true. I think being on 4chan conditioned me to be a tourist, so I never actually engaged with anything sincerely. But I think, thinking about it, every community is like this, in that every community has their reactions and ideas and opinions, on every other community. I guess the problem then for me was simply a matter of courage. Seeing the brutality of the judgements on that place might've made me, on some level, afraid to be myself and pursue my own interests (how many /v/irgins confessed that they don't even play videogames anymore after coming to /v/?). I really appreciate your post. It seems I'm not the only one that fell into this trap. Though I do recall trying to address this before - this matter of authenticity. Since a fear of being "cringe" was the problem, I began to notice a hierarchy to cringe - Mentionably Embarassing and Unmentionably Embarrassing. If people talk about something embarrassing, it's Mentionably Embarrassing. But there are some embarrassing things people don't talk about that are too embarrassing to be mentioned. These are Unmentionably Embarrassing. Being a furry might be Mentionably Embarrassing in the eyes of some, but repressing your identity and curbing your natural process of self-exploration for the sake of maintaining a perceived conformity with a group of strangers is Unmentionably Embarrassing. Anyway, as I said, I appreciate your post.

It started with somethingawful. From there it went, 4chan -> encyclopedia dramatica -> kiwifarms. I frequented the ed forums around 2014. In the manga and anime section, a guy once bragged about selling his manga collection after his girlfriend laughed at it, and using the money to guy weed. The other users though this was praise worthy. Pretty sick mentality.

a shame you turned out to be someone who took someone like >>90145 seriously. in the year 2000 bearded dudes were having fun. in 2025 kids 12-13 years old are having fun. that is the thing that """truly""" killed the internet, alongside with state coordinated action. >>90155 people with genuine interest use ban hammer. sects, sorry, "gatekept subcultures" are archaic, harmful, and outright evil, because instead of enforcing a topic and a mood for the discussion of the topic, they build a walled off system of *values* for their participants. literal elitist/cultist cancer, one the most dangerous things you'll encounter in this life.

>>90163 Not everyone has the time and patience to endlessy ban the same retards switching between ips and sock accounts. Sorry that you're not wanted.

>>90163 I'm >>90145 Look, I used to agree with you, and for a long time I did my best to both engage in a fun way and put in the effort so everyone can have a good time. I still think that trolling has it's merits, by itself it is a form of art and I enjoy the occasional soykafpost here and then. brewing soykaf is only a problem when the same retard posts the same garbage for the 1000th time and takes personal offense when his unwanted spam is deleted off the board. It is like telling the same joke over and over again. Soyjaks used to be fun, I have quoted entire threads in the past too, but now they are adopted by incessant spammers and online bullies who like ruining people's lives over nothing. They will spam and ban evade no matter, and not only that, they will try to dox you and ruin your life and reputation too (!), unless you exclude them from your online spaces and don't let them know where everyone has left. Nobody should have to practice perfect OPSEC that was originally meant for political activists challenging their government just because your online space is open to everyone and you managed to piss off some people from these spaces (very easy to do actually, just be passionate about your hobby or say/do anything left to fascism). I don't think anyone deserves to be socially excluded without a very good reason (because I think it's a form of bullying) but sometimes it's just too much and you can't reason with these people who clearly can't seperate online and the offline and clearly need professional help.

>>90167 You can't hide. You either yield the ban hammer, or you die. Sects aren't an answer, because the people there are fundamentally the same. You just didn't realize that yet, but you will see at some point, that people are the same everywhere. There's isn't a wall that would protect you from them. There is one and only one solution against retards - vigilance + banhammer.

>>90168 I don't agree with you, screening new participants works and I'm having a better time overall since I no longer have to worry about the exif data and other identifiable information inside the images I share with my online communities. But that's the beauty of this. We can all agree to disagree.

>>90168 Gatekeeping doesn't preclude moderation. What a dumb conflation.

Zoomerz only use TT and IG. Imageboarders either moved to X or moved on with their lives entirely, and imageboards themselves are basically dead. As someone who’s been terminally online my whole life, the drop in quality over the past few years has been obvious—way more bots, way more low-effort posting, and far less signal overall. At this point, it feels like the move is to skill-max and quietly exit. I don’t think there are many genuinely cool, real communities left online anymore—maybe a few small private chats with smart people. But if you don’t already have the network to get into those spaces, you’re effectively locked out.

>>90171 No, we're still here we just got old. The problem is that there aren't enough chuuni replacements. Go have kids to fix the internet.

Stackoverflow and Wikipedia rabbit holes are useful if you're looking for information. Old long-abandoned websites are worth visiting, but they have no replayability. You pop once, do what you have to do, and go. >>90171 >beep boop

>>90138 Maybe it wouldn't be so dead if you could avoid talking like a moron with your "bruh". Do you think you sound cool?

It's not "dead", it just sux a bit more now. Remember, the internet was created long ago for the purposes of research and sharing information, but internet social life came later along with "liminal intelligence incubation" (whatever the hell that means)....liminal meaning threshold.....that is to say probably that many teens used the internet (and other curious people) to learn about life and to do things online that they could not do in real life...that is what chatgpt was saying the other day chatgpt said the old internet lives on in places like lainchan lol if you wish to use the internet like us kool kids did when we were edgy teenagers in the 2000's you have to do it privately with private individuals i guess nowadays all the politics in recent years and the advent of smart technology also had a huge influence changing the internet into more of a worldwide tool for corporate interests like control, surveillance and monetization

>>90180 I only used beepboop LLM to cleanup my writing because it wasnt being sent for some reason (I guess TT was the word that blocked it idk)

>>90188 >chatgpt said the old internet lives on in places like lainchan lol I've known about lainchan years ago but I actually came back a few days ago because grok recommended it when I asked for good tech communities >all the politics in recent years and the advent of smart technology also had a huge influence changing the internet into more of a worldwide tool for corporate interests like control, surveillance and monetization early 2010s has a small wave of freedom (og btc forums, etc.) but that quickly died off unfortunately theres a small niche privacy community within ethereum now but its nowhere near the level of early 2010s forum vibe

>>90196 yeah, forums back then were truly based

I'm trying to form a community of people that I know, using ActivityPub and such. In order to not rely on the "closed gardens" of corporations. I want to retain the data, I want to be more attached to people, I crave for making a community with these people that care for me and I care for them too. I want to make a fediverse instance, using snac2 for this.I would love to see if there is a thread for this kind of thing already? Decentralized social media. Or even, community related social media. >b-but it will be dead in weeks!! I don't care. I want to try. I have a group chat with 4 people, we don't talk daily. But we do talk. What is the problem of it being online and reachable? I don't care. I will give it a try.

>>90200 gnunet sounds cool to be honest

>>90201 I never heard of this one. I will take a look later, right now, I'm trying just to setup a usable activityPub for my friends.

>>90196 >grok recommended it when I asked for good tech communities That's why there's so much soykaf.

>>90242 >>90196 >>90188 Welp I've officially lived long enough to see an Eternal September situation propagated by AI. I think we've had a good run.

http://mootxi.co/ and its rizon chatroom are pretty cool

>>90159 this looks like a real version of the "hacker tool" I made in batch when I was nine

>>90138 >Bruh >it's truly baffling It's truly baffling, no idea what happened.

>>90145 serious voyager of the world wide ether right here

x.x remember when we all briefly became neo-nazis

> 4chan is the only active ib despite it is like kicking dead whales down the beach to use is it preferential attachment, or robots?

The internet is over. You may go outside now.

>>90249 tragedy of the commons and all but i dont buy that we are seeing some sudden shift in internet horticulture it was and will always be riddled specs of community long as there are the people out there who want to engage >>90318 maybe im talking out of my ass but it hasnt just been the internet, my friends take longer to respond and strangers seem more alien than ever i guess thats just how the cookie crumbles, dunno what we can do about it but wait and hope to get lucky either way threads like these are all doomed to fail since we are all looking for different things and people. the only commonality here is frustration

It is like kicking dead whales down the beach. The Internet could be great and online spaces could be revived, but the generation that needs to revive it (z and α) made themselves so cynical and jaded like le old internet users that they refuse to improve anything and, ironically, see that they are the problem. They come to smaller sites and then bitch and moan about how terrible everything is, put a damper on everything, then wonder why no one is having fun. >>90249 what a horrible sentence

>>90320 its totally cool everybody im making a video game that will surely soon be advertised with my site gunmetalrats.com

>internet is dying how do we solve the problem >i know! lets kill it off completely! gatekeeping never worked never works and never will work.

Almost 2026, people still refer to the 'World Wide Web' as 'The Internet.' Extra imbecile points for saying 'The Internet' as if it were a collective entity or some bullshit like that. These are the kinds of things that make me infinitely glad that the Internet (as they call it) is “dying.” The ability to manipulate computer networks should never have ceased to be something exclusive to people who know about this stuff. Goodbye drama lovers, goodbye trashy content, goodbye corporate culture.

>>90322 Actually, gatekeeping is the only thing that works. This is why [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] are still fantastic. We don't have worthless people soykafting up the joint. We have a few people outside of the gate, but we don't let people in unless they are clearly able function within the space properly and won't rape and destroy everything in sight. Gatekeeping doesn't just work, it's the only thing that works.

>>90323 "people who know this stuff"? and who is that? you? what is internet if not a collective entity? how does death of WWW not mean death of the internet and how are they even distinct from each other? you do know that WWW is just a marketing term right? are you stupid?

>>90322 >>90324 Gatekeeping keeps people like this away: >>90325 People who believe in nonsense or who don't know the basics of how things work and resort to ad hominem attacks when the truth hurts.

>>90325 WWW is the fuarrrking web you hypo-animalistic retarded ogre, internet is the whole network, includes many other protocolls, irc, gopher, usenet, soulseek, whatever whatever

if you say so. but dont come crying when your subculture becomes subsubculture and you find out that culture overall is dead. why do you even need gatekeeping? what echo-chambers arent enough now? >>90327 >internet is the whole network, includes many other protocols, irc, gopher, usenet, soulseek, whatever whatever so? are you claiming that these networks are not dying?(they are yknow) are you saying that death of "web" (marketing term btw) is not gonna affect these other networks or that's gonna be a positive? jesus christ dude its in the name: "interconnected networks"! and how come you didn't respond to other questions our your fit of rage? you don't have anything so say only an expression of frustration but you got even that wrong.

>>90254 Someone can elaborate on this?

>>90328 Jesus, you're the kind of person who enjoys writing whole walls of text that say nothing relevant at all. Besides, it seems like you can't be bothered to read and check the spelling and grammar of what you're posting—so I just can't take you seriously. What is your basis for saying that ‘Web’ is a marketing term? My evidence to prove that you don't know what you're talking about is: 1. The fact that you don't need the Web to, e.g. send a file to another person. You can use FTP (you know what that is, right?). 2. The beginnings of what we now call the Internet date back to the 60s. There's a lot of history behind it (which you probably don't care about in the slightest), but the main idea was to create a network of interconnected computers so that information wouldn't be lost. Hence the name: INTER-NETwork. The World Wide Web was created in the 80s with the aim of sharing documents more efficiently. I'm leaving out a lot of important details, but if you don't bother to research the basics of the tools you use, can I really expect you to read everything I have to say? Damn, maybe you're just trolling me and I'm falling for it like a complete idiot. But honestly, I'd rather believe that than accept the fact that such apathetic, ignorant, and obtuse people are capable of using a computer.

>>90334 Guyssssshh please stop fighting is not worth it guyyyyyshhh

>>90335 its better than scrolling :)

>>90335 Although I'm not fighting (that's in real life). I genuinely want people to break out of their circle of conformity. It bothers me that people are content to just be spectators and not be part of the solution. Instead of learning and engaging in meaningful conversations, they just want to “fight” online as a hobby, which is simply pathetic. This isn't the first time I've brought up the issue of why we shouldn't call the Web “the Internet” and, in general, why we should use the correct terms in the appropriate context. But the attempt at pseudo-cynicism and irreverence by some has already made me more aggressive about it. Whatever... cute drawing, by the way.

i swear on my life in middle school around 2013, we had a class with several whole units dedicated to online etiquette. >>90137 it depends on your interests :) basstalk.com: if you like bass guitars phrack.org: phrack magazine's still goin surf the web and bookmark stuff for later. all kinds of things are posted on the web all the time, just broaden your horizons. i promise its far from dead. it also helps to accept the fact reddit is a place where stuff happens as much as we all love to soykaf on it.

>>90338 >i swear on my life in middle school around 2013, we had a class with several whole units dedicated to online etiquette. When I was in elementary school we had lectures on how important internet privacy is and how to never give your full name out or any personal information. Everyone was taught how to use the computer/keyboard/mouse and how to search for information and check reliable sources with experts and have conversations in real life. They told us that we should only spend maybe up to an hour or two a day on the computer... My god how things have changed. Now they stick the kids in front of a fuarrrking ipad all day and just give them apps to play for 8+ hours. I don't think anyone even knows what privacy even is anymore like we've become dumber as a species.

>>90341 >we've become dumber as a species true, but first came the laziness :(

>>90341 That's the reason why a significant portion of my internet activity during my childhood with a lot of embarrassing mistakes is completely disentangled from my name. I'm glad whoever told me to use a different fake name/nickname on each and every website.

>>90338 >i swear on my life in middle school around 2013 we had this at my middle school in 2007ish. It was mostly "don't give out your name" and "here's how you should format an email." then in high-school they gave us an updated version that included ineffective tips on how to spot fake profiles, scare stories about how if you have a picture on the internet with beer in it you'll never get hired anywhere, and some anti-cyberbullying advice. at some point we had a lecture about web forums but I can't remember when. then in uni we had the same "here's how to format an email" and "here's how you should act on academic forums" and (in programming classes) "here's how to file a bug report that won't make maintainers want to kill you"

The only imagebaord worth visiting is no one. But I still visit 4chan out of habit. All others are dead or full of weird people.

>>90391 >4chan isn't full of weird people

is it possible to still post on 8chan (aka 8kun)?

>>90433 It is basically unusable on my computer. 8kun isn't the real 8chan they are frauds.

>>90137 the internet is not dead. most people back in 10' are stuck with cat videos and picures on 9gag. now most people are stuck on porn (much easier to stream since average world internet now raised above 40-90mbps), on tiktok/reel/yt/x, or on simply small groupchats like telegram/snap/whatsapp. some think that it is dead since their classic "MMOs" are also dead but fail to realize that most people game on custom server/worlds in minecraft or roblox which can do pretty much anything (especially roblox which can even be programmed to run couner strike). there's also a lot of soykaf that we can use now so it's like what happens if you virtually built an apartment complex that is infinitely larger than usual, most people will be dispersed in their own bubble. there is also a lack of care at all. I remember downloading some anime and saying "wait the subtitles are an episode behind" and no one even dared to voice it out (even me but registrations were closed) and there's like 2000 downloads of it already and zero comments about the problem. it just shows hat people don't care anymore or are more careless. I would say if you want something worth consuming like >>90145 go chceck the archives, go read manhua or donghua (chinese) because even anime and manga (japanese) had reached the point of peak stupidity and oversaturation. >>90156 schizoposts are the only thing that can pass the Turing Test in the era where actual people respond worse than bots and bots are muddling the waters. online conversations are rare enough at least comparing to 2018 era. 2019 is when they went all out with the anti-imageboard propaganda (including soyjak == hijack --- CIA nigger codeword/project)

>>90320 >The Internet could be great and online spaces could be revived, but the generation that needs to revive it (z and α) made themselves so cynical and jaded like le old internet users that they refuse to improve anything and, ironically, see that they are the problem. Too true, its disturbing likewise to think yesterdays 4chan internet kids are todays young adults. They are left with bigtech as their first layer of exposure to the internet. >>90337 >It bothers me that people are content to just be spectators and not be part of the solution. Instead of learning and engaging in meaningful conversations, they just want to “fight” online as a hobby, which is simply pathetic. This may be said about life in general, it seems spontanious and random interactions have become rare, life seems monotonous and repetitive in general, its only about logical this translates into online interaction too. Life used to have more quirky weird people and generally lots of diy stuff, now everything feels like a copy of a copy of a copy.

>>90439 >actual people respond worse than bots and bots are muddling the waters Too relatable, too true in every aspect. It's like a cancer. Even if you have same interest with people they just don't wish to discuss and share their opinion, giving you a "yeah" or "nah". I found myself in a situation when I considered a post generated by AI more interesting and schizophrenic than what some people say. I even thought the problem was in me and it is I who just is like kicking dead whales down the beach at maintaining any dialogue, considering being a generation z (feel free to throw tomatoes at me, I am part of the problem). But no, that wasn't the case. It is just the internet getting to be more open to every boring fuarrrker and the easy access to it. The problem is not even with it being so easy to access (partly, I think it still had its bad influence), but rather in new people being degenerates who do not wish to put at least enthusiasm in two messages and give an adequate reply. >>90446 >This may be said about life in general, it seems spontanious and random interactions have become rare, life seems monotonous and repetitive in general, its only about logical this translates into online interaction too. It is kind of funny. When one thing came to ruin, the other dies too. People stopped visiting public places like libraries, themed cafes or any places that share some hobby or interests becuase internet is easier to do it, yet if you look at the internet everybody is saying it is dying too. It's like part of what surrounds you just disappeared and what remains are plane of dust and ashes, with some single large stone in the middle of empty field embedded with "we went to our private chat, enjoy empty soulless public soykaf, bye!!1". And I can't say I don't understand them why they chose to do so.

>>90185 swallow my turd, unc.

We can bee the change, fren. If you've gondolla'd for long enough, your patina might be interesting and valuable. If we are the water we swim in, then we ought to seek out some more puddles. Or, maybe this will be the only thing I post this year, again

I'm pretty tired of the internet. I don't have nostalgia for it any more. Really, the years when I was online all the time in the "old internet", and all my friends were online, were the worst and loneliest of my life. I am in a lively discord server that reminds me of the lainchan IRC back when that was fun. Other than that, I use the internet to download movies (either on YouTube or torrents) and keep in touch with IRL friends. Plus a few small imagboards.

>>90491 I'm getting increasingly bored of every interaction I have online. It's like I've seen every archetype you could ever see, when I start reading a post I can already tell what it's going for from the first sentence and I'm not looking forward to reading further. It's the most shallow type of interaction, you need to at least hear the voice of the person and interact in real-time.

>>90492 Same. But I don't have RL so am stuck suffering your schizo ramnlings over and over again. I'm particularly upset though I'm already insane enough to not pay attention to anything you write. I can reply anything no matter how tangential and you won't notice either

>>90462 I was at a bar and an acquaintance whom I've tried to be friends with for the past couple years, came into the bar. I was so ecstatic to see him and I noticed he had a USB on his neck (a common DJ trend.). I had asked what kind of music he had been making and what he put on that USB, and his friend butts in "It's good bro.". And the guy I was talking to was acting like it was a secret to discuss his music with someone else who also makes music. That was one of the oddest experiences I have had as an adult.

>>90492 Yeah, really. Every once in a while someone has a good new joke or something interesting to say but it's really panning for gold in the sewer. Having IRL relationships is the cure for the internet being dead, I guess

>>90491 In some weird and twisted ways i can relate, i spent a lot of time on the net in the past. Have a rough past behind me too, had some friends but almost none are around still. Things aint what they used to be, the 90s cyberkids are almost old men by todays standards, the old web is not so relevant anymore to most. I have a hard time being online too, even when i got nothing better to do.

>>90146 to be honest my personal hidden gem is rDrama.net.

>>90137 >is there any space in internet worth visiting? 1) https://www.mileswmathis.com/updates.html 2) https://theethicalskeptic.com/ 3) https://digdeeper.love/ 4) most of the links in: https://rentry.co/FMHY

sizeof.cat has been down for 2 or 3 weeks. is he ok? there wasn't really any warning from what i saw

>>90991 I just came to ask this? Does anyone what the hell happened?

I hate the internet and www now

>>90137 haven't found much of anything myself, my hobby only has two forums and it basically has had its golden years over 15 years ago, nowadays they're only filled with surface level topics from people who are just starting out and even they pretty much always give up early.

>content worth consuming You are part of the problem. Create things and share them to the world, instead of bemoaning a perceived staleness. And yes, there are plenty of active sites on the web, if only you would bother searching for them. https://marginalia-search.com/explore is a decent starting point, but it is only a starting point. Think about what the "web" in "world wide web" means.

what do you want from the internet?

the internet used to be a place, now it's an ocean. i had a whole essay about this but for some reason intelligent discussion is frowned upon and I am not allowed to post it by this silly forum software. kinda ironic.

>>91026 I think that internet it´s still a place that you can have fun. The ocean is kinda of funny.

>>91017 >telling OP to create things Its like telling the main character from the beginning of the lego movie to create things , another cog in the systrm that wants to suck free available content dry

Most real communities these days are on discord. There are some holdouts on isolated forums as well. Lainchan has somehow lumbered on despite it all, but I wouldn't describe this as a community.

>>91031 Hey, the bunk couch is a cool creation. I'm not expecting them to be a new Tolkien. >>91032 uck off with your blatant shil ling for user farms.

VRC can be alright for social applications, despite the bad rep it's sort of like exploring the internet with a body, you can find most things or if not; create them yourself with a bit of practice and dedication. It's the only place I've found genuine people and communities to interact with, if you recognize and keep yourself away from the retarded, mentally ill, alcoholic or normal user population, then it honestly does feel like the romantic vision of the 'old internet' in a sense, its still experimental, mocked, very misunderstood and doesn't have much corpo bloat (for now)

>>91026 I'd be interested in hearing what you have to say on this matter, we can have a discussion on it if you'd like.

>>91032 >real communities are on discord Sure I'm not going to say you're wrong but are these communities interesting , worth joining , intellectual , open discussions and the works ... Probably not >>91037 That place hasn't been completely ran over with corpo bloat ?

>>91040 >are they worth joining Of the 20 or so discord "servers" I'm aware of, exactly three are worth joining and only one is public. I'm not going to share it though. I hate to say it but if you reject discord totally you're just not going to meet a lot of interesting people. That's just how it is.

>>91041 I have given up on meeting interesting people online. For me it's independent blogs and friends from meatspace. https://mpost.io/humanity-protocol-experiment-reveals-how-ai-can-bypass-kyc-and-exploit-digital-trust/ >The experiment spanned two months, from October to December 2025, and involved six members of the Humanity Protocol team. Using publicly accessible AI tools including Reve AI, ChatGPT, Nanobanana, and Midjourney, the team generated four distinct Tinder profiles, complete with photos and biographical details. >In order to maintain realistic activity, the team employed TinderGPT, an open-source tool on GitHub, enabling the profiles to manage over 100 simultaneous conversations with genuine users on the dating app. Although the accounts were created across multiple countries—Portugal, Spain, Serbia, Indonesia, and Thailand—all profiles used Tinder Gold to set their location to Portugal. Over the course of the experiment, the AI-generated accounts engaged with 296 real Tinder users and successfully convinced 40 individuals to agree to meet in person. >The experiment concluded ethically at a restaurant in Lisbon, Portugal, where all participants were informed of the situation upon arrival and treated to dinner by the startup. The design of the experiment ensured that no financial, emotional, or physical harm was caused, and the stated purpose was to expose systemic vulnerabilities rather than exploit them.

>>91041 how is the client situation? are you still forced to use their dogshit client?

>>91044 Yes but you can run it in a web browser. It is essentially a website. >>91043 >I've given up trying to meet interesting people That's unfortunate.

>>91039 if only I knew why this forum gives me a "please write a better post" error when I try to post the comment. there's probably not enough slurs to be accepted by the edgelords tl;dr: the only way forward are invite-only cultural islands to keep tourists and the masses away. bring back elitism, instead of embracing democratization of culture that ends up devolving into memes

>>90137 deek.chat has some cool people, but there's like 10/20 users, so it's very very slow.

>>91044 I'd recommend vesktop or vencord. They're custom clients that allow plugins, cutsom CSS, and other stuff too. I've been using vesktop for like a year and had no problems and I've been really appreciating it, especially stuff like the stripped-out telemetry and plugins that block youtube ads in embedded discord vids

>>91040 VRC? Definitely not, It's very domestic, entirely dependent on user created content, You could argue the way to get into it through a VR headset if you go down the meta hole is corpo, but their reign has recently ended over VR technology, and they have no influence within the platform itself. Moderation is also pretty nonexistent depending on the spaces you inhabit, it's all done through user reports.

Considering that Discord is now mandating facial identification on every account and locking accounts into SFW mode by default, what options exist for replacing it? I used to be big on Matrix and fediverse/defederation, but I know from big server hosters that the Matrix backend is absolutely horrible optimization-wise. Are there any decent Matrix servers to sign up for that aren't micromanaged or for extremely niche communities? >>90137 Really, the answer to finding a good internet space is just to find a small group of cool people, and the software is just the means. Unfortunately most are on Discord now but I've met cool people on the Fediverse and IRC in the past. I think the best solution moving forward is to just be present across multiple platforms to boost engagement across them. It all comes down to numbers, so using niche platforms to help boost their local communities is still a noble effort.

>>91058 > Considering that Discord is now mandating facial identification on every account (Video of someone using a Half=Life character to spoof the face check) https://comp.lain.la/media/ff/b0/55/ffb0557c2f5c98f0e31a1556c553d3a43f692b049fcf479508ba11aa0a34a0a2.mp4

>>91061 That's my plan, but apparently a lot of services are using 3D mapping and flashing colors to match depth or something to make sure it's legitimate. Also verifying manually for low confidence scans. I'll give bypassing it a fair shot, but eventually they'll have patched it. I already got derezzed from Facebook many years ago for trying to recover my account with thispersondoesnotexist (although they probably just had photos of me already to compare against)

>>91062 > That's my plan, but apparently a lot of services are using 3D mapping and flashing colors to match depth or something to make sure it's legitimate. Also verifying manually for low confidence scans. The facial identification/ID scan is only if your account is being used for accessing servers with 18+ content or channels. The video I linked shows the technique used on Discord. As time goes on they will likely tighten restrictions, but people will likely find bypasses as well. The OSINT community especially would likely be the first to come out with methods for bypassing the checks and mass creating sock puppet accounts. > I'll give bypassing it a fair shot, but eventually they'll have patched it. What about using a fake ID? Obviously not your own or someone's who is close to you, but I somehow doubt that the services have the capability to verify that an ID is legitimate or not by doing a lookup in a government database. > I already got derezzed from Facebook many years ago for trying to recover my account with thispersondoesnotexist (although they probably just had photos of me already to compare against) Condolences. Not sure if you're in a part of the world where Facebook/WhatsApp is a vital part of having a social life, but on the bright side you don't have to worry about Facebook anymore. Also, I agree with your sentiment here: > Really, the answer to finding a good internet space is just to find a small group of cool people, and the software is just the means. I doubt there will be a mass exodus of people from Discord to other places because Discord is easy to join and well known, and there isn't a replacement that currently exists that can compare to the scale and branding that Discord has. Yes, there are XMPP and IRC and SimpleX channels and the Fediverse, but these solutions do not have the same presence (read: advertising) as Discord does, and so (normal) people will be hesitant to switch to them. That is fine. The really interesting people are likely already idling on IRC, arguing about Coreboot vs Libreboot in a SimpleX chat hosted on Tor, and so on.

>>91058 Here is a step by step guide: >host a matrix server >advertise your matrix server on your discord channel >move people willing to move over >delete the discord server

>>91077 > switch from jewish (jason citron) spyware company to jewish (amdocs) spyware company just give up

I've been playing with the idea of tailscale lately to share networks of self-hosted services between friends. This should help escape mediating interaction via the algorithm and AI surveillance, but I'm still not sure how to ever get back to that early internet ecosystem where you could stumble across random communities and meet all sorts of people. For a while twitter was the last place keeping that going but, rip lol

>>91078 I don't think this kind of one dimensional thinking is not going to be productive and it's not going to move the conversation to a place beyond basic bad faith arguments and soykafflinging. A better approach would be to ask: is this trustworthy? And how you are going to assess that is by looking at the foundation of software. Is the software built on solid programming practices? Is end to end encryption properly implemented so that even a complete compromise of the server does not expose user data? Can the server software work on commodity hardware? Is the code structurally and logically sound? Does it have any backdoors? And that's actually possible to assess compared to Discord when the Matrix protocol is open source. By assessing the source code, you can make security claims about the Matrix server that you are hosting and the Matrix client that you are using that is just not possible with Discord. Then there are practicality considerations. Is this user friendly enough? Does the user client properly work on commodity hardware? Is it cross platform? Does it have the key or nice-to-have features rival platforms have? If you can make these assessments, and it satisfies your practical needs and also fits into your threat model, then it shouldn't matter who originally came up with the software.

>>91080 i thought about this a lot. i posted about invite-only cultural islands above, and the larger idea is, to avoid the mass-surveillance and capitalism and low signal-to-noise ratio of the greater internet, that it would be nice to create mesh overnets to share services among trusted peers. users are identified by some kind of private key, deep encryption is not that necessary, the idea is that it's a private invite-only LAN. you might have an overnet with your friends, sharing movies and playing games online (do games still ship with LAN search features?), another with your school mates, one for work, why not.

>checks Dead Internet thread >all the links are dead-ends perfect

If you think all places suck it's because of You are projecting your depression onto everything, who think that is fun and entertaining? Be comfy and you will find comfy.

>>91089 yea those kinda places are still around, though many of them tend to be rather slow. for those who were on sizeofcat, a new forum has been created, more infos in the irc

>>90137 I think any attempt at returning to the way things were in any substantive sense is doomed to failure, but I too am nostalgic for the old noughties forum vibes. Nothing wrong with small communities, I guess the trick would be to figure out how to get a sustainable community going. I can imagine the sort of people who are drawn to it on average will probably be semi-reliable. I think the way of the young web that many of us kind of take for granted or forget was a feature these days is *theming*. A strong site theme helped to first gather, and then retain like-minded people. Like some of the old fan-forums back then.

>>91119 the lainchan irc or the sizeof.cat irc? what is the sizeofcat irc anyway? none of the addresses I tried worked

>>91112 no, they actually suck. good luck finding a warez site that isnt aids and cancer. at best you have torrent sites but then you have to form social bonds with a bunch of users

hell, you cant even name an actual good hardware review site

>>91122 >I think the way of the young web that many of us kind of take for granted or forget was a feature these days is *theming*. A strong site theme helped to first gather, and then retain like-minded people. I agree. It's hard to keep general purpose forums running, but themes could be too limiting and deter people. On the other hand, I've seen too many forums or discord servers (yuck) fail for reasons that could've been avoided by gatekeeping more. So much so that I'm experimenting with setting up an invite-only forum. I'm still working on it but well, maybe it's time to go public with it. It's called thegranule.net.

>>91129 the sizeofcat cafe, ##cafe on Libera, the new one is #socia

>>91161 Sounds to me that you are just being picky and lazy to find actual nice places on the web. Everyone in this thread is complaining about how "the Internet" (the Web) is "dead" and no longer the same, but I see little initiative to go beyond mainstream bullshit. Here, so you can see I'm not being an asshole 'just because': https://www.ipingthereforeiam.com/bbs/ But more than one person on this site will have to leave that comfort zone and use the Internet with something other than a web browser and HTTP... If you dare to start the journey, I wish you a good trip.

Agora road is active and they are in the lainchan webring https://forum.agoraroad.com/index.php

>>90137 >>90145 Twitter and 4chan aren't "the internet", stop consooming botted ragebait. >>90155 Good post >Now that this has ceased and the Internet is once again becoming decentralized and with closed off, gatekeeping cultures you act confused and lost. This is why people say the internet is dead imo, if all you browse are mainstream sites you'll just see the "fake internet" reaching its logical conclusion of spam/astroturfing and they can't satiate their tourist desires anymore. All they know is e-celebs and vying for attention rather than topic based discussion. >>91361 Seems interesting.

>>90145 Jesus, this has to be bait

>>91375 "bait" doesn't get filtered yet? pointing out something is bait is actually a wrong think, and those are not allowed on this site

>>91376 If lainchan maintainers (understandably) don't have time for mitigating the attacks from people who post pedophile links or gore garbage "just because is funny", do you really think they have the time to filter stuff you don't enjoy reading? Common, the code is open source. Why don't do it yourself if you worry so much about trivial stuff? Sorry for targeting you out of nowhere, but this whole thread is full of people who just wanna consume content for free, but do not want to contribute in any way; not because they are not capable of doing so, but because they are lazy and think being apathetic and nihilistic "is cool." Is genuinely starting to piss me off...

Of course it's not dead, idiot. You're on Lainchan RIGHT NOW, what else do you need? I still hang around some smaller imageboards and a certain IRC channel I've been in since 2020. There are plenty of good blogs I follow. A couple of webcomics. A room on the soulseek network I sometimes talk in. Plenty of interesting websites to read through. There's also an active forum I go to when I just want some funny pics to mindlessly scroll through. Whenever I see people whine about "le web is dead" my only question is: What, exactly, do you want to do on it? Because I assure you whatever it is, you can just... do it? But no, it always comes down to this vague "sense of community" or some bullshit like that which to me reads "i'm a lonely sad glitterboy and my blend of online ersatz social interaction isn't cutting it anymore". >>91361 Agora is the absolutely worst offender when it comes to this. An entire website full of whiny glitterboys and windbags. Everyone's just posting for the sake of posting or talking about how much worse everything is all the goddamn time. Not a single decent thread or post on the entire site.

>>91381 From my perspective you were making sense... until you spitted this: >>But no, it always comes down to this vague "sense of community" or some bullshit like that I could go on a whole blabbering about humans being social beings, thus our necessity of finding people with the same interests (which the democratization of the Internet via stuff like BBSs and the Web made easier), but I'll just say: You also posses this "vague sense of community," which directs me to the next point: >>which to me reads "i'm a lonely sad glitterboy and my blend of online ersatz social interaction isn't cutting it anymore". First, what's the point of trying to be condescending assuming someone's else life if, apparently, you are mostly the same since you admitted engaging in these "vague communities" and liking mindlessly scrolling through funny pics, which is ironic since you wrote this: >>Everyone's just posting for the sake of posting I mean, you are saying that there are these times when you like "lurking for the sake of lurking." Don't get me wrong, sometimes I also get bored of studying and enjoy to shut down my brain for a moment (mostly playing DOOM or Duke Nukem), but I do not pretend to be special just because I visit these "oh so obscure, niche communities." My synthesis about this: You are being an hypocrite. Additionally... what the hell is a 'glitterboy'? I genuinely searched for it both in formal dictionaries and slang sites, but could not find anything that makes sense, at least in the context of this thread. The only thing that kind of makes sense is, quote: "A boy or girl who is homosexual and openly admits it by their screen name of glitter boy or glitter girl, or in a guys, case by wearing glitter." So you are calling people who says "the web is dead" gay? Oh boy, I also hate this whole "dead internet" bullshit (let alone people referring to the Web as 'The Internet'), but that's just pathetic, even if you're angry about the situation.

>>91382 Yep, this is def how most Agora posts read

>>91384 I've had interactions in this site that genuinely made me feel bad about calling them out and even ended in a friendly argument. But you are the same as the average, boring web consumer: Using cheap try-hard personal attacks when something hurts instead of real arguments. Sad.

>>91384 >>91381 agora has bigger prawnblems than its people its website is bloated and full of tracking javascript from google and cloudflare, it has a merch store that montizes the brand™ (how many forums has a merch section lol) and the first thing you see is a frickin cookie banner yes yes very small web, very indie

>>91381 You probably don't want to reveal your IRC channel, but how about the others?

>>91382 >could go on a whole blabbering about humans being social beings I'll do it for you >>91381 >You're on Lainchan RIGHT NOW, what else do you need? What, exactly, do you want to do on it? People want friends who care about them. They want to share and have their ideas heard. They want to feel meaningful to others. They're lonely and don't care if it's online or not. If you find the fact that other people aren't satisfied with brewing soykaf on imageboards upsetting that's fine, but then you're posing the question in bad faith. >Because I assure you whatever it is, you can just... do it? There is no technological limitation at play. This is *why* there are so many complaints: people in the 1990s and 2000s were promised a revolution in socialization, a future where individuals across the globe would come together based on interest, intertwine, and escape from what was, for many, an isolated suburban hell driven by sprawling construction of the post-war decades. They got what they asked for in a sense: people are as online as ever, social media is as popular as ever. It turned out though that most humans are completely insufferable, and when the signal to noise ratio is unworkable you end up back to where you started. >it always comes down to this vague "sense of community" or some bullshit like that It's vague because what each person wants is wildly different. >>90319: >either way threads like these are all doomed to fail since we are all looking for different things and people. the only commonality here is frustration >An entire website full of whiny glitterboys and windbags. Everyone's just posting for the sake of posting Do you have even a smidgeon of self awareness? You're on a website dedicated to an anime about the impact of the wired on human connection and all you have to contribute is some shallow smug bullshit >>91788 Check netsplit.de/networks/top100.php. You can then search for channels on each network libera.chat/guides/findingchannels