What is your relation to this place?

There was a time when I could reasonably guess at why people came here and why they WERE here (separate things!). This time is no longer as those guesses wouldn't even apply to me now. There is a lot of talk I see about at least on this corner of the Chan things "getting worse". Often I see the same sentiment from people i'd imagine would both point to each other as the problem. And so when I was thinking about why, I thought about how the me now has nothing outwardly in common with the me 5+ years ago. A me who had much in common with most people here. It gave me a sort of suspicion that we all have very little in common anymore, that we probably can't even all unanimously say we care that much about privacy or netsec, or may not care about technology at all. I can only say for sure we all (or most of us) love lain. But this could be easily wrong if a significant amount of members aren't longtime or people who return and leave and are in fact newish, that would just mean I and some others are having a falling out with this place. So my questions are these. Il answer as a comment. Im certainly not the first to do this type of thread but it's been a minute I think. >When did you first come to lainchan and how did you hear about it? >Why did you stay? >Why do you still come here today? >Do you enjoy your time now as much as you did when you first started coming? What do you feel has changed. >Do you feel like overall you've gotten something out of being here? Would you leave if a better chan or even just community you liked crossed your path? >How do you imagine the typical lainchan poster? Do you fit with that image or relate to it at all? If you want something more open ended and general or think im some filthy dataminer or three letter agent >How would you describe your relationship with lainchan?

Alright so to kick it off. >When did you first come to lainchan and how did you hear about it? I actually can not remember how I heard about lainchan, but I know I came to it 5-6 years ago when I was experimenting with Linux for the first time. >Why did you stay? I loved lain and so I loved the aesthetic of it, and I loved being surrounded by people who knew way more than I did about computers and specifically net sec which I was a senior in highschool and thought that's what I wanted to do with my life. >Why do you still come here today? I think I literally come here because I've found over the years I have no motivation to do anything if it doesn't involve another person or people. Including vent. I don't just vent and actually really enjoy responding to the people here who are having problems as they tend to be more open to solutions than on other chans. However I have a lot of complaints to i'l get to. >Do you enjoy your time now as much as you did when you first started coming? What do you feel has changed. I don't but i'm not sure if I ever enjoyed it since moving away from the tech related boards and into /hum/. I think maybe I have the best interactions still on the drugs board. I'm not sure if the people have changed or if I have changed, or both. I notice people are way quicker to make assumptions about your character off of just lines of post. I also think though I've gotten worse about this. My best explanation is maybe just the longtime people that are here have posted enough to where we all have gotten to know certain "types" of posts and when it's one that sounds like one we've heard and hate it gets more frustrating each time. But I don't know. >Do you feel like overall you've gotten something out of being here? Would you leave if a better chan or even just community you liked crossed your path? I think sometimes this board helps keep me occupied when i'm alone and usually that plus me being on stims. I actually am always looking for alternatives to this board on discord and such. A sort of "main" online community as i'm used to by now having that, a online group of people I used to know irl, and then my current irl friends. However even though there is people here that piss me off way more than on the tens of discords i've run through by now, the fact is I don't know who they are. On discord I can get way angrier as certain people come to "irritate" me. Here it's just a fresh anger every time mostly. >How do you imagine the typical lainchan poster? Do you fit with that image or relate to it at all? When im being my most optimistic I assume the typical lainchan poster is a young adult or underage and in need of some kind of help they can't get because of external or internal reasons that I think I understand. I assume most of the worst soykaf I see here is something that will be moved past in their life, which isn't to imply at my most optimistic I assume that everyone that irks me is just a less "developed" version of me. Just that they won't go their whole life hating everyone or whatever it is, and that at my most optimistic I feel I can empathize with them. At my least optimistic I assume that I actually don't understand anyone here. That even if I once was equally in the dumps as someone and in a similar way with maybe even a similar manner of posting and talking about it, they will not ever see it as something that needs addressing or want to move past it. When i'm really really unoptimistic I start thinking I understand them again and think there isn't any reason i'm better off besides chance and happening to meet a few people who changed my life. That if not for that, if any little thing was different, i'd be exactly the same. That there isn't anything to be "done" even when the person is expressing want to change some aspect of their life here.

>>44864 >>When did you first come to lainchan and how did you hear about it? I don't remember, I probably came from some other imageboard. >Why did you stay? It's easy to remember the name of the website. >Why do you still come here today? I don't have anywhere else to go. People on /g/ and here are only ones that I talk to besides my family. >Do you enjoy your time now as much as you did when you first started coming? What do you feel has changed. No, because imageboards as a whole are slowly dying. Centralization won, 99% of the people are in walled-garden platforms like discord, facebook or any other service that is popular with people right now. >Do you feel like overall you've gotten something out of being here? No, there is a lot of crossposting from other imageboards so I can't really say that there is something I got that is uniquely from here. >Would you leave if a better chan or even just community you liked crossed your path? It depends on how active of a community are we talking about. If I had to actively participate in something then probably I would come here less often. >How do you imagine the typical lainchan poster? Do you fit with that image or relate to it at all? There is no such thing as a typical lainchan poster.

I think originally it was tech guys who also actually watched lain and liked it because it reflected common interest topics. Personally i originally found this site cause i assumed digging for lain would lead me to people interested in same topics. Now its probably more a mix of refugees with a few original users. I see this indicated by the change of posting style. As for value i do see interesting stuff still posted here i dont see on other sites i frequent. So the site continues to have value.

>>44867 >There is no such thing as a typical lainchan poster OP here. I like that, wish I said that. Mine are though what I assume, but you are right in reality.

Nice try FBI >When did you first come to lainchan and how did you hear about it? When it was one month old. I just watches SEL and gf said there apparently exists a "lain chan". >Why did you stay? People seemed able to withhold their urges for the sake of interesting or fun conversation, and on average weren't as dump as most imageboards. Also lain. >Why do you still come here today? Same reason. I don't give a damn about lain now though, it's nothing new under the sun and somewhat cringe in hindsight. >Do you enjoy your time now as much as you did when you first started coming? What do you feel has changed. The userbase has gotten less mature, there's comparatively more teenagers. Also people in their 20s-30s who feel like teenagers and are militant about some political ideology, be it /cyb/, free software, or the leftie-rightie thing. >Do you feel like overall you've gotten something out of being here? Would you leave if a better chan or even just community you liked crossed your path? Better quality discussion than I'd find on most of the web. I have serious doubts if the imageboard format can allow for anything significantly better than this, unless it's a community of like 30 posters in a secret hideout. >How do you imagine the typical lainchan poster? Do you fit with that image or relate to it at all? Not quite, I don't care about gnu, free software, zombie apocalypse, p-zombie apocalypse, evil government state police corporation dystopia in books or IRL, or lain. Like seriously watch Texhnolyze it's superior in every way that matters.

>>44864 >How would you describe your relationship with lainchan? I'm just here for the poontang.

>When did you first come to lainchan and how did you hear about it? I had heard about lainchan on another image board around one year ago, and after the admin had a mental fit, I decided to come here instead. >Why did you stay? The conversations are better, and cringe is posted less. I can somewhat stand the American anime fans here, while I can not on other sites. >Why do you still come here today? It is my favourite image board currently on the internet. >Do you feel like overall you've gotten something out of being here? Would you leave if a better chan or even just community you liked crossed your path? I have learnt about many different websites and books through here. I will probably leave for 5ch soon. >How do you imagine the typical lainchan poster? Do you fit with that image or relate to it at all? Like many have said in the thread, the average lainchan poster is probably a teenager or around early 20s. I am in this demographic. >How would you describe your relationship with lainchan? I love Lain.

>>44876 Texhnolyze isn't about the same thing or even in the same genre, putz. They aren't competing.

>>44866 >However even though there is people here that piss me off way more than on the tens of discords i've run through by now, I don't understand how you get pissed online even at anonymous communities but I can guess that you being found out as redditor is one especially on imageboards. I'm at least 90% confident that I'm correct, nobody uses 2 line breaks after a greentext. You're probably the type to only discuss with emotions at hand, anonymous communities are different and it's more of like a general consensus where posters automatically align with other posters and mutually understand each other. Generally I see crossposting redditors as spergs from experience that I can even probably compile reddit spacing posts I had archived in my time and prove a point. The same people usually complain a lot about "cuteness" and "anime" across all imageboards or make posts that appeal a lot to emotion or the meta itself and it's just something you don't see in common. >5-6 years ago 2015/2016 It's about the same time as the reddit exodus. I've been here since 2014 back when the pace was a lot slower and when it was one of the early altchan ghost towns. It's not something to brag about since I barely used this chan, actually it's a lot livelier now. >I assume the typical lainchan poster is a young adult or underage and in need of some kind of help they can't get because of external or internal reasons that I think I understand. >At my least optimistic I assume that I actually don't understand anyone here. There's a saying "Those who try to understand will never understand." You can only understand something if it is (You). You should know better. You're lumping a group together and making a general assumption out of the fact that you do not understand it. >underage At least I think they are teenagers with all the "school" related posts. >>44864 >It gave me a sort of suspicion that we all have very little in common anymore No, if you're truly olduser anonymous, you'll know the fact that it's always the case when newusers start using imageboards.

>>44886 im an "older" 4chanchan user as well about the same sort of def not early but not late to the party, I think 2010-2011. I sort of just dont believe thats whats happening. I also have not used reddit like even once, and its not something id particularly be ashamed to admit if I did. My reddit spacing is literally just from typing thru a phone and the paragraphs looking far longer. Its worth noting ive been through and said some of the exact same things as them, but im just aware its never exactly the same of course. My point being its not that I dont have any idea or guess at whats going on its that I choose not to. I considered it being new people and etc. but id rather think the problems internal and with me rather than external.

>>44886 >it's more of like a general consensus where posters automatically align with other posters Reddit is designed around common consensus. Group approval is the most important thing on there. The appeal of an anonymous, no-ratings system is that it's well-suited for posting dissenting opinions. This gets messed up when enough small-minded, dogmatic people invade and use dickish behavior to enforce de-facto censorship. That's what happens on 8chan and 4chan now.

>>44884 Indeed, there is no competition. Still, people who are for whatever reason stuck with SEL and have it as their primary motivation for being interested in computer stuff (more likely than you think) need some good Texh therapy so they can either finally become good at it or move on. >>44891 This seems pretty relevant, yes. There's little to no forces at work here that would have a chilling effect on people, while on login-based platforms they have reputation and access to lose. Realizing this, new users like to trip their power and do utter, pointless, tiresome soykafposting that mods will have to delete to uphold post quality and not give other users a precedent. At this point the angry manchild tries to rally against censorship using whatever their soykafpost focused on as an excuse, gets ignored into fairy dust, gets bored and leaves.

>>44891 General consensus isn't limited to commonality. Accepting agreement even with disparity is consensus. Anonymous seeks (to make) content, the OC, meanwhile reddit is about being the "front page" you pick some photo, or an article from yahoo or maybe ycombinator as OP and then discuss it with others, you make the most catchy reply and get a cake, gold or whatever digital scoring systems they now have but usually the end result is plain or little to no valuable discussion you can learn from (it's more like instagram for nerds), also while staying within the boundaries that does not desecrate the "redditor mask" which is the absolute opposite of the "mask of anon" which may even reach the extremities of online discussion and everyanon can agree that it's just another day.

>>44908 >Accepting agreement even with disparity is consensus. That sounds like contrived bs. >Anonymous seeks (to make) content Most of which gets lost in the void. Content's merit is determined by how often something is reposted and regurgitated. This isn't noticeable on slower imageboards since stuff doesn't get deleted nearly as fast. Slower boards are almost entirely reliant on moderators for "quality control", but fast-posting completely fails at that. The common "x image general threads" also have practically no OC and are just for reposting stuff that's elsewhere on the internet, without any discussion. Reddit has boards for OC. I wouldn't be surprised if there was more total OC on reddit simply because there's so many more users. >the "redditor mask" which is the absolute opposite of the "mask of anon" Except there's cross-posters. People on 4chan now start crying for mods if so much as flat-chest porn is posted.

>When did you first come to lainchan and how did you hear about it? i'm a tourist from 4chan. >Why did you stay? the pace of the boards is much slower, enabling more involved and better quality discussions. >Why do you still come here today? i'm not sure exactly. i'm a shameless tourist of chans, i've never watched lain or any anime. but i think i have a similar psychological and social situation of the majority of individuals here. hence the constant return here... >Do you enjoy your time now as much as you did when you first started coming? What do you feel has changed. i haven't been frequenting this place for long enough to answer this. >Do you feel like overall you've gotten something out of being here? Would you leave if a better chan or even just community you liked crossed your path? i like the technical discussions here about math and programming. and yes, would leave. >How do you imagine the typical lainchan poster? Do you fit with that image or relate to it at all? i hardly can imagine. given my background i'm a complete misfit both here and irl

>>44896 >There's little to no forces at work here that would have a chilling effect on people, while on login-based platforms they have reputation and access to lose. I've been working on a text-only login-based message board that aims to reduce the "must maintain reputation" and sockpuppet issues simultaneously. There's no reddit-style user profiles with a full post history. In each thread the usernames are hashed with a randomized per-thread salt. You'd have a guarantee that you're not arguing with a group of sockpuppets, while also being able to post controversial opinions that don't follow you into other threads. I'm looking at how best to handle potential admin-related issues. Of course there's no way to guarantee that an evil admin won't find a workaround and log everything. But I think it's doable to build in a sort of plausible-deniability no-link-between-posts-and-user-ID into the system, so that a benevolent admin has no useful info to turn over to authorities who demand it of them. It's text-only for now because I'd like to run such a site myself without also having to police it 24/7 for CP. Been there, done that, hate it. And of course it's entirely javascript-free. I want this to run properly on Tor.

>When did you first come to lainchan and how did you hear about it? 2015 I think, after watching SEL and googling around to read more about it. >Why did you stay? I didn't really, I come now and then when I feel like it. It's the only chan that I know which is both fairly active and where you can have a serious discussion. >Why do you still come here today? idem >Do you enjoy your time now as much as you did when you first started coming? What do you feel has changed. I don't know. I don't have a good memory and I changed a lot as a person. >Do you feel like overall you've gotten something out of being here? Yes, I've had many interesting discussions, and sometime when I have random thoughts I develop them a bit more in writing to make a post here. >Would you leave if a better chan or even just community you liked crossed your path? Sure. I love Lain, but I don't want to have a dogmatic attachment to this board. >How do you imagine the typical lainchan poster? Do you fit with that image or relate to it at all? I don't imagine them at all.

>When did you first come to lainchan and how did you hear about it? Found it in while looking at a reddit thread yesterday haha. Finally finished Lain today. >Why did you stay? I think it's super interesting, and I don't have many friends so I have a LOT of free time >Why do you still come here today? I feel like I'll come here everyday now >Do you enjoy your time now as much as you did when you first started coming? What do you feel has changed. Hmm I guess I can't really answer this question yet >Do you feel like overall you've gotten something out of being here? Would you leave if a better chan or even just community you liked crossed your path? I'd probably just stay here if there were still active users.. so far I've learned a lot from this place >How do you imagine the typical lainchan poster? Do you fit with that image or relate to it at all? Maybe late teens and early 20's. Yep I think I fit in perfectly. I don't think lainchan posters are ordinary by any means.

>>44864 >When did you first come to lainchan and how did you hear about it? I came here and to other chans when the chan I was exiled to from 4chan stopped existing. >Why did you stay? I wanted to become a developer and thought it would help me reas up on CS-related trivia, stories, experiences and to nab the pdfs from here. I never liked SEL, but I like cyberpunk, hacker culture, diy tech, street pharmacy (purely from a diy perspective). >Why do you still come here today? I'm a developer now and I sure didn't learn the ropes from here. But I come here still to learn about the fringes of computing and programming. Many here are interested in weird, rare, specific things within the technical domains. I get many project ideas from here. I mostly lurk and prefer to read about people writing about their field of interest. diy and lambda I often lurk. By now I mostly ignore the 7 side-boards and only sometimes check /hum/ since the RLM thing got moved there and I sticked around a bit. >Do you enjoy your time now as much as you did when you first started coming? What do you feel has changed. I enjoy it more, because I understand it more. I can also tell now when someone is full of soykaf. Overall I feel the place is slower and /or dead. >Do you feel like overall you've gotten something out of being here? Would you leave if a better chan or even just community you liked crossed your path? I only check every few days for a short while, sometimes I don't visit for weeks. So I haven't yet regretted a single hour. >How do you imagine the typical lainchan poster? Do you fit with that image or relate to it at all? I think there's some pretty /cyb/ people on here, but most on here are little kids. Many lainchanners are also Marxists, anarchists or otherwise politically confused and misguided. It's safe to say that I only have the cybersecurities issues, anti-megacorp ideals and privacy in common with them and otherwise I don't feel very connected to lain. It has come to the point where I visit purely out of technical idea-mining, since the community isn't quite my folks. >How would you describe your relationship with lainchan? We grew apart, but I use it to learn of tech things that don't get much mainstream attention.

>When did you first come to lainchan and how did you hear about it? I have no idea anymore, more probably I saw a link on other imageboard or someone complaining about it and decided to verify, but I truly don't remember when and how. >Why did you stay? Interesting place, I always liked the quality of the discussions and posts here. >Why do you still come here today? Same as above, quality fell trough time but it's still miles above what others have become. >Do you enjoy your time now as much as you did when you first started coming? What do you feel has changed. I still enjoy it even though there is much more schizophrenia around, the problem is probably that more people came here, which has it pros and cons. >Do you feel like overall you've gotten something out of being here? Would you leave if a better chan or even just community you liked crossed your path? Yeah, I like the "community" if you want to call it that, I probably wouldn't leave, if it's better I'll definitely use it more but unless this place is much worse-off I can just use both at the same time. I also have been helped with some tech stuff both here and in the IRC, so there's that. >How do you imagine the typical lainchan poster? Do you fit with that image or relate to it at all? I don't think I imagine that, I guess the main public would be young adult male? But I have no stereotype in my head of the average user.