Secretiveness in regards to internet communities

Hi /hum/ I've always enjoyed imageboards and traditional forum. Although the former provide great freedom, they also make connecting and making friends an impossible task due to its anonymous nature. So I like gravitating towards the latter. Recently a great forum I used to visit was nuked and I lost track of everybody because I don't like using social media. Trying to find another forum to fill the void has been a painful and unrewarding task. I try to investigate, ask around, and nobody gives a clear answer because they're too secretive about their communities. I know they're just trying to gatekeep bad elements out, but it hurts, I feel so isolated and I don't know what to do with my free time, online connection was always a big part of me but the advent of social media has destroyed a lot of worthy communities over the year. Social media isn't a good replacement, they don't foster communication nor discussion, they simply satisfy the ego. I know there are arguments to be made in favor of secrecy but at the same time, web 1.0 is dying and I feel it's bad idea to keep that attitude forever. I dunno, I'm just bummed, trying to find an oasis out there. Hobbyist forums don't satisfy me, and finding a more generalist place is becoming an impossible task if you're not in the know. I don't think extreme gatekeeping is that good, and I'm of the opinion that the best gatekeeping is a strong community culture that makes new members adhere to it, rather than remain hidden from the masses. What do you think?

The world wide web is long gone and now instead of a "Browser" you use various applications like "Discord" or "Telegram" to join app-locked forums.

>>47914 Give pleroma a try. I know your feel. Lainchan, for me, is like walking by a derelict playground from the simpler days of childhood. Image boards are no more. Since halfchan was taken over by the regime years ago, there’s nothing but sterile, humorless posts by feds, journalists and their ilk. It looks active, but it’s a Potemkin board. The kids moved on to dicsord, but us geezers occasionally drop by our old playground to look at the rusty swings. It’s crazy. I remember when I felt like I was stepping into a village of fellow misfits, but now the internet is like wandering through a bombed out wasteland. Populated regions are brightly-colored gulags guarded by the apparatchiks shouting propaganda on their megaphones and what’s left of the free world are little vagrant camps too small for the regime to go after.

>>47920 halfchan still gets occasional interesting oc, i agree that your general take is right though. For one said oc is swiftly deleted. For two its been leaked that halfchan is a better marketing platform than fb/yt/etc. which means anyone who cares will market on it

>>47914 >>47920 Are you trying to tell me this wasteland isn't normal and that you Gen Y had better everything? What a surprise, welcome to the dead commercialized internet dominated by megacorps. My problem is that I'm neither Gen Y nor Gen Z and that's probably the reason I'm attracted to such obscure places like lainchan. I love word filters.

>>47922 I'm 32 and know exactly what you mean. >>47915 is right though. Traditional forums are dead and now all means of socialising online are basically through corpnet soykaf. Extremely isolating existence when you grew up these things. There is no real option anymore except "becoming" a normal person which is usually not possible if you're an internet retard like me or just accepting your solitude which, as a human being, is not easy. >>47920 Pleroma is full of excessively rude pedo weebs who gatekeep everything. It is NOT a forum. It is by definition a "microblogging" alternative and posting random sentences about your thoughts is just a garbage way of communicating. The only reason twitter is so popular is because well known people (politicians, celebrities, etc.) use it and it gives the illusion of interraction with them by "retweeting" and commenting on their random soykaf.

>>47923 >Extremely isolating existence when you grew up these things. Thanks for pointing it out, didn't know it's a domain of my times. I basically belong nowhere and am losing my humanity. People have never been that connected and that lonely as they're now, quite ironic. >"becoming" a normal person I was thinking about that. "Leaving the internet and spending more time with friends", I thought, but I don't know if that's possible. People I like are always busy and no one really writes to me because I only use SMS. They like me but they don't bother to write, maybe because they're also busy being lonely online. Chan users are mostly trolling or the quality is too low, so you can't really get into anything cool. There are still FOSS mailing lists but my skill level is too low to get engaged. Now everything online resolves about selling and buying products or services, the culture was purged. I tried to contribute but I got burned out and now I lack the motivation to do anything. Do "greener pastures" even exist or is it all just burned ground?

>>47923 >>47924 Also to make things clear: technically I'm Gen Z but for some reason I share a big part of culture with Gen Y. That's what happens when you're born between two generations.

>>47924 >I was thinking about that. "Leaving the internet and spending more time with friends", I thought, but I don't know if that's possible. "normal" people now extend online life into IRL, they talk about online memes, social media. They aren't separated worlds anymore. >People I like are always busy and no one really writes to me because I only use SMS. They like me but they don't bother to write, maybe because they're also busy being lonely online. People chose commodity over actual connection. They don't need the responsibility of friendship because their minds can now be constantly occupied by a stream of risk-free dopamine. In some ways, they see actual friendship as a headache. >Do "greener pastures" even exist or is it all just burned ground? I'm afraid it's the second. It will get worse. If you can't form a family, it's going to be tough.

>>47914 Facebook and VK are actually a great replacement for forum communities with user-created groups for what I've seen. People do discuss things there like they did 15 years ago when both Facebook and VK were like portal forums with real names. Microblog ME-ME-ME user-centered (as opposed to topic-centered) soycial media: Twitter, Fediverse and Telegram are the actual cancer for smartphone users by smartphone users. All people I've seen with decent opinions on twitter also host their own website, so there is no point in "following" them when you can read actual stuff. Microblog users are eating their own cat food. And Discord is what Jabber MUCs were in 2011 and IRC in 2004: foster to insufferable attentionwhore egoglitterboys. Channel-style chatrooms promote chit-chat noise burying creative content signal. They are good for int-ime coordination only. Few topic standalone forums that don't revolve around gayming or simulacrum hate culture are hosted and visited by 40-something olds with extremely assburger topics, they are comfy to read, very hard to navigate or find anything useful under millions of topic pages spanning decades, but I'm afraid to contribute, because often use some freedom-disrespecting deterrent like google craptcha to keep millenial dimwits like me out of the premises.

>>47926 >"normal" people now extend online life into IRL, they talk about online memes, social media. People I like don't do that, but I always pick slightly weird people as my friend. What you say is quite common among NPCs though. >They aren't separated worlds anymore. Thet were warned but didn't listen. Spreading propaganda has never been so easy and effective as it is now on faceberg or halfchan. >People chose commodity over actual connection. They don't need the responsibility of friendship because their minds can now be constantly occupied by a stream of risk-free dopamine. In some ways, they see actual friendship as a headache. Is there a cure for that? I value friendship more than people around me seem to. >It will get worse. If you can't form a family, it's going to be tough. Thanks for reminding me I'm still a virgin. I'm going to become either a hero or a villain in this world. I need to get some superpower quickly.

>>47922 It wasn't perfect, but it wasn't this bad. Websites used to be for nerds, so there was no money in trying to shape opinions on them (people still watched TV then). Neocities, but unironic. People tried to be who they really wanted to be and said what they wouldn't say aloud. It could be hilarious. It could be shocking. Now the social engineers are interested, so there are grifts on top of grifts in all directions. Content farms pump out outrage porn and everyone just fumes and spins their wheels. It's an insidious psychological prison. Everyone is nervous. Everything is a crisis. Nothing happens. Once in a while you'll hit something interesting, if you look. Like a telnet BBS that some geezers actually use. Or the lain mumble and you know that the nonsense you're hearing is an honest-to-god neckbeard from some god-forsaken part of the country and not just another paid "influencer" trying to sell you some product or some political bullshit. They're hard to find, though. You can say it's the corps, but there really isn't a clear line where they end and the government and NGOs begin. I just call it 'the regime' at this point. The unholy marriage between the new church and state. >>47923 Eh. Yeah, that's a fair critique of pleroma. It varies a lot with your instance, though. >>47927 >facebook is OK No. No it isn't.

>Although the former provide great freedom, they also make connecting and making friends an impossible task due to its anonymous nature. Yeah. I remember when I used to bash forums back when they were still relevant. They're all so cliquey, they're all a huge circle-jerk among their longtime users, etc. But in the age of social media, "you never know what you have until it's gone" couldn't be any more true. I just didn't think we'd ever lose something as simple as linear discussion that gives all posts and threads equal visibility. I know there's still a few around, but the ones I've seen have taken every stereotype about forums and cranked it to maximum. Gaming forums seem especially bad, I tried to visit ones about games I like and the result is always the same. Power-tripping mods, some kind of crazy user title/badge insanity to inflate people's egos, and every discussion getting dominated by the same group of people. Thing about imageboards, though, is that anonymity attracts trolls and spam. Plus feds/ideologues posing as some undesirable group, to attract legit members of that group and associate your site with them, all for discussing something verboten yet harmless.

>>47923 >Pleroma is full of excessively rude pedo weebs who gatekeep everything. It is NOT a forum. It is by definition a "microblogging" alternative and posting random sentences about your thoughts is just a garbage way of communicating. The only reason twitter is so popular is because well known people (politicians, celebrities, etc.) use it and it gives the illusion of interraction with them by "retweeting" and commenting on their random soykaf. Yeah, I honestly don't know what the appeal of something like Pleroma is. It's not any better than Twitter, it's just a different kind of terrible. >>47931 >I just didn't think we'd ever lose something as simple as linear discussion that gives all posts and threads equal visibility. Yeah, just look at Reddit for example. It's terrible for any actual discussion. It's pretty much just an echo chamber by design. The things discussed in this thread pain me too. Internet access is more widespread than ever before, but the internet feels so barren and devoid of any interesting content and actual discussion.

Dont be too negative, I'm fairly sure that the unfortunate/fortunate thing about new things that even after they've been old things for a century there will be some cliques among the billions of us that will profess them as the ultimate. I'd be willing to bet that in 2100's there will still be someone hosting a phpBBS for their Ultima Online shard, the problem is mainly how do you find the internet communities that you're looking for... It probably isn't even so much about secrecy and gatekeeping, although since everyone by now should recognize that these small homely communities of ours will quickly be destroyed by the light of the public mass that some measure of secrecy is probably a minimal kind of self-defense, still a lot of it probably is just people being stuck in their own bubbles. Us included, who knows what kind of strange worlds we would encounter if eg. we someday took a turn into a different subnet on the 3rd hop (or just browsed in a different language) instead of going into the same places day in and day out...

Also you can't blame new generations for not knowing about your past if you're unwilling to teach them about it and just hide in your digital retirement homes...

>>47927 >Facebook and VK are actually a great replacement for forum communities with user-created groups for what I've seen. >People do discuss things there like they did 15 years ago when both Facebook and VK were like portal forums with real names. FB - absolutely not. What are you smoking? But VK I can say used to be a decent alternative until they sanitised everything and made it just as disgraceful as FB (but replace US intelligence agencies with Russian ones). Regardless, why the hell would you want to use your real name? Throughout the 90s and early 00s, we were constantly told never EVER to give out your personal information online and for good reason. You belong to you. You own yourself. Outside of very limited circumstances, the only reason people would want your personal information online is to exploit you. But now all that has gone out the window and you are ENCOURAGED to give as much information about yourself as possible to feed into their vampire data collection and mass surveillance. >>47929 >Neocities, but unironic This is the worst thing about Neocities. It is absolutely full of Gen Zs creating 90s/early-00s simulacra, what they BELIEVE oldnet was like in the same way people still believe the 80s entirely consisted of neon and cocaine. I'm not being harsh to gen Z's as they are just fascinated by some "golden age" they never experienced but it's all extremely empty of any real substance. >It's an insidious psychological prison. Everyone is nervous. Everything is a crisis. Nothing happens. This is an extremely accurate description. You know, when I was young, I would hear older people saying how things were better back when they were young and as you grow older you hear about the concept of nostalgia and "rose-tinted glasses" and are told that the past was never really as great as you believe it was, and that all people experience nostalgia in a never-ending cycle. And as much as I try to think about it all, I KNOW that it was better. I KNOW that the Internet was far far better than it is now (and of course the world in general). In no way could anyone justify the idea that the Internet of today is in any way better except for speed. I would trade all the speed in the world to return to what was. I would trade it all to go back to a time when my nerdy little "Internet hobby" was ridiculed by regular people, when it was a place, a "wild west" as people so often describe it of creativity and imagination, of hope and friendship and joy. I know these words may sound ridiculous but damn it, it really was Elysium to what exists today. In fact, sometimes I feel like I miss a thing like MSN but then I realise how MSN was part of the beginning of the end of that wonderful period... ease-of-use computing that allowed John and Jane Normalman to "connect". >>47931 >I know there's still a few around, but the ones I've seen have taken every stereotype about forums and cranked it to maximum. Gaming forums seem especially bad, I tried to visit ones about games I like and the result is always the same. Power-tripping mods, some kind of crazy user title/badge insanity to inflate people's egos, and every discussion getting dominated by the same group of people. Unfortunately you are completely correct. While there always were "power-tripping mods" and cliquey environments to some extent as you have described, these days the forums that are left are really like little clubs that outsiders will find extremely difficult to "penetrate". It's like trying to enter some secret society or fraternity or whatever but the result you will find is totally empty. Also, those that are left mostly consist of the same high-volume posters that posted there 15+ years ago and are there holding onto that little piece of meaning they had in their life, refusing to let it go. It's quite a sad thing to see, really. >Yeah, just look at Reddit for example. It's terrible for any actual discussion. It's pretty much just an echo chamber by design. Reddit is just so bad. There is NO real discussion. Everything is designed as an echo chamber. I know that phrase is thrown around a lot these days but there is no other way to describe it. If you have an interest in something or some subject and post about it on the dedicated "subreddit", if your thoughts do not align with the status quo, your thread/post will be voted down to hell and buried from sight, if not outright "deleted by moderator". In contrast to forums which, as >>47931 implies, give a fair and democratic quality to user discussion via their linear nature, Reddit relies upon a sort of mob rule which gives the illusion of democracy but is usually just synonymous with whatever soykaf is acceptable or popular in the culture at any given time, and thus an extension of "the system" if I can use such a term. >>47936 >Also you can't blame new generations for not knowing about your past if you're unwilling to teach them about it and just hide in your digital retirement homes... The problem is that the new generations are so-often brainwashed like little agents of destruction and will subvert what remains with their bullshit. Once again, I don't wish to be rude about Gen Zs or whatever, but this is just the reality. They grew up with smart devices and social media and have no clue what life can be like without it. They are possibly THE most brainwashed generation since the Hitlerjugend.

>>47944 >Once again, I don't wish to be rude about Gen Zs or whatever, but this is just the reality. They grew up with smart devices and social media and have no clue what life can be like without it. They are possibly THE most brainwashed generation since the Hitlerjugend. Early Gen Z here, that's probably true but not globally. The internet wasn't that common in early 2000s in post-soviet countries like mine. Social media cancer started becoming popular maybe in 2010 or 2012. I had a pretty normal childhood and spend time outside, so you're probably talking about middle and late Gen Z, born 10 years later - so called "tablet kids". Tablet kids spent their earliest days in front of brainwashing TV channels like "Babyfirst" and then play Angry Birds on their tablets. When tablet kids grow up, their overprotective parents don't let them go outside and instead they give them computers/tablets because they are "easier too control and look after". Never ever let your kid watch "Babyfirst" - it really makes you and your kid dumb, Soviet cartoons are unironically better to watch than that brainwashing soykaf.

>>47949 imagine not showing your kids Polish cartoons

I'm early gen Y. Among the friends and communities I made back before the web became a megamall, there was a generally accepted idea that we would all eventually leave the internet, our escapism hobby, when we grew up. When someone older disappeared, we all presumed they got busy with "irl", having outgrown internet shenanigans in favor of (what I personally perceived) to be more "enriching adult stuff". The people I looked up to disappeared without a trace, save for maybe one or two with a personal website that hasn't been updated in several years. The remainder went on to be active on social media cesspools. It's strange to me how much rampant use of these sites seemed to change their character, or maybe it just brought out things I didn't register back then. The back of my mind stills clings to this notion that I'm supposed to outgrow the internet and move onto the more ~enriching irl~, and for the most part I have... the problem now is that the internet is embedded in that world I was supposed to enter, and I feel a serious disconnect with it. I guess it was naive of me to assume it would never be like this. I'm almost 30 and still on anonymous imageboards because it's a bit of refuge from the oversharing megamall. >>47944 >This is the worst thing about Neocities. It is absolutely full of Gen Zs creating 90s/early-00s simulacra Yeah, it hurts. They're emulating more of a tumblr aesthetic than a geocities one imo. I still see some potential in it as a creative platform however if you're willing to make something outside that bubble.

I think the internet lacks the culture of younger/older colleague where we learn from each other. Instead there's the hermetic "lurk moar" culture which drives quality towards extinction. I'm something between Gen Y and Gen Z because I spent time with my older sister and older people when I was outside, this is the only reason I'm not a smartphone zombie now. >>47951 >got busy with "irl" Like what, wageslaving, getting older, raising kids and dying? >I'm almost 30 Man, you're like one of those Atari dudes, are you? >Yeah, it hurts. Withstanding the pure pain of Gen Z cringe, you're brave, anon.

>>47949 >The internet wasn't that common in early 2000s in post-soviet countries like mine. Social media cancer started becoming popular maybe in 2010 or 2012. Yes, I understand it's not universal but even so, as a dude in his early 30s I remember speaking to people from CIS/eastern European countries in the late 90s/early 00s and was fascinated by their curious experiences. Usually they were older guys as I'm sure as you say the Internet was not as widespread in the east even compared to its niche character in the west at the time. That being said, the 90s in western countries was truly the LAST great decade where there was any semblance of normality. Despite the soykaf that was going on at the time, the world still hadn't been totally ruined by social media or the homogenisation/mass consumerisation of the Internet. I know that it was a pretty bad time in the east (still adjusting from "shock capitalism" of the fall of the USSR) but in the west there was so much hope for the future, such a feeling of that the world was going to be okay. The "evil empire" of the USSR had fallen and technology looked like it would make a better world for us. We truly believed that back then. So much hope now lost... >>47951 I'm a little older than you, and will tell you now that that life is NOT fulfilling. There is no fulfillment in living a 9-5 job, having a mortgage, going to work, going to the gym, going home, pumping your wife, going to sleep and then waking up and doing all over again forever and ever and ever until you're old and in a long care home where you die and will be forgotten in a few decades. Do NOT ever believe for a second that the life that is painted as desirable is so because it isn't except to the most mundane, basic, simple-minded people. People are socially engineered to BELIEVE that it is something they should want and that's why so many do so. You must find what you love, what you are passionate about. I know this sounds cliché but even if it doesn't make money, your passion must be your life. Yeah, the Internet is a load of soykaf these days, but it is totally integrated into life now and I think it's important to accept that there's no going back now. You will never "grow out of the Internet". It is part of us and short of massive war, will never leave us. Just do what you love and surf the Web all you like, friend. Just avoid corpnet and strengthen the numbers of "communities" like this. Even if you're anonymous and will never know your name, I'm with you. I believe in you.

>>47956 I'm that Gen Z you're replying to. Good post, I don't remember when was the last time I had hope. It's interesting that on the Internet we can skip the cultural cringe and talk like equal, even though there's over 10 years of difference between us. The obscure internet culture needs to be protected.

>>47957 Hopes lies within you, my friend. The world right now is a whole load of soykaf but you just gotta believe in yourself. Reach out if you feel helpless and know that you have so many people cheering for you online. We are all in this together.

>>47956 On the topic of internet in Russia I found this book to be very interesting perspective https://weaponizednarrative.asu.edu/system/files/library/docs/fm_9.pdf

>>47944 Earlier Gen Z (am early 2000s) does not really fit this description, considering that we did not have tablets to laze about on and did not have phones at the start, nor this type of social media. I myself seem to have latched onto forums at their tail end, actually.... What has been lost, I have come to glean, is beyond just equally visible linear discussion, but also coherent and long-winded discussion. That is, the usage of the medium for the conveying of thoughts, ideas, and even emotions through language is diminished. Why work on your project for weeks or months, and spend 1+ hours crafting your effortposts/funposts, when you can ingest a constant stream of dopamine fixes? We have traded accomplishment, intellectual discussion and true social connections for slavery to our impulses and the harvesting of our attention spans. I mean, read an old Phrack article- that sort of thing hardly can exist now.

>>47961 If you were born in the year 2000 (although you say early 00s), you would have begun accessing the Internet around the earliest 2007 or roundabouts as a child that only began learning to read if that. This was when the finally nail in the coffin in oldnet occured. Even MSN of all things was dying by this point. Just because you did not have tablets, it does not mean you grew up with oldnet. I know there are quite a few gen Zs who like to believe they were on the "cusp of gen Y" and make out like they experienced a similar time but they simply did not. I do not mean to "gatekeep" my own experiences at all but it's just a sad fact that you grew up and never truly experienced what the Web was before it was totally killed. I know your experiences through youth online were probably great, fun, etc. as they usually are but you grew up with soykafnet tripe without a doubt. That you are here shows you are probably a social outcast like the rest of us and are very aware of what it has become, that it is indeed a load of soykaf and this is a positive thing. But to thing what you grew up with was anywhere near close to what was is inaccurate.

>>47944 born shortly before 9/11 here. I grew up with VHS tapes. I didn't have regular access to a computer until I was around 13, when my dad decided to let me and my sister use his beat up old powerbook to browse the internet and play miniclip games or whatever. I learned to program on that thing. While a lot of people my age are definitely phone and social media addicts, a surprising number aren't. A lot of people I know have either quit social media or cut way back on their usage in the past few years. My mom is a schoolteacher though, and she is constantly amazed at how totally dependent kids are on their ipads and phones. A lot of kids aged 10-13 now can barely read. She compared it to letting kids chain smoke starting at age 2. OP: honestly when I started using the fediverse I was very surprised how many familiar pseudonyms I came across from back in my IRC days (yeah I used IRC, it was dying even back then though). If you carefully prune your web of social connections it can be a rewarding place. Forums are usually best when people have knowledge to share IMO. Chat rooms are way better if you just want to sit back and chat with your internet buds. I hate to say it, but I think much of the 'original internet culture' you wish you could have has mutated and found its way in to Discord.

>>47963 actually come to think of it I must have been younger than 13. More like 10 or 11.

>>47962 Literal toddlers watch youtube now, what the fuarrrk are you talking about? Obviously the user you're responding to couldn't have appreciated what they were seeing at that age, but even 15 years ago it wasn't odd for extremely young kids to hop on their dad's computer and visit websites. Also what kind of non-developmentally delayed child would start learning to read at age 7?

Oi, I'm a gen z redneck (basically), and I am just trying to ingest some old-time culture, before it gets wiped out. This place seems like it gets a lot of attention compared to other communities, and the discussions can often take a rough turn. Are you guys nice though? I've read a few threads and am pretty confused by the sudden turns they can take, and how hostile posting can become in a matter of a few words. Are there some things I should avoid talking about? Or am I simply misunderstanding the general tone because of little outbreaks of rudeness? Thanks in advance.

>>48022 >Also what kind of non-developmentally delayed child would start learning to read at age 7? Not the poster you're replying to but there are people of different backgrounds here, for example the system failed to teach me reading until I was 9 and my parents had to redo what the teachers failed at. Surprisingly, later I had better exam results compared to the kids who could read perfectly. Not everyone was a smart ass Einstein kid like you were, sorry.

>>48028 >for example the system failed to teach me reading until I was 9 Are you from a 1st world country? I'm not trying to be arrogant it's just that I expect parents/the school system would make sure you can read at latest by grade 2, otherwise what kind of curriculum could they even teach you?

>>47914 anyone here tried utopia network? it's at: https://ut.is/ it's proprietary tech AFAICT yet it claims to be a freedom-promoting product of anarchists. honestly just looking for better forums, I don't see myself using 4ganz /v/ to find interesting communities.

>>48036 >Are you from a 1st world country? Depends on the definition, lol. My post-soviet soykafhole is a developed country now, but then it was a second world country. >I expect parents/the school system would make sure you can read at latest by grade 2 I mean I could "read" but that reading was far from fluent. Teachers in the primary school assumed that I should already know how to read so they ignored my problem. That's what you get when you combine public school, ignorant teachers and parents staying late in work.

>>47914 Same boat op. It seems like damn near everyone these days is just on discord or some other proprietary centralized datamining "service". The only other active "underground" communities I know of are for gamehacking, like csgo hvh or minecraft anarchy, and even those are all organized on discords lawl it feels hopeless trying to find people who actually gaf about using decent platforms these days. I toured around tor again recently for the first time in a while and was shocked at how dead it was. I honestly doubt there is that much underground anymore, as if the slightly underground is slow, logic follows that anything truly underground would be very much dead or incredibly small. It is like kicking dead whales down the beach, but it feels like we are at the end of an era. >>47956 >There is no fulfillment in living a 9-5 job, having a mortgage, going to work, going to the gym, going home, pumping your wife, going to sleep and then waking up and doing all over again forever and ever and ever until you're old and in a long care home where you die and will be forgotten in a few decades. Do NOT ever believe for a second that the life that is painted as desirable is so because it isn't except to the most mundane, basic, simple-minded people. Couldn't have put it better. It is like kicking dead whales down the beach that it's so hard to find an alternative though. Either crime, work yourself to death freelancing, or off the grid meme which will leave you screwed once your health fails >>48024 People are generally chill but ofc there will be others trying to stir the soykaf due to the nature of anonymity

>>47956 As a single guy who just reached 30, every thing that you wrote is hundred percent correct and it hurts. >People are socially engineered to BELIEVE that it is something they should want and that's why so many do so. It's more like social pressure, anon. You see couple with kids, big smile, dogs, nice cars, and a home - naturally you want that. Fear of becoming a failure, people passing judgement, family pressure, all of this soykaf is real. How society treats a guy with money, and without money? How women find you unattractive? Don't want to type a long paragraph as still I'm figuring soykaf out. Don't have any passion, just impulses filled with lots of vices. But do believe in this little tight knit community. Hope everyone finds their true passion, good night!

ye once you realize what kind of trash lives other people have all their hate becomes more understandable, just do drugs, watch anime, play games brus... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti4K8uuiLZ0

>>50668 just curios.. what's your ideal standard of good lives?

Blah-blah-blah whole thread, not a single example of healthy pseudonymous community forum has been posted.

>>50695 Pic related. For some definitions of "healthy" (can any online community really be healthy?) >>47914 Does anybody have the source of that gif? Looks comfy

>>50721 reminds me Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou

>>50721 Healthy = people share and discuss things they actually did in real life. Watching boat life youtube channels = not healthy. Building and sailing boats yourself = healthy. Talking about state of architecture = unhealthy. Doing carpentry = healthy. Playing gaymes = not healthy. Making game mods = healthy but probably unethical since it inevitably leads to the former.

>>50734 that's really stupid, consumption isn't unhealthy in itself only an overabundance of it is (like everything else).

>>47944 >This is the worst thing about Neocities. It is absolutely full of Gen Zs creating 90s/early-00s simulacra Even if the graphic design on the majority of the sites is done ironically (or in the same vein as Vaporware), a decent amount of sites still have interesting content to read or look at. My main complaint with neocities is that many users seems to think the 90s Geocities aesthetic was the pinnacle of web design, as a result they're not really pushing any new boundaries with web design. But there are a few exceptions to that

I've given this a lot of thought, OP. I'm 29, started browsing 4chan at 16, back when nobody knew what Tor or the darknet were, I've been on many, many imageboards. I've had great times and sometimes I wish I could go back, when the internet wasn't as sanitized, when it wasn't serious business. But the thing about those 'glory days' is that I was on the verge of becoming a NEET who socialized exclusively on the internet. It was also a super toxic mentality to live with if you had no social life outside of it. I also kind of outgrew it. Even if I see the same kind of discussion going on on lainchan/anywhere else, it's never as engaging or interesting to me as it was when I was 20, because I'm older, have had more experiences, and just have lost that sense of wonder I guess. That kind of made me realise that now that the cycle has come to an end, at least for the sort of culture of the imageboard, that there's other types of socializing/ways of connecting to other people that are emerging and becoming more prevalent. I think more and more people are going back to meeting in person, to keeping a close knit of local acquaintances, etc. It's obviously never going to scratch the same itch that *chans do, but that's the thing, you kind of need to deal with it and move on. Keep discussions IRL, talk to people IRL. This might not be a solution for you though, but that's the answer I've found for myself

>>50740 >there's other types of socializing/ways of connecting to other people that are emerging and becoming more prevalent What are they? Just IRL things? I mean I got clubs but damn

>>50734 I like these real-world examples as definitions. I would want to point out that our irl activities and styles of real life interactions and discussions will eventually drift towards the fake and online. Simulation becomes simulacra becomes real. But we luckily still have a taste of what it is to be outside of it. Cherish that and spread it however way you can.

>>48037 The link takes me to the webpage for the government of Iceland lol

Gen Z here. I'll go out and say that Oases do exist, except they're mostly on IM clients like discord now. I've been in small communities and had internet friend groupchats where we just shoot the soykaf and talk about whatever crappy free games we'd all play together. I ended up deleting my discord account because I realized I got kind of addicted to just talking on the net and that I still have things that I want to teach myself and books to read, but that I won't ever do that if I'm spending all my time on discord. I wonder if I'll ever meet that eclectic band of brothers I left behind, they were funny people.

>>47914 I'm with you in the belief that traditional internet forums are superior to modern social media (twitter/instagram/facebook/etc). High quality, long form discussions with people who use anonymous but consistent usernames and form a community with recognisable members. I've used forums for a couple of decades now. Some got nuked, some went on a steep decline and became unusable/not worth your time (Somethingawful), but some remain as good as ever. Have you checked out the Codex? RPGcodex.net.

>>51350 Note: the forum is not just about games (although the bulk of us are old school pc gamers). Also, there is a part of the forum that is hidden from new people.

Forums were also a much better place to share your art (or music or code or whatever; I'll just say "art") than anything that exists now. You post something and everyone can see it, there's no need to worry about having too few followers or anything like that. Maybe the pagination system at worst, aka your post is the last one on the page so it won't be in plain sight when the next post starts a new page. Last paragraph of pic related gives some additional insight. You used to hear about people who got their start on some forum or another, and this shows how they did it. The forum gave them an easy place to meet other people, network with them, and build their reputation in the process. It also helps that the bar for art was lower back in those days, everyone was more easily impressed, and the slightest political differences didn't put your reputation at risk.

It's a delicate balance between a closed community that stagnates and an open community that loses its unique identity. Making sure that new members try their best to fit in is even harder when everybody is anonymous.

>>52426 To become accustomed, new users need to lurk moar, to lurk moar, information should be accessible and resilient, to be accessible and resilient it should be hosted in more convenient form than 1000 page forum thread or sliding and poorly moderated anything goes chan. First thought that comes into my mind is user-submittable hypertext knowledge base. E.g. a wiki. For the most famous wiki-style knowledge base, Wikipedia, majority of it's readers are not even aware that it houses discussion boards, hidden under "Talk" tab above each article, although software implementation is rudimentary: the talk thread is written with standard wiki markup, e.g. each poster has full write rights to the page instead of being permitted to submit one message only. Shouldn't lainchan obscure itself and only present itself as a knowledge base? There is already 1% rule applied to everything on the Internet, we should at least make our knowledge accessible to wider audience without actually welcoming them to post here as that's not necessary. In the wild reaches of the Internets there is installgentoo wiki, there used to be cloverOS wiki with some additional info which unfortunately was not committed back. Knowledge bases should be easily downlaodable, archivable and sharable, each person should be able to edit knowledge locally without contacting a server, and vice versa - edit info on server without special software installed locally (javascript included), servers should be able exchange data between each other automatically. What tools allow this flexibility?

>>52431 Here's a wiki-style site that documents online communities, each with their own wikis: https://communitywiki.org/wiki

>>52444 That's a handy resource, thanks lain!

People will find your soykaf if they care enough, you can't stop the tide forever.

You can join my secret club at www.www.www.com

It's hard to find decent underground communities, and even harder to find any that one can personally relate with. Always loved challenges of this sort though. I left the communities I was associated with a few months ago because it was time to move on, but I am hopeful I will find a new group before long. Altchans are always very easy to find and fill the gaps well enough.

You dont really need gate keeping when you have a hobby that keeps a community together. you can look at lainchan and see it's mostly about tech/programming stuff. Everything else just helps to add more conversation. I just like places that I can walk into and talk about whatever. Problem is most places like this are usually the same. A handful of guys in some "super secret club" trying to dictate how every one else acts. strong community culture doesnt really exist with anonymity. I have no clue who you people are or if half the people in this thread are still around. If you want a strong community you be better off making a discord and building it yourself.

>>53675 custom forums > discord discord is like kicking dead whales down the beach in terms of searching for what you want and providing value in general for other people searching for the information your hobby group might provide to the general public which attracts new members.

If by "bad elements" you mean a normalglitterboy hive that kills everything that's good, you're spot on. It is better for them to keep secretive, don't be bummed out, anon. I guess you just have to lurk moar, good luck finding something. There are a lot of imageboards and forums down in the darknet you could try fitting in. If you have a weird kink is easier, sex usually brings people together from God-knows-where, then it's just easier to find something more general from there.

>>47923 I'm also 32, and what you're describing is the exact crisis I'm going through. Nowhere remains that can fill the pseudo-social void that imageboards and forums did for so long. The corners of the wired that don't drain my sanity are falling apart. I can't interface with normal people. I don't know what to do anymore. I'm in a constant state of dissonance.

I see threads like this a lot, but the key points that people come up with again and again are: - For a community to be good, it must be private - Because it is private, it is hard for people to find - There are vast swathes of people who would like to be part of these communities, but have no idea where to look I don't know how much I agree with all of the above but these are always what comes up. I think layered on top of this is the fact that most anons are quite socially awkward even if pseudonymous. I know the prospect of being a newcomer still terrifies me and I'm a 30s manager type who has to talk to new people all the time IRL. I think the key thing is that everyone wants a community of friends to talk soykaf with, but that's not a thing easily found. My experiences in trying to find these have mainly been letdowns, required too much effort to be a part of, or in recent years, been mainly populated by either the mentally ill, or people solely focused on right wing politics and conspiracies, which I don't care about. Sorry for the overly long post. I am at least grateful Lainchan is still here.

>>53711 What's the name of that game?

>>53923 It's LOCALHOST by Aether Interactive

>>53706 >There are a lot of imageboards and forums down in the darknet you could try fitting in. If you have a weird kink is easier, sex usually brings people together from God-knows-where, then it's just easier to find something more general from there. Is there a forum for people who don't want to make sex a central part of their lives?

>>53933 https://wizchan.org

>>53935 Not 30 and not a virgin so Wizardchan isnt for me. I've recently moved to leftypol and while Im not hard-left by any means, it's a nice escape from the neverending low quality right-wing garbage 4chan throws at us nowadays. For images and videos I still go to 4chan but I don't read the comments, I just grab what I like for use on other boards. If you want to find smaller communities you're going to have to deal with people who are likely older than you, I'm on several retro game forums and the people there are the nicest people I've ever met, they genuinely care about the forum quality, keeping a nice community going, and helping each other out.

>>53947 Leftypol is a low quality board on all occasions besides maybe learning their ideology through recommended literature. Lol, just look at their /tech/, it's hilarious. It's also populated by twitter idiots who post dumb twitter """memes""" and image macros. >I just grab what I like for use on other boards. You don't even have to touch 4chan, there are dozens of foolfooka servers archiving all posts and images, you can search by keyword, file name, hash. >retro game forums So I see, all solutions in this thread are for manchildren, not a single serious activity forum has been named. Toys, cartoons, funny pictures is all lainchan cares about. Of course, there's a Discord serv-, I mean, chatroom for any of these.

>>53950 I never said it was perfect, but its a hell of a lot better than 4chan because you can actually discuss things. >Retro games are for manchildren Most of the posters on these forums are late 30s to well over 40, with a wife and kids and a stable income. Theyre also generally quite friendly people and not the kind of manchildren you would expect, I should also mention that Im talking about retro PC games, and that these people collect old PC tech which Lainchan likes to do as well.

>>53950 >So I see, all solutions in this thread are for manchildren I like discussing retro games because I grew up with them and were a heavy part of my life. In some cases is nostalgia, in others it's something I can hold on to. I don't like how being an "adult" means severing ties with your past completely and become a new person without history when you hit working age.

Im also 31 now so I'll share my take. I can agree with the guy above that the middle class picket fence dream is soulsucking. Also paying bills etc and other things that people think makes you an 'adult' are trash. There's nothing difficult about having a mortgage, house, bills etc other than having enough money. If youre not making much all those things seem stressful and like 'adult problems' but if you make a lot that soykaf is as easy as signing up to a game membership. None of it brings fulfillment though, the worst part is getting bored of your partner and trying to keep something dead alive which decreasing rewards to effort as time goes on. Thankfully I never had kids but I'm sure Id be unfulfilled there too, as I am with my pet cats. Like yes I love them and Im not a sociopath, but none of those things adds deep meaning to my life. Regarding the internet its bad in some ways and in some ways I prefer it. I remember when it started out it had this enchanting aspect of discovery where you'd try to find a website for something you needed and it took work, but once you found it you were elated. Every site felt more personal and close knit like going to a boutique shop in your neighborhood. There werent many normal people on the internet so you'd get a lot of quirkieness. And yeah talking to people was more anonymous and felt more mysterious-illicit. There was more of a community feel for everything because the scale was so much smaller. Also the feeling of it being unrefined and nascent was always there, you knew it was going somewhere, but I never anticipated this kind of hell. The aesthetics were novel too, everytime youd see some cool website background/css it would be exciting now I could care less. Also I remember when you were considered nerdy just for being on it. So now with it grown so much, normal people everywhere, corps getting the hang of it, it has changed. Everything is depersonalized yet more 'personal' in the sharing of your information. Individual websites are dead and no one goes on them, big tech has taken over and monetized everything. The updoot culture and eceleb/internet fame grind culture has spoiled any genuine interaction. Everyone online seems like an insufferable narc. Everything is corporatized and monetized there's no escape. Apps have taken over as the new boutique shops except theyre more like franchises of a megacorp with personalized aesthetic facade. Its not all bad though, the things that have improved is piracy is alive and well albeit lacking some of its values. Information is easier than ever to access, it can be used as a great tool for self growth if you use it that way. Finding anything now is a breeze, you can find the most obscure stuff. But as more and more megacorps take over it will become impossible to fight back and take back the internet from them. The resistance has also largely died out, I remember how big the hacker/piracy/open source type scene was and now its near a whisper

i remember when i was in hight school that this girl that my brother was friends with named raven showed me a website where it was a small forum community of goth people with less than 100 members just talking about random soykaf and everybody knew each other. i also remember going to many weird and obscure freeware pc game sites to download freeware games before itch and gamejolt became popular. also, here is an old forum for emo people http://emo-corner.com/forums/

After reading the entire thread I'm gonna give my take on the subject, and I'm going to quote two posts specially because I think they nailed it. >>53921 >For a community to be good, it must be private >Because it is private, it is hard for people to find >There are vast swathes of people who would like to be part of these communities, but have no idea where to look >>53957 >There was more of a community feel for everything because the scale was so much smaller In my opinion the size of the community is the key. You open the gates, everyone comes in, you will get a few intelligent and educated folks for sure, but you will get a lot of idiots as well. The quality of the place will go down if the idiots stay. When the place is big enough authorities, megacorps, whatever you wanna call them will join and they'll shape the most visible individuals and sooner or later a herd mentality will prevail and you'll get your so called echo chamber. Some lain here posted reddit and its "mob justice" as a pretty good example. I never used reddit but I'm been browsing 4chan for over a decade and the same thing is true there now. The old web died as soon as it stopped being perceived as something nerdy or geeky and was made mainstream and their users being treated as mouth breathing retards (and this comes from a web developer). I remember when the Internet was used as a way to escape IRL while now it feels quite the opposite, with "normal" people glued to their phones 24/7. And I don't even want to get into how utterly disgusting social media is, taking pretty much the worst of IRL and Internet and mixing it together in a package so small you could shove it up your ass. >Information is easier than ever to access, it can be used as a great tool for self growth if you use it that way. Finding anything now is a breeze I'd like to make a remark here. This may be true for advanced users, but for your average folk Google search is the internet, and it has been proven that it willingly manipulates search results. People find what they want them to find.

>>53957 ...piracy is alive? Maybe I need to hit up a /ptg/ somewhere. >I remember how big the hacker/piracy/open source type scene was and now its near a whisper My theory is that this also ties back to money: that in the 90s and 2000s the market for devs and white hats was so inefficient that for many, the only way to program things or do cool stuff was through open source. Now that you can make $300k+ in a job (or more if you start a company), why would you give that up for the "scene" or for some ideal, especially when the cost of living is up in the meantime.

Here's a new internet cyberpunk forum that looks pretty cool. its design is based of the old bbs's of the 90's it was just released recently I was wondering if anyone else wanted to take a look at it. https://underground.cyberpunks.network

>>55953 I never signed up for a forum before. Is it worth it?

>>47921 Fascinated by this--do you have a source for the claim that halfchan is a better marketing platform than FB/etc?

>>55957 it's really small right now, it's always worth taking a look at.

>>56014 read leaked internal documents of an advertisement agency in us. From what i remember it ranked top in conversion rate so $1 spent on quadchan converts into more customers than $1 spent on fb. You likely can get more customers on fb but it will cost also you a lot more money. So smart advertisement will do both following the ABC curve analysis to maximize reach. As for why it works i can see several reasons: imageboard forums make it easy to rank high. You dont need a bot farm with 10k fake upvotes/likes to get to the top on a imageboard. So its much cheaper to gain visibility. Especially for smaller budgets this is a huge plus. Secondary you are competing for visibility. If someone is running a big campaign on reddit you will lose efficiency trying to compete with them as they too will use botted upvotes and might downvote you just to maximize attention on themselves. Its been noted that smaller people got derezzed trying to advertise while big corps where running adds. If you however advertise on a platform with none to little competition you can get more for less effort. And that platform would be the most popular imageboard. Secondary you can generate hype on old media by posting fake leaks about your product on quadchan as others will repost your "leak" on reddit/fb/etc. as top secret intel. It's almost comical how well this works. It's probably also partly driven by journalists taking the free clickbait happily since its free revenue to write a quick article about it.

>>55953 >Access is granted only to authorized personal only. Zis Seite iz owned by ze German, Ja?

>>55953 the place is shutting down. No reason has been given but from the looks of it probably because the owner wasn't happy with the amount of activity. From what I can see he really did give it a try. Which makes me wonder, threads like this are not uncommon. People looking for new communities, a group of like minded people to join, seem to come along more and more often on several imageboards. But oddly enough when new places are recommended they don't put in the effort of joining and giving it a try. It seems like putting effort into anything these days is becoming rare, understandable when everything these days is comfortably served to you. Perhaps this is why the 1% rule has become a thing compared to the past where you actually had to put in some work to even use "the internet" in the first place.

>>56909 >the place is shutting down that fuarrrking is like kicking dead whales down the beach

>>56909 Getting a stable userbase is a difficult thing, takes a least 1-2 years of shil-ling to establish the place. Pretty senseless to close it down so soon.

>>56909 I've seen his thread on cyberpunk forums and he didn't give a coherent answer as to why anyone should come and post on his bbs instead of cyberpunk forums or as we're here, lainchan. It's of same value as one of those soykafboards that pop every two months and get spammmed on every other chan in imageboards.json list. What's the point?

>>56932 For the little time I've visited it, the place seemed all too focused on stonks and crypto. It's such a tired subject and not cyberpunk at all.

I'd like to add this observation. The rise of gated internet communities, whether corpo social media or invite-only secret clubs has had a detrimental effect on the remaining open communities such as imageboards too. There used to be more places where you could post anonymously and/or without registering. The diminishing number of these places means the worst trolls and most bitter, unsatisfied people all flock to the ones left to cause trouble. Imageboards were always hostile places but they are so much worse now because idiots that aren't wanted elsewhere have no place left to go. It's funny... my previous internet community which was wiped from the face of the internet was populated by people with probably very different political, lifestyle and subcultural backgrounds from most imageboard types including Lains. Different hobbies and interests, even a different view of the uses of technology and an average lower level of skill with it. Yet the few people from that now obliterated phpBB forum who I've managed to remain in touch with have previously said nearly everything said by Lains in this thread, in their own words. Particularly and especially regarding corpo social media platforms.

>>56916 this is also a big thing, lainchan has been around for almost 8 years and still has a pretty small userbase. actually building a community is difficult, especially if it's on your own servers away from popularly visited sites.

>>47956 >Life is not fulfilling Man, I feel you. I'm not so old, but I skipped the college phase of my life and found myself in the kitchens. The pay is soykaf, the stress is unbelievable, the space is as hot and uncomfortable as every hell out there and you spend your days shrugging off 10 inch blades and searing hot metal driven into your fingers. I hated it, looking at all my mates doing all these cozy "easy money" jobs pretending to work in front of a screen 8 hours a day. I resented how easy their lives were so much that I packed my knives and fuarrrked off to a mythical office. 3 weeks. That's all I managed. It's all bullshit, lain. None of it is real. Everyone is already dead and they're all using eachother as a reference for how to pretend to be alive, but the source material died long, long ago. They don't care about anything but this rat race of illusionary success, using ephemeral, disposable comforts to gauge their value. The only emotion they still feel is contempt. Contempt for everyone around them, falling for the same lie they all project outwards towards eachother. I picked my knives back up and walked right back into what I used to think was hell on earth. Now, it's my little paradise. I make some good fuarrrking dinner, and that meal is real. It's right in front of me. It smells like heaven, it tastes like success, and it stings just enough to remind me it costs me blood, sweat and tears. It's all bullshit, lain. fuarrrk the rat race. I'm not telling you to get a soykaf job, but I am telling you to create value somewhere in your life. Your work should be left behind at work, and even if your job is soykaf, you should create value somewhere in your life. Get a trade, get a hobby, I don't know, fuarrrking anything. Just care. Create things. Be passionate. No paycheck is worth your humanity. fuarrrk the 9-5. Maybe it's too late for the lain I'm replying to, but it's not too late for all of you. If you think you're stuck in the poser pretend-life rat race, just remember you are and will always be free to leave. You might have to leave behind your comforts, but those often aren't real either. I'd rather bleed, burn, sweat and cry surrounded by passion and optimism than live lavishly in a simulacrum of happiness. This might sound like a bit of a ramble, and it is, but just... Man, fuarrrk corporate. It's not worth it. You'll turn into a corpse.

>>50873 another gen z here. i've had the same experience. I usually find about one small, high-quality discord server to spend my time in every 1.5-2 years. only found two so far. i wish it wasn't on discord of all places, but i can't find things like this anywhere else.

Halfchan is filled with ideologically poisoned normal people who try to shove their political ideology down your throats and imageboard culture including lainchan gives it a pass because it’s the opposite of what Reddit says. Stupid. They’re opposite sides of the same normal user coin. There is no place left on the internet for an outcast to go, just b themselves, and not worry about judgement from normal people. There are no sensitive or sincere places left on the internet. Every trace of the internet is filled with people who act like tourists from halfchan, Reddit, or Facebook. The internet is gone.

>>58204 You are just dramatic and dont know how to use the internet.

>>57036 I mostly agree and all but what's the alternative? Who's gonna pay my bills? How am I supposed to be able to live without a source of income?

>>47956 Cynical “nihilists” of middling intelligence such as yourself are the WORST group of people to have ever been on the earth, I mean, insignificant blue ball of hydrogen ambling aimlessly through the black nothingness. Life prior to this mind-waste only sucked consistently if you were mentally-ill (your brain created or perceived the hardship) or, well, you know, actually had a rough time.

>>47914 Gab is the closest thing i found thats populated.

>>56909 It was an april fools joke, UCN is still online and staying online.