It's not childish anymore. It's just angry and cynical. It looks less like the shit-talking edgy teenagers having fun being idiots like it was in 2007, and more like unhinged, hateful, contrarian paranoid schizophrenia.
I wish the people on 4chan had the stupid childish fun that I did 15 years ago.
>and more like unhinged, hateful, contrarian paranoid schizophrenia.
You and I did not use the same 4chan in 2007...
I learned new slurs there, ways to insult people that I could have never imagined.
I read posts from a schizoid that claimed to have evidence that the government was influencing his life through the ratings of popular animes on My Anime List.
I saw child porn get posted regularly.
I saw extremely hateful posts about women, extremely hateful posts about people that aren't white, extremely hateful posts about literally anyone.
I believe you're looking back with rose tinted glasses.
I was a teenager, so it's possible to a degree, but the things you're listing in my memory were there in significantly smaller degrees, and have since completely taken over the site. Back in the day, there was a hell of a lot more "Yellow van", "epic for the win" and the like. Now it's 'america is a far left cultureless “nation” and its tranny enabling (((mutts))) will never be white no matter how much they inbreed with other “whites” in their shithole trailer park'.
Yeah, the disgusting stuff today always was there, but it was a relatively small part of the site, and now it's the vast majority of it. I'm not going to pretend that it was ever "good", but you can't pretend that it hasn't changed at all.
I wholeheartedly agree with this analysis, and submit that those users condescendingly suggesting that it's we who've changed and not 4chan may never have actually experienced the kind of 4chan to which the parent refers. Things were, are, and presumably always will be done for "the lulz", but what those things are, at whom those things are targeted, and why those targets are chosen have changed dramatically. A bright, prescriptive mockery [0] has given way to a sullen, threatening white-supremacism dressed up like the historiography of the fall of Rome, complete with a would-be-kingmaker priesthood who half-ironically wield meme magic to (successfully!) sway real-world events [1]. And this transition is important, because much of the internet's "culture" is created on 4chan, only making its way into the wider world once it's been sufficiently, uh, digested [2] by successively more "normie" intermediaries.
The categorical error is that none of it was a "come from", rather it was a "passing through". The sites were all popular waystations, but none of them owned the creativity of their users, they just happened to host the party, and once the party died down something new came up and the same users moved on to that thing. Thus the large number of Twitter users who will post things starting like "in my 4chan days" "in my SA days".
That last line reminds me of the old refrain: "Ironic shitposting is still shitposting."
Also that old fake Descartes quote: " Any community that gets its laughs by pretending to be idiots will eventually be flooded by actual idiots who mistakenly believe that they're in good company."
>> I read posts from a schizoid that claimed to have evidence that the government was influencing his life through the ratings of popular animes on My Anime List.
This was called trolling for the lulz, you fell for it, & seem to have not realized even 15 years later.
Schizoposting as a fun pasttime has been a thing for users of 4chan/online forums forever. Go watch some South Park episodes centered on Gerald Broflovski trolling. Can’t remember which season off the top of my head. It may help you to understand if things don’t click.
Anecdotally, actual schizophrenics tend to post endlessly into their own little void on traditional social media, often not slightly being aware of or caring that they have either absolutely zero engagement or anybody seeing their profiles at all.
It really depends on the board that you're on. /g/ imo is one of the best tech forums that I'm aware of, as long as you don't get fixated on the occasional crudeness and racism. /pol/ is just racists and incoherent rambling. /tv/ is a good forum for critical takes on media but again requires weeding through the bad parts.
IMO having a kid is the cutoff between old young and young old.
Have a kid and the walls move in fast. Used to live in alternative shelters, backpacking in the outdoors for months on end? Yeah child services says that's substandard housing and abuse. Hell there were child abuse investigation just for a family backpacking the Appalachian trail, and that's a boring ass well planned thing that even old square fuckers can relate to.
Used to psychedelics or other drugs? Yeah the kid is trained at a very young age by police officers at the school to snitch you out, and they get them young enough they won't have a filter. DCS and/or criminal charges incoming.
Used to go overseas and do super dangerous stuff? Suddenly any family or friends that tolerated that say you're a piece of shit for risking your when a kid relies on you and the judge is gonna say even if you earn enough doing that to support the kid it's still not enough because the kid needs 20% of the imputed income you could make as a conservative working stiff no matter if they were fine before during the times you were making less, don't agree well then off to jail.
Your life is surrounded now by mandatory reporters. The doctor, the teacher, the therapist. Yeah, all mandatory reporters. Say something they don't like as a child-free and nobody gives a shit. Have a kid, fuck nah their alternative views are signs of abuse. Send in the investigators and let them sort it out.
And the people making these judgement calls are judges, lawyers, DCS workers. People plugged into the system. Not necessarily politically conservative but conditioned to fall within the norms of the system. Hell even SBF (the guy that never wears a suit even for billion dollar investment meetings) wears a suit in front of a judge, that's how conservative that system is.
You learn to keep your mouth shut. You learn to living in the boring ass house that has occupancy certification. You espouse the most boring views that will not anger a mandatory reporter. You diligently pay the taxes the government uses to drone strike brown people ovrseas. You refrain from drugs. You don't take risks that will result in not being able to make 20% of the imputed income you need to stay out of jail. Wait 18 years and you can be old young again.
I don’t disagree with the general spirit of what you’re saying, but as a former teacher the observations that fall under Mandatory Reporting are fairly specific. Additionally, I know more than one CPS worker on a personal basis and the types of things that get a child removed from the house are religious and severe. Nothing that you have said would cause me to call in a report unless your kid showed up to class with signs of violence on their body. The stories that get reported on are reported because they are exceptional, not normal. I lived a property less, transient lifestyle for years before settling in a place. I don’t write this to change your mind, but to respond in kind.
Yeah I agree there are people all over the board as far as their interpretations. I have family in healthcare and teaching. I believe most of the mandatory reporters are reasonable and possibly even willing to violate the law as they know the foster system is often even worse than living with even a physically abuse parent, but unfortunately the parent and child come into contact with a LOT of reporters over the years and thus they must optimize for the very worst of the ones they will encounter rather than the most reasonable.
Two thirds of black families in my county are investigated. My family have coworkers that explicitly state they will mandatory report things like a parent seeking health care to reduce their substance use.
