Online refuges, homes and other places to enjoy

Does anyone else feel excluded from the Internet? This may come out as a incoherent rambling, but i can't shake the feeling that the internet is morphing into something i can't quite comprehend, or feel welcome anymore. I know full well, that i'm not the Main character of the universe, but if home is where we make it be, then what do you do, when all places feel like foundation made of sand? I joined the internet around 2008, and enjoyed many of its simpler aspects, such as flash games, social media, and later, imageboards. The whole internet felt like something special, where people would bring their A-game, where you could distinctively hear and be heard by 1000 people, and the only limit was in your ability to be interesting. I've seen the SA chans become strange, confusing, superficial, and of no interest. Where before, every single thread in the first page would have a post of mine, not because i'm the greatest greatness in this Earth, but because of their immense potential and joy provided by the discussion. Nowadays, they've been taken over by pornography, superficial politics, and a general air of toxicity, as if people are competing to be the Alpha Chad in a Mongolian Basket-weaving anonymous forum. Even FB, which i would have around 80+ Notifications, because of the amount of posting, discussing, answering and being answered, in the various groups of various interest, from gaming to some obscure Fandom, is of little interest. The memes feel hollow, endless self-referencing, they die and are born on a whim, and the only thing missing is someone holding my head, and screaming "recognize this and laugh!THAT'S FUNNY". Am i a spoiled brat, with my pleasure receptors fried? Have the interesting people moved on, or moved somewhere? Where then?

>>58800 >Where then? Real life

>>58801 >the interesting people have abandoned the internet and are now all touching grass somewhere I find this very hard to believe. More likely they have all just been corrupted into expressing only the kind of bullshit OP is referring to. I see this in myself even, I write the worst soykaf, it just creeps in even if I try to notice and stop.

>>58801 This. Internet mutating into an incomprehensible cesspool of repetitive things and opinions notwithstanding, novelty wears off, real life obligations pile up, most people come to realize how pointless online communities, clout, drama and discussions really are and just leave. Simple as that.

>>58801 I somewhat don't buy it. Like really? What do they even do? Not that I expect anyone to sit in front of his screen the whole life, but the early internet wouldn't have anyone on it if it was for people who could find everything they need irl. So what changed that they went away? I too stopped using the internet as much, but that's because every place has become stale right now. I rarely read, see or hear anything noteworthy anymore. I'll agree internet communities and drama suck and is boring, but I never really used internet for friends outside of a short time 3 years ago.

>Does anyone else feel excluded from the Internet? I think old people after 40, 50, might feel this as well.

>>58801 But how would I find interesting people to talk to in real life? Even if I was comfortable with real life interactions I would have no one to talk to. And no, I am not going to watch ballsport just to have a topic.

I've been on the internet since the 90s. My advice is to follow the young people. These days they're on Tik Tok and Discord. Anyway, I think that text on the internet is pretty much done, video content has won.

>>58809 What if I have something to say but I don't want to film myself shaking and to add two lines of text on that? I will give a try to tiktok but I doubt it will work.

>>58810 >>58809 Now I want Putin to stop talking and to send the nukes.

>>58809 Video content has it's place, but like >>58810 said, there's no point in making a video if all you will do is just blast your face (to improve the glowie face scanning tech) shaking slightly with text on top.

I read posts like this every time I visit and I'm starting to wonder if this place isn't filled with lonely, lost souls at all because there are a lot of commonalities in the wording. I'm starting to think it's mostly (mostly!) just one person with the same problem posting over and over.

>>58809 Tiktok is boring. Actually most websites normalshit use are fuarrrking boring. Watching a random assortment of low-erfort short videos all day looking for something of value -and not finding any- is boring.

Bots, censorship, very young kids on the internet, brainworm like social programming where the person becomes radicalized into basically becoming a bot, and capitalism colonizing the internet into a sterile addictive boring place.

>>58809 tik tok suks discord is hit and miss

>>58815 it seems like a common sentiment and i relate to it. i doubt it. >>58819 discord is definitely hit or miss. I've only ever found two servers I well and truly enjoyed but both of them have been ripped apart by drama now.

>>58820 >it seems like a common sentiment and i relate to it. i doubt it. eh more like 3 people >>58818 what your solution then, pinko? Liberals and communists are some of the biggest drag queens to exist.

>>58823 >Liberals and communists are some of the biggest drag queens to exist. in my experience, the ones who actually take it seriously, as opposed to simply posting on twitter about it and getting into nonsensical arguments, are genuinely really enjoyable company.

>>58824 specifically referring to communists/anarchists. self-identified neoliberals usually can't shut up about politics, regular liberals are just kind of weirdly cute with how much faith they place in electoralism's potential to create meaningful change. i know a few commies/anarchists and they don't really get annoying about it, they just practice according to their ideology and it's kind of admirable. i have no faith in my ability to influence any meaningful positive change so I don't engage with politics, personally, it just makes me sad. i just try to help people directly and hope someone else manages to make a better future

>>58824 >in my experience, the ones who actually take it seriously, as opposed to simply posting on twitter about it and getting into nonsensical arguments, are genuinely really enjoyable company. alright what are the solution(s) this enjoyable company has? The only "serious" ones are defeatist when it comes to the "developed" world. >>58825 >i know a few commies/anarchists and they don't really get annoying about it, they just practice according to their ideology and it's kind of admirable. thats cute. now they are as effective and obnoxious as vegans while accomplishing exactly nothing.

>>58828 "Practice what they preach" would in this case mean agitating for revolution. You don't have to scream it from the rooftops and get pushy about it to accomplish this.

>>58829 >agitating for revolution all the while the fascists continually and successfully agitate the masses in pretty much all metrics. Those fuarrrks scream like toddlers yet have accrued success all the more. The "solution" your friends seem to have is crying into a piss bucket.

>>58800 I've been on the internet since the early 2000s. There have always been dumb platforms out there but this became exacerbated when smartphones became popular. You can still find websites with interesting content that's not aggregated by soykafty algorithms trying to manipulate you. A lot of these are personal websites, imageboards and some are even old school forums. Besides the clearnet you can check out alternative networks (I2P, tor etc)

>>58831 >all the while the fascists continually and successfully agitate the masses in pretty much all metrics I haven't needed to do much. I just point when you guys soykaf your pants and then talk about what I've got going on in my life. >Those fuarrrks scream like toddlers yet have accrued success all the more. DARVO only works for the president, sir. But seriously, it's really only liberals screaming and crying while gaining some semblance of success. I see it from the marxists as well, but I don't see it from the serious communists nor the serious natsocs or other third positionists. Oh, and yes, I am saying American-Republicans and American-Democrats are both liberals. A concept many seem to have a hard time grasping, likely due to their bastardized understanding of politics... Oh but they sure love to talk about it, don't they...

>>58817 Some vids clearly took time to make but what unsettle me most is the lack of fantasy, of dream, of creation. It's like computer generated content, it's not that it's bad, it's just empty inside. It's what people who have been trained all their live to never explore and to never leave their box would do. /wsg/ is only short movies, but it does have content. Possibly more than Tiktok. >>58829 It's getting off topic but modern commies/anars are antiguns, anti offensive speech, anti freedom of information that any revolution need. They are asking for change that would strengthen the grip of a central government and the submission of the workers to corpos, all while thinking that they are rebels.

>>58845 > modern commies/anars are antiguns No, for the 1000th time, they are not. There are anarchist and communist gun clubs springing up all over North America. You don't hear about it because they are less likely than right wing activists to post cringe selfies with their guns all over the internet. The mainstream media, liberal or conservative, isn't going to mention this because either it doesn't fit into their easy narrative of the left/right divide. The far right is unaware of it too because their leaders are too busy scaring their followers to the effect that their guns, jobs and even their testicles are in danger of being stolen from them by some vague amorphous "left". Anarchists cannot by definition be anti-gun because it means sending men with guns (cops) to take everyone else's guns away. They have never been against guns, ever. People don't know the history, that it was Ronald Reagan (that commie liberal bastard, right) who kicked off modern gun control measures as governor of California to crack down on a literal Marxist group you may have heard if, The Black Panther Party who were open carrying in California cities. There is a long tradition of leftists with guns in the US and even Canada, from Emma Goldman to Abbie Hoffman to Dr. Hunter S. Thompson to the Vancouver Five. It continues to this day, but I suppose now you'll try to make the case that these are outliers or something.

>>58842 >I see it from the marxists as well, but I don't see it from the serious communists nor the serious natsocs or other third positionists okay, what do you see? only seen bumfuckery since pretty much there is hardly much in the way of effective organization and leadership. Again most of em are impotent bitches >>58855 to be fair, the previous lainon's lack of knowledge on what communists/anarchists are for or against is pretty telling of how as a whole their relevance is minute at best but realistically how irrelevant the group(s)/individuals and overall cause are. The current crops of these groups are more book clubs than anything else really or if they are online then a bunch of ebeggars.

>>58835 And where could i begin looking for these platforms? Forums for Retro Games, or hobbies like wood working? Is there a Index, or some aggregating platform for this type of content and people?

Almost every imageboard I've used sucked and still is like kicking dead whales down the beach. Anonymity is supposedly good for open and unlimited discussion but people end up creating the kind of hierarchies that exist in real life to feel better about themselves. I'm talking about extremely divisive, us-vs-them mentality stuff like the concepts of "old users", "new users", "normal users", etc. They ARE coping mechanisms for people that lack confidence and real-life bearing and want to feel better about themselves. So much focus is put on what other people are and what they care about rather than themselves. The whole internet elitism/gatekeeping soykaf is pathetic and annoying and it squanders creativity and fun despite their proponents' attempts to justify it. New people are afraid to ask questions and express themselves and long-time users are constantly fearful that they'll say something wrong or haven't used the site for 7 years to learn every stupid soykafty trivial detail about its history rather than just being a part of history themselves. Some people feel a sense of personal attachment to imageboards and act like victims when a site is transformed into something they don't like by the collective group of people using it.

>>58890 I first (perhaps tragically) visited 4chan in 2008. To this day people still call me a new user if I do the "wrong thing". That inculcation process was among the first thing I noticed actually, because I'm an uncultured swine / schizo autist / whatever, so I didn't comprehend "board culture" or the deliberate maintainence of feedback loops that enforce these norms int he sense of retaining status or identity. I just didn't get it, but I watched, and picked it apart, and so on. I've found, simply acting on your own, it's not only possible but relatively straightforward to greatly modify the culture and content of a board. Though a lot of it won't stick once you stop.

>>58889 best thing you can do is lurk for those interests on things like reddit-like tor and alternative clearnet sites, fediverse, foss social networks, imageboards, random forums, etc. You have to generalize then narrow your interests. You like woodcarving? check out forums/spaces related to the outdoors. Eventually you'll find something related to your interests and someone might drop a hint or a plain link. Good luck, lainon.

>>58800 It's by design friend. There is no massive web anymore. They're turning it into TV.

>>58829 Simply walking the distance could get us there .

>>58894 Interreta kulture lives within the records of that culture . We have reasonably thorough archives . We need only access and actualize the life there-in , there-of , and there-ob .

>>58891 The last time I was around that place, I was getting called "new" or to "go back to" certain places because I was typing full sentences and using paragraph breaks. People accuse you of "phoneposting" if you capitalize because obviously only a phone user has an app for that! (what is a shift key amirite?) I started posting there in 2006. Full, coherent sentences is how people posted back then. They just call anyone a newf4g if they don't know how to respond to what you're saying.

>>58928 Happens here too: see the complaints about 'redditformat'. Part of the culture of chan-four is that it sort of expects you to just not care. everyone is called a nigger, kike, f*ggot, troon, phone poster, reddit user, soyboy, and a dozen other things. If it bothers you, you don't stick around.

>>58929 It happens here too yes, because it's the same idiots who don't realize they've left 4chan and/or haven't figured out yet that the rest of humanity doesn't communicate like that. I would worry about these people someday going out into the real world if they were the sort of people that you'd care about in the first place.

>>58800 > I've seen the SA chans become strange, confusing, superficial, and of no interest. Where before, every single thread in the first page would have a post of mine, not because i'm the greatest greatness in this Earth, but because of their immense potential and joy provided by the discussion. Nowadays, they've been taken over by pornography, superficial politics, and a general air of toxicity, as if people are competing to be the Alpha Chad in a Mongolian Basket-weaving anonymous forum. Yes, the imageboard culture has died. It was replaced by the genZ-culture. Zoom users ruin everything. Literally the worst generation in the history of mankind. You might say that I don't know much about the very original chan culture either, and you would be partially correct. I don't know what 4chan was like in 2003. I have come across 4chan for the first time in 2006. My memories of that time are a little bit hazy, because I didn't pay attention to that website too much at that time. My interest in 4chan has peaked in 2008 when I've read a lot about it on various web forums. So yeah, I'm definitely no "original user", but I think that I have been there long enough to confirm that its culture has changed drastically recently. I've noticed the first signs of change around 2011 and it went only downhill from there. As the new users moved in, the old users have moved out. The true old users have moved to many different places on the web and mostly abandoned the imageboards. That emptied the place for the influx of even more new users to take over the chans and crown themselves "old users" instead. But they are not old users. Hell, some of them are even younger than the website itself. The old imageboard culture has been completely replaced by a new one. It was a total and I believe somewhat forced replacement. The imageboard culture was replaced by the Zoom user culture. The chan culture died and Zoom user culture took its place. And the worst thing is that current chan users don't even know there has been a different chan culture before this one and consider their inferior new culture to be the original chan culture. They would not even believe you if you tried to convince them otherwise. > The memes feel hollow, endless self-referencing, they die and are born on a whim, and the only thing missing is someone holding my head, and screaming "recognize this and laugh!THAT'S FUNNY" Zoom user memes. Self-referencing has become the point. The punch line is missing, the context doesn't matter, the original idea is forgotten, the humor is stale or nonsensical, the meme itself is often cringe for the sake of being cringe. Many of those memes are actually used as a form of political virtue signaling more than anything else. And the audience? The audience is scrolling by at the lightning speed anyway. It's the way Zoo user's brain works. Posting these memes does not require any original thoughts, it doesn't require forcing your brain to think of a problem in a novel way, it doesn't require any personal take on things. It doesn't require thinking, originality nor any kind of personal self-expression. It doesn't require making something new yourself. It's only about using something that somebody else has already made, no matter how boring and unoriginal it is. Zoom users don't even want to make their own fun, they expect the fun to be delivered to them in a box ready to use, like everything. That's why these people would rather pay money for overpriced and oversimplified videogame from Ubisoft than to go and make their own fun in some creative way. People of this generation completely lost the ability to be creative and want to consume "fun" via visual media in the same way they order food.

>>59086 "Zoom users" is language-enhanced Zoomf*gs

>>59087 God damn it, these word filt*rs are going to cost me my sanity.

>>59088 it's a language enhancer, friend

>>58815 its actually multiple people anon, just that a lot of us anons feel this same way. for many of us, our "home" was the internet, and now we are refugees from the only place that we could resonate with and be a part of. where do we go now?

>>58800 I maintain a website, plenty would call it a blog, but I don't use that word. I associate with plenty of others who also have websites. I still like Lainchan and other forums, but it can be so frustrating to realize there's nowhere else to go; there are only so many places to be, and I seem to be in all of the worthwhile places already. I contribute to Lainchan threads, and then want to revisit them to see what I'd written, to find they'd died in the meanwhile. The most value I get is in writing for my website. Still, I feel human warmth when someone enjoys what I create, and I learn of it. It would be easier for some other sensation to be more powerful, but any rarely are.

>>59102 > I feel human warmth when someone enjoys what I create You are lucky person lainon. I wish I knew this feeling.

>>59102 > and then want to revisit them to see what I'd written, > to find they'd died in the meanwhile. better to let die than to see destroyed in flames .

dignity requires a means to limit humiliation . to keep open a door for hope by closing a door for dignity , the path preserving sensation and sanity can only grow more destructive : for the price paid for what you want amounts to living with what you once wanted . some fear death others fear life what of those who fear neither , but live on regardless ?

>>58800 I'm a Gen Z, I started hanging around in the internet since 2015~2016, and I've discovered through the years what the internet used to be, with image boards, forum, etc. I've always wanted to find this feeling of community and chill discussion, through text. I think these small image boards, with small communities are the best options we have. Other sites try so hard to push the most popular content that you can't have a nice chill discussion anymore.

>>59086 God I wish I didn't agree with you. I swore I would never be that guy but it's happening. The lowest, lamest incarnation of a simulacrum of legitimate subculture I've ever seen is this myspace mallgoth retro trend that exists on tumblr (yes tumblr still exists). Kids who were busy being born back then dress that way, do "scene" hairstyles and adorn their mirror selfies with graphics that look like they are from that era. I remember when that was in it's first life thinking, imagine being in your 30s and having nothing but this watered down, already recycled from several sources crap to be nostalgic about. But a revival of it??? . Dressing up as a subculture that was all about hanging out in public and being cringey and annoying to adults when you know this crop of kids don't even leave their rooms. What's next?

Long Live the Internet, but Fuhk the Web!

>>59229 I desire death, but on the battlefield. To die for what I believe in is the most satisfactory death and sacrifice. I will die anyways, at least I will die to fight for what I believe in to be true. I do not desire death in of itself. I will fight to the last breath to preserve my life, which means I can live so I sacrifice it for something or someone else. I do not want to live up to age 87, and die alone in a bed for old folks. I wish to die fighting for something.

>>59608 You say this but no man or woman will ever fulfill their life if they aren't ready to let go of their material wants. Life can be about revenge if you make it so, but that carries its own implications.

>>59608 Maybe you're already in a branch somewhere, but look up FBR and read Ephraim Mattos' book if youre intredasted

>>59614 I was saying it in a proverbial sense of the word "battlefield". I don't believe violence is the answer, most of the times. I had a very violent youth and it only gave me more problems than solving them. Also I don't believe if I were to kill that joining the army is most efficient way to bring forth the change in the world I want to see. Even if it was killing talibans or insurgents in allied factions. I would preffer getting to there by airplane and forming a dumb militia with likeminded idiots. But even then it would be easier/cheaper/more efficient to just make a drone that has an explosive device on it. I could do it right now and assasinate the politician I hate in my country, from comfort of my bed right now, all for under 300$. The battlefield of ideas is a real deal war of 21st century. Because yea, you can kill a person but not an idea. You have to be smarter than an idea. To poke holes in peoples theories and laugh at their face while they try to rationalize their dying thinktank ideas is a sight to see, people around you just frantically snicker. I absolutely adore pressing the amygdala buttons on a person and seeing them squirm. Even 6'4" men cry when you tell them they are mommas bois that never did or will amount to anything in theor lives. >>59609 Revenge is cheap. Also I won't ever bring all this material worth into my casket or the afterlife, it was never mine, I just rentrd it for a bit. I live for here and now, not past or future.

>>58809 This is it. Gen Z have created their own internet culture and their own online spaces. The older you are, the harder it is comprehend their culture or access their spaces. If you aren't in their cohort, you'll be left in the position of an outsider looking in and this is where misunderstandings happen. Usually, it takes the form of conflating the most visible, normal person-pandering tip of the gen-z cultural iceberg with the entirety of their online presence. This is nothing new, of course, and older generations have always seen younger people as "shallow" in one way or another. >Anyway, I think that text on the internet is pretty much done, video content has won. This transition happened during the millennial era. The early 2000s were the golden age of blogs before twitter and youtube took over. If anything, textual content is a seeing a bit of a renaissance with substack and medium. Also, "interesting" subcultures thrive in an atmosphere of levity and playfulness, whether online or IRL. Nothing drags things down more than being a tryhard or a moaner. Sh*tposting doesn't kill online spaces, turgidity does. So to answer OP's question: he is too old and taking the internet a bit too seriously.

What is with the obsession with "generations"? They're completely artificial categorizations. I'm "gen Z" and probably a solid 70% of lainchan users are "gen Z". By the time I had unrestricted access to the internet facebook was well established as 'the center of the online world' in the eyes of most users. Yet I'd probably be called an "old user" based on my browsing habits. Meanwhile lots of genuinely old people are active on tiktok, youtube, r*ddit, etc. and use it in pretty much the same way as a "z**mer" >Does anyone else feel excluded from the Internet? No, but I have always been quite content with being in the backwaters of the internet, always a regular for a few years until the site dies. >>59638 >Nothing drags things down more than being a tryhard Depend a lot on the community. The modern attitude of "haha I don't know anything I am monkey brain I write spaghetti code who cares!" in programming communities is really toxic and results in all the soykafty software you see everywhere around you.

>>59639 Writing good code isn't being a tryhard. Taking your craft seriously is not the same as taking yourself too seriously.

My theory is that big corporate tech owned websites influenced the status quo on how people conduct themselves online as well as creating a counter culture that is purely just an even more toxic version of the exact same BS. You can see this in how site rules have changed how they are writen. In past it was all about taming harassment and abuse now it's all about holding back wrongthink and generating drama for entertainment.

>>59632 I told you to look up the Free Burma Rangers, and you write like you didn't. It also reads like you're basically just a coward who doesn't want to face the real troubles of this world and do something that will actually matter to others. Then again so am I, the difference being that I'm honest about it.

>>59654 >>59632 to both you I say , I wanna die because I don't want a war of ideas . I would rather not be than fight and struggle like gladiators would , for no "fellow feeling", dream, or personhood excluding my own in isolation from all others . that is not ubuntu , therefore I do not want such a life .

>>59654 I looked up Ephraim Mattos, not FBR because it didn't give me any real searches. I will now. I am already solving some real world problems. I fixed a lot of stuff in my immediate distance. I don't need to go to Burma to help others, or to feel good about myself. Cowards are those that run away from their past, thinking that their future will absolve them from their past transgressions. I look a guy in the face and tell him I am sorry. My ego is not that of arrogance. >>59656 How can you with a serious reply act like you're advocating defeat when you are fighting and struggling right now? With ideas and opinions and argumrnts of mine, sure, but you didn't keel over and took it. You didn't just stand there ignoring me. You struggled back.

>>59660 not every struggle means war you enter this place with consistency to struggle here you need not justify ego nor I nor many others among us ! we treasure the beauty ex;ob our conflicts but in an offline context such a thing is rare for mi .

>>58800 2008 was actually the entry point of normal people into the internet as everything became mobile. It was pretty much showing off what nerds built over the last ten years after the Dotcom crash and all that stuff was made by people who didn't care about the money since they stuck around-- they were internet true believers. Demographics is likely the biggest change. The ratio of nerds to normal people is like thousand to one now. In olden days of web 1.0 and 0.0 the English speaking internet was all pretty much White male nerds, it was an ethnonet. Another point is that the internet is now getting it's information from itself and bots echoing each other, becoming self-referential rather than reporting on things outside of itself. Web 1.0 was a strange time because it when cable TV was also at it's peak and many things were being digitized still so it had a constant stream of fresh info to commentate on.

just go for niche circles like discord groups or neocities idk boymoder circles on twitter or something like that, just stay open to the idea of meeting new people and learning something new from them and you might find yourself learning different things and maybe even having fun.

>>58800 Crowngate is real. British intel took over all of the popular sites and used trolling and automated tools to find and ban everyone opposed to either the USSR or Hamas. Anyone who attempted to start an alternative service was taken down by the feds, DDOSed out of service, and blacklisted by all of the banks and PR agencies so that they couldn't get off the ground.

It was just different because the government didn't know how to regulate it yet They know how to now by reducing the amount of places people can hide out in and corralling everyone into a handful of places they can easily track. Same old history lesson

>>58800 old user here. "joined" the internet around 1999 and i can relate to your sentiment. in my early days we had some forums, icq and irc channels to stay in touch and to make new, (virtual) friends. later social media became a thing and in the early days it was fun, but it soon became a corporate hellhole once all the "normal people" and literally their mothers got smartphones and joined the party. most of my friends in my age range are now in small telegram groups just chatting like in the old days, some like me are still active on some image boards. TLDR; get your friends into closed circles and don't bother with the public internet at all.

>>58809 tiktok is literally a psyop, stay away as far from it as you can.

>>60425 interesting that the vast majority of people on social media aren't supportive of the USSR then.

>>59086 You could literally hook up an ai to learn from 4chan, and eventually it would be spouting the same meme terminology and using the same way of communication, green texting about some bullkaf that nobody cares about, now take that and rewire it and eventually you would get a whole new language filled with the remnants of terms like c(u)ck,tranny,soyboy,etc. You could do this present day, present time and see how far you can get.

Have you watched Lain? You do not need to be online to be ONLINE Being Lain is having the launch codes to a nation's missiles, without their powers knowing. Take a week to just observe your environment. it's a gumball machine easily gamed for laughs and hahas

>>60471 already done, gpt4chan. Was shared on github but they removed it cause no fun allowed, might still find it in torrents though. >>60439 Social media is just a small minority of the population and the posters especially follow pareto where 20% produces 80% of all posts. tldr: it represents nobody but local town nutcases connecting online.

>>60475 >already done, gpt4chan. Was shared on github but they removed it cause no fun allowed, might still find it in torrents though. guessed, since i played around with gpt before its pretty easy and all it is, is web scraping and python, both easy to master once you know what you're doing.

>>58800 The main difference is that in the old times people used internet to share information, their experiences, etc. while nowadays they are using it to argue about stuff (not just politics, but pretty much anything that can be argued about). I blame normal-people and their insatiable need to argue to be honest. I know this is not the most original thought out there, but that's simply how it is. The only solution is to find a place where people are much more interested in sharing rather than in arguing. Unfortunately such place probably doesn't exist anywhere on the internet anymore.

>>58823 >>58828 >>58829 >>58831 >>58842 >>58855 >>58887 Look at these people. These people are EXACTLY what is wrong with the internet. Find a place without such people and you'll find hope.

>>60555 >The only solution is to find a place where people are much more interested in sharing rather than in arguing. It would so nice if atleast people could argue without it turning into a cage of monkeys throwing soykaf at each other.

>>60557 Well, I'm going to break my own advice and I'm going to argue with you. :D I know what you mean, but I don't think that is enough. Even if the debate is done in a calm and polite manner, it is still ineherently divisive. What I loved about my early internet experience was the fact that the internet communities and people within them were much more focused on connecting with each other and sharing thoughts, rather than in divisive arguments that make the ineternet feel like a battlefield with two (or more) sides. Even a very civilized battlefield is still a battlefield. What I think makes the ineternet feel good: Connecting with each other and sharing thoughts. What I think makes the ineternet feel bad: Divisive arguments. Of course I realize that it's impossible to regulate such a thing. After all, there is no way to let people share their thoughts without the risk of them getting into an argument. I think it's simply a matter of having a good community with the right mindset.

>>60556 i found some comfy imageboards to be quite nice, i think theirs definitely places like that still they're just hard to find.

>>60559 this pertains to imageboards, idk how other sites like social media behave but i think it mainly has to do with cultural differences like in the english parts of the internet, imageboards are known for sperging out and being autistic, while in the japanese parts its entirely different.

>>58800 I grew-up with computers, grandfather ran a BBS, etc. I've inhabited a sweet spot of seeing the changes from analog to digital. Watched the progression to the face-hugger lifestyle with smartphones. It is incredible how I have almost any information now at my fingertips. I bought Lain on VHS, now I can watch, edit, exchange, and do anything I want with it, using less money than I spent on those original tapes. It has been an amazing ride, and now VR is just beginning to get to the point where it might be a few years away from becoming usable. Emotionally, telnet and muds hold the most fond memories of my time online, and second life, in its first decade of being, coming closest to what I want being online to be. That being said, I have always been more attached to meatspace. Only now meatspace has been taken over by facehugger tech. Normal people know too much for their brains to handle. I see now why the ancients kept sacred knowledge away from the uninitiated.

>>59638 >Gen Z have created their own internet culture and their own online spaces no they haven't mostly they have to grapple with millennial web 2.0 soykaf like twitter or instagram where they're heavily outranked. even discord is mostly people from irc and soykaf. tiktok is a complete meme, even vine was much cooler than it

>>60596 They haven't created their own spaces, that's true. As for creating their own subculture, the fact that I can't understand half of what they say without looking something up and they constantly reference online events I wasn't aware of tells me they have done that. Of course it's the most boring subculture in historical record but who are we to judge?

>>60563 I just remember death, for hope. Nothing else works anymore.

>>60602 deep.....................

>>58800 When I was growing up we where taught in school not to share information about ourselves online, post photos of ourselves, share or adress or post anything else that could be used to pin down who we are. As such internet culture was built around being anonymous with at best a silly username used to represent you. Once Facebook came around that changed, Facebook suddenly required you to use your real name and you where encouraged to share as much about your life as possible. This is where internet culture is now, Instagram and Tiktok is by design meant for you to post about yourself and your life in order to impress others to get likes which encourages people to share faked versions of their lives to make them look better while giving kids who grow up with these websites major insecurity issues. Doesn't help that schools no longer discuss online privacy anymore. Now, there is nothing stopping people from sticking to older forms of communication on the Internet but the real problem is that no one wants to put in the effort to build and keep a community. That requires people to actually put in the effort to create something, be it websites, content for websites to grow their culture or even memes. There is a reason why 4chin went from having funny drawn memes to simple wojack edits, because people are too lazy to put in the effort. People want to build a community but put in the least amount of effort possible and gives up when that doesn't work after a couple of months. It also doesn't help that you have a bunch of people who think that the internet used to be some caothic space of free speech lacking any form moderation when the actual reason why communities formed was thanks to moderation and gatekeeping. In order to build a close knit community you need moderation to keep that community from turning into a cesspool of trolling and brewing soykaf and it wasn't uncommon for people back in the day to hop from site to site until they found a site with a community and moderation policy that they personally enjoyed. Even 4chin itself used to work like this with public bans, something they haven't done since Hiroyuki took over. You even see people on here complaining about how the moderators are censoring them when all they're trying to do is to gatekeep the community so it doesn't turn into 4chin 2.0. It's also not really a generational thing either, despite people in this thread saying otherwise. One of the reasons 4chin fell to soykaf was thanks to the mainstream media reporting on it during the celebrity nude leak, goobergate and the 2016 election which caused a ton of new people to swarm over to the site. You'd be genuinely surprised over how many older people are posting on the political board now thanks to the media and a lot of that has bled over onto the rest of the site. The truth of the matter is, the political board became the biggest board on the site and its culture is now sitewide culture which is why you keep getting thinly veiled political bait threads on unrelated boards. In short, no one wants to put in the effort to build a community.

>>60616 >It also doesn't help that you have a bunch of people who think that the internet used to be some caothic space of free speech lacking any form moderation when the actual reason why communities formed was thanks to moderation and gatekeeping. In order to build a close knit community you need moderation to keep that community from turning into a cesspool of trolling and brewing soykaf and it wasn't uncommon for people back in the day to hop from site to site until they found a site with a community and moderation policy that they personally enjoyed. Holy soykaf this, building a genuine community is really hard. pulling people away from normal surface webspace to other sites is already difficult. Building a since of community that keeps people here is another. I remember in the early days of lainchan there was alot of small group projects that people worked on that really did build a since of community in the early days.

>>60616 I agree that moderation itself isn't a bad thing. But it has to be done fairly. Actually it doesn't have to be done faily either, but in that case the mods should publicaly state the reason WHY isn't the moderation fair. If they suppress opinions of a certain side, while refusing to publically state that they themselves are supporters of the other side and that the board itself is inteded for a specific kind of people, then what am I supposed to think?

I have this feeling that the terminally on-line and the corporations made the internet so toxic and so annoying to use that a lot of the kind, interesting people just gave up and no longer contribute unless there's a monetary incentive involved. So you're left with a boring, opinionated, narcissistic human zoo and bots, in other words, machines and screaming village idiots. >>60616 Four Chan is 18 years old, it's not surprising that the userbase is old. I don't know where this idea comes from that the site is still full of teens - it's obviously not. I'd argue that its demographic is older than that of almost any social media site.

>>60618 indeed, the moderators shouldn't be a shadow government, they should be the people who have been appointed (either by admin or by the users) to tend the garden of discourse. How they tend the garden is up to them, but they should be upfront about it.

I like to participate on sites about specific things I like - being the most common sites/app about books and for readers. I find interesting people and discussions in there - you might even meet one of them IRL.

>>60616 Hey, batanon, ltns! ╰(*´︶`*)╯ > but put in the least amount of effort possible > and gives up when that doesn't work after a couple of months. the guys probably need practice with smt reliable like most RPPPG'es ( R.ole P.laying P.en & P.aper G.ames ) except emphasizing a free culture while discouraging body dismorphia , through lores like Vilous , Irish myth , or Felarya ! the key'es get lost in dreams without a fun way to plan for a real future . sans "perma-culture" in a variety of senses this most of all gets extremely exhausting : that community requires identity . . I recommend digging subterranean punk industry in Alas_land_! *cough* I mean , Alaska , (kek). pre

>>60624 >in other words, machines CORRECTION : in other words, suicidally depressed machines don't forget how most of us would qualify bonafide Jain'es ...

>>60624 I think that's largely the case. I used to go onto the internet to escape the negative aspects of real life, and now it *is* the negative aspect of real life, distilled. our attention spans (mine included) are so shot from years of social media being the main form of interaction online, we couldn't go back to forums and IRC even if we wanted to. places like lainchan and the neocities scene give me hope that living a life online outside of the centralized net, however

Excluded? Why do yall complain when things like lainchan, lainzine and mebious all exist? I highly recommend, to all that are darknet fluent, checking out places like end chan as well. Sure, maybe you're "excluded" from the dirt and garbage of the internet, but there's a place for you right here. The fact that you even found this site lends credence that you aren't excluded from anything. A better term is included and you're included here, which is something so rare. Could you imagine meeting someone in real life that had foreknowledge of sites like this? Hell fuaaarking no.

Come to wirechan everyone, it's comfy

>>58803 That is also how I believe it works. The internet and its novelties satisfy a need; when that need is no longer present, there is no reason to engage in it. I'm sure many people are only plugged in still because using the internet is some routine, whether they get any enjoyment out of it is up for question.

Clone this: https://github.com/ccd0/imageboards.json

So this board literally lets me make an empty post but when I make one about internet censorship I get a message "please make a better post"

>>60821 there was probably someone spamming a keyword in your post. edit around obvious potential keywords

>>58800 Well I wanted to leave 5he country but covid happen so I am reassessing my plans and trying to replan.

>>60821 you should cross-post and tell ppl you plan on cross-posting thus any semantics lost in one post get picked up by another a really pro-social way of building diversity and encouraging an open internet ( by setting a precedent )

>>58823 Islam is the solution. The principles it teaches fixes the human's broken logic/rational machine. Think of it as an anti-virus. Whether you actually believe in the idea of God, that's up to you.

>>61497 Walter Veith -> Origins of Islam.

>>60471 I was impressed by the gpt generated greentexts. If you cherrypick enough, you get content of higher quality than current day fourchan. I would be worried for a bot-infested future, if not for the fact that even now most internet content is botlike

>>61536 нет μᚂnon « vi estos fartonta bone , ĉu ? »

>>61536 Those greentexts are actually kinda funny

>>61536 >I would be worried for a bot-infested future, if not for the fact that even now most internet content is botlike Yea, most people are programmed in a dual paradigm, so much so that its almost impossible to get them to think on their own, even if you took the time to "inform" them they would still fall for almost anything, its like theirs an instinct which just dosen't let them think for themselfs, theirs probably ways to fix it but it would require exploring an unexplored part of psychology. >>61592 its line by line fuarrrking patrick, that makes it even better, lmao.

>>61592 > Those greentexts are actually kinda funny They are. It's impressive that the bot learned how to do comedic irony.

>>61603 GPT3 and openai can go fuarrrk themselfs lmao, this is the supiriority of an uncurrated and uncensored ai.

>>60616 This post encapsulates the mentality of this site pretty well, and is the reason why I don't like coming here very often. This site could be descrived as a "bluepilled" IB, people are not interested in free discussion, not even in having fun (unlike 4chins), people here are obsessed about creating an online community from the top-down, with moderators, well, modarating discussion, regulating it to shape the direction of the discourse (mods "warnming" users for making bad posts, filters that modify the way you communicate to avoid arbitrary evils like "edgyness"). This is why I will never like this site, I can't stand moderators curating the content for me, as if they know better than me what is a better experience for me. And no, this is not what the internet was about originally, the main appeal of 4chins was always its chaotic nature, not the public bans and the sense of community.

>>61643 A sense of community? On MY halfchan? I went there back in the day of the motivators, when there was no rule for posting or for moderation (enjoy your ban and bring snack back) and we had daily CP threads. Actual ones, not whet there is now. It was the idea I have of a pirate tavern in the renaissance: dangerous, violent, disturbing but free and you keep coming because one you got in the rest of the world become boring. Not even the rules of internet or the chanology project gave it a sense of community. Not even the two years repost crisis after the death of bee. How are we even supposed to have a community when we don't know the other guys?

>>61711 >How are we even supposed to have a community when we don't know the other guys? This should be the first question on everyone's minds At the same time, the baggage of identity ruins everything >>61643 A trend you may or may not want to note is a juxtaposition of orderly net against a melting outside. The wants of the surfers changed. though they did once see the net as a place to act recklessly. Chaos, some laughter against the monotone day! Now the day is too crazy. The world doesn't make much sense. Drugs mounting, common decorum fading. They may as well not exist, except for a single fact: their internet world sustains them. The Ordering introduced a new highway of existence. The Counsel scrunches up every pixel toward a new town center. Sitting in your corner of a room staring ahead... what everyone wants now (shown through parasocial peoples, streams, moderated forums) is stability above all else. A continued status quo that sits comfortably above the flames shredding through any meatspace left. Something to attach to, to anchor a personality or existence around. >Please, please! At least let me have my living room and my toaster oven and I'll leave you alone!

>>61711 >>61717 Yes, I agree, people are dragging real life wants to a medium that wasn't meant to emulate such things. It's impossible to conciliate these two opposite concepts, the one of community and the one of descentralized communication. Lainchain (or any blupilled site) will never be better than 4chan, because these ideas simply cannot coexist in a natural and satisfactory way.

>>61824 >better On what? Taste? Experience? What's the purpose? I'll assume this is a matter of taste. So, in terms of Taste - the structure does not matter. The structure will define itself if the band of quality people know how to create quality implicit agreements and work upon that. There's not going to be a need to clean up funpost aisle 5 if there are no funposters to begin with. The central fallacy of Internet forums – or Internet Content at large – is that if you create a ~proper structure~ then the quality will improve. This just isn't true. Rot comes from rotted flesh. And if you think you get quality from your Internet Experience today, then you may value Distraction but that is fundamentally uninteresting. It's distasteful. Without direction. Why are there no improvements to how discourse works online? Because discourse doesn't take place online. Discourse requires having buy-in and ethos. If you had quality people to begin with, then you wouldn't need structure. Quality people understand power dynamics and 価値 Quality people understand the purpose of a forum to begin with: goal oriented discussions. "What can you provide me and what can I provide you?" Respectable people don't need identity or acknowledgement and don't have attachments. The real amusement of the 21st century is that people are so dissociated and brainwashed from what makes a valuable contribution, what is valuable, why someone talks to you, what to BELIEVE you want, what are principles... they're walking receivers from hidden masters. The only winning move is to not play.

Jesus christ, I hate these kinds of people. Pic related.

>>59638 >So to answer OP's question: he is too old and taking the internet a bit too seriously. needed to hear this honestly

>>62105 not me to be honest but everyone within earshot of me does, much to my despair and suicidal inclinations.

>>62090 >In my opinion ... tree-structure comments are the best Should we tell him?

Are you me? Nah seriously the modern online culture is cancer manipulated by intelligence services. Inauthentic as hell and everybody in it is scarred. I can go here. I've seen so many posts like this recently and I always agree but really we gotta make somewhere to go. Like Lainchan. So sorry not really a solution other than uplug a bit and do more IRL stuff

When something becomes popular, the core community of devoted participants cannot possibly initiate new arrivals quickly enough to avoid change. Sometimes it's straight up impossible, due to creation of offshoots. This inevitably leads to dilution of the central ideas and principles of the community, and bastardization of them in the eyes of some of the original members. Not all of them, it's usually a split between people that don't mind as much and adapt, and those that become estranged, alienated, and spiteful. The bad news for you OP, is that I have never seen something withstand change once it became popular. Even if the people against change try their hardest to fight back, or create their own communities, things will never be the same again. There are numerous examples of this happening on smaller and larger scales - the deterioration of discussion quality when the manga you follow gets an anime adaptation, the death of MIT's AI lab and twisting of what the hacker culture represented, the Eternal September on Usenet, and so on. Something complex and engaging like Space Station 13 becomes Among Us, where the mechanics get reduced to mindlessly making swiping motions with your mouse to a very limited set of simplistic mini games. I can't classify this as either good or bad, I can only say that to me, it's a big loss. But for other people it's a source of entertainment and engagement, and there's nothing I can do about it anyway. I used to go into the places I visited in the past, that in my view deteriorated quite significantly, and bitch about it. That's pointless, because the people that frequent them now simply have no idea what has been, have no emotional ties to that past, and no interest in learning it. The people that would have gone their own ways when things started to change. I try to avoid the places I used to frequent as much as possible at this point, because it's very damaging psychologically. So on that note, to attempt to directly answer your question - in my opinion, staying in a community for a very long time is difficult, because even if it manages to stay more or less the same and under the radar of general public, you as a person are subject to change as well. I sometimes caught myself thinking of the good old days, but when I took a look at the old posts, I found little difference to the present. Don't forget to take off your nostalgia glasses before going on to declare the death of a community. Perhaps it would be a good idea to search in some of the more niche groups and interests, for a smaller, but highly engaged and active group of individuals. If you want to take a shot at creating one yourself, I would definitely advise against the imageboard format (and perhaps textboard format as well), simply because it attracts people from the big communities looking for refuge or just to spread misery; they bring all sorts of common baggage with them, and could be hard to integrate. The choice of format definitely matters, and I'm not sure what would be the right answer here. You could also try expanding your horizons and learning a different language. Although I'm not sure if that's necessarily worth the effort - people can be strangely similar even across different cultures. I don't have the energy left for proofreading this text, so please pardon any mistakes or inconsistencies (but feel free to point them out). Thinking about these things spoiled my mood significantly, I don't feel like engaging with this any further today. P.S. Here is a nice article that also touches on this topic in a more structured manner: https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths

>>62636 You're absolutely right but the problem is all the niche stuff is absorbed by the cancer. Reddit is the most applicable for this. You can't find any discussion anymore except on fuarrrking reddit.